Print Issue of September 14, 2017 (Volume 46, Number 49) by Chicago Reader

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | S E P T E M B E R 1 4 , 2 0 1 7

RI OT F EST RET UR NS ,

AND THIS TI ME WE ’VE G OT I T A LL TO OUR SELVES .

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Now Open Charlotte Perriand. Prefabricated Kitchen Unit, Les Tournavelles, Arc 1800, Savoie, France (detail), 1975–78. Funds provided by the Architecture & Design Society. © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris; Ludwig Karl Hilberseimer. Highrise City (Hochhausstadt), Perspective (detail), 1924. Gift of George E. Danforth; Bless: Ines Kaag and Desiree Heiss. Bless Beauty Hairbrush, 1999. Architecture Purchase Account Fund; all(zone) and Rachaporn Choochuey. Light House: The Art of Living Lightly (detail), 2015. Gift of all(zone) in collaboration with Offscene Films; Yuri Suzuki and Mark McKeague. OTOTO (detail), 2013. Architecture Purchase Account Fund.

2 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

THIS WEEK

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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, JAMIE LUDWIG, KATE SCHMIDT SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, OLIVER SAVA, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS ---------------------------------------------------------------VICE PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT NICKI STANULA VICE PRESIDENT OF NEW MEDIA GUADALUPE CARRANZA SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES FABIO CAVALIERI, BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com CHICAGO READER 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654 312-222-6920, CHICAGOREADER.COM

FEATURES

IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda The play United Flight 232, the return of comic and improviser David Koechner, the movie It, and more goings-on about town

FALL ARTS

Chicago’s best bets for fall arts

CITY LIFE

8 Chicagoans An Uber and Lyft driver has hauled a woman to Wisconsin, run errands for his wife, and checked his road rage on multiple occasions. 10 Joravsky | Politics Lessons we can learn from the late, great police activist Pat Hill 12 Transportation After wiping out on lakefront algae, a cyclist wants the Park District to address the green menace.

A preview of the brightest sights, sounds, and screens coming to Chicago in the coming months. BY READER STAFF 13

ARTS & CULTURE

39 Visual Art How the Expo Chicago fair is faring 40 Theater Redtwist Theatre integrates Our Town. 40 Dance Jackson Park’s Garden of the Phoenix hosts the debut of the newly formed South Chicago Dance Company. 41 Theater The inaugural Sparkfest sparks some magic.

FALL ARTS COVER BY ANDREW NAWROCKI

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

Riot Fest is Chicago’s monster again

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

56 Shows of note Rainer Maria, Sheer Mag, M Gun, and more of the week’s best 58 Secret History A brother-sister house duo took on the sister’s husband to form Master Plan, but its future ended with divorce.

After years of expanding into other cities, the giant punk party is once more a strictly hometown aﬀair—and the Reader weighs in on its bill, its brand, and more. BY ED BLAIR, LUCA CIMARUSTI, LEOR GALIL, AND KEVIN WARWICK 43

FOOD & DRINK

63 Restaurant review: The Kennison Chef Bill Walker picks up where Perennial Virant left oﬀ. 65 Cocktail challenge: Tums Drumbar mixologist Gary Matthews attempts to relieve the burn with booze.

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RIOT FEST COVER BY BALDUR HELGASON FIRST U.S. SOLO SHOW ‘THREE WISE MONKEYS’ WILL OPEN AT NYCH GALLERY IN PILSEN NOVEMBER 10TH.

CLASSIFIEDS

66 Jobs 66 Apartments & Spaces 67 Marketplace

EXTRACURRICULAR

Having squeaked out a dramatic extra-innings win over ChicagoNow on September 11, the Reader’s 16-inch softball team has become the ﬁrst-ever back-to-back media-league champion in the history of this great city. The Kup Cup, named for late Sun-Times columnist Irv Kupcinet, found its way back to its rightful home at the Reader offices, where it will continue to sparkle, thanks in part to a mix of bargain-bin champagne and tears of joy. —KEVIN WARWICK, TEAM CAPTAIN

68 Straight Dope Which country has the loosest free speech laws? 69 Savage Love Is demisexuality a real thing? 70 Early Warnings Matisyahu, Halsey, Animal Collective, the Struts, and more shows you should know about in the weeks to come 70 Gossip Wolf Jessica Marks debuts her video for “Fuck the Clock” at the Hideout, and more music news.

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 3

ADEWALE HEATHER CHRISTOPHER REYNA JENNIFER AKINNUOYE-AGBAJE GRAHAM McDONALD DE COURCY EHLE MOST COME TO ESCAPE THE PAST. HE CAME TO CHASE IT.

AGENDA R

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b ALL AGES

F The Drowsy Chaperone MadR Kap Productions takes on this Tony Award favorite, a “metamusical”

ABRAMORAMA PRESENTS A MEDIABEND PRODUCTION WETLANDS ADEWALE AKINNUOYE-AGBAJE HEATHER GRAHAM CHRISTOPHER McDONALD WITH REYNA DE COURCY AND JENNIFER EHLE CASTING BY BESS FIFER COSTUME DESIGNER MICHELLE MATLAND PRODUCTION DESIGN LUCIO SEIXAS MUSIC BY TREVOR GURECKIS MUSIC SUPERVISOR SUSAN JACOBS EDITOR RAY HUBLEY DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY BARRY MARKOWITZ, ASC EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS MICHAEL SHAMBERG AND DAVID UNGER WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY EMANUELE DELLA VALLE

The Civility of Albert Cashier ò COLE SIMON

THEATER More at chicagoreader.com/theater

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4 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

young Cashier and Billy Rude as a smitten battle buddy. —DAN JAKES Through 10/15: Wed-Thu 7 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 4 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-3275252, stage773.com, $40.

The American Mercy Tour WritR ten and performed by Michael Deirdre of the Sorrows Milligan, this is a harrowing two-parter R Here’s a genuine rarity: the ﬁrst on how and why our country has failed professional Chicago production in

to protect its “huddled masses” from sickness and destitution. “All these people,” says Joe, the bankrupt and humiliated auto mechanic of part one, waving a hand at invisible bank heads and bureaucrats. “They’re just trying to make some money off my wife’s being sick.” Part two shifts to an attorney’s office, where William, an overworked doctor, contemplates a standing offer from Big Pharma to buy his small family-owned practice. Compared with Joe, William has it made: nice car, IRA, vacations in France. All the same, the accumulated pressures of 30 consultations a day are about to destroy him. Milligan is more natural as William, but there’s fury (and massive research) behind each performance. —MAX MALLER Through 10/8: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-4047336, greenhousetheater.org, $5-$1,000, pay what you can.

The Civility of Albert Cashier By the time of his death in 1915, Union soldier Albert D. J. Cashier would be betrayed by many of the same institutions and individuals for whom he sacrificed so much. Notably, his comrades in arms, who vouched for his bravery and entitlement to a full military pension, were never among them. Jay Paul Deratany’s new musical for Permoveo Productions tells the incredible story of Cashier’s Civil War engagements and the scandal that broke when, retired, he was outed as a biological female. The story, directed by Keaton Wooden, who cocomposed with Joe Stevens, flips awkwardly back and forth between the soldier’s active combat and the year before his death, when, suffering from dementia, he was assigned to a mental institution. Though the light musical tone is often at odds with the substantial story, there are some undeniably affecting bluegrass and folk-infused moments here—especially between Dani Shay as

a century of John Millington Synge’s poetic tragedy, based on pre-Christian Irish mythology. Synge’s last play—unfinished when he died at 37 in 1909, but completed by his friend William Butler Yeats for its 1910 premiere at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre—retells the legend of Deirdre, betrothed since childhood to Conchubor, High King of Ulster. Unwilling to marry a man old enough to be her father, the beautiful, headstrong heroine instead flees to Scotland with her young lover, the warrior Naisi, leading to the bloodshed and sorrows that were foretold at her birth. Kay Martinovich’s staging for City Lit Theater evokes an appropriately rustic simplicity with evocative costumes and tapestries, and the ten-person ensemble execute the dense, heavily accented, image-rich dialogue with an effective mix of lyrical eloquence and unaffected plainness. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 10/15: FriSat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, City Lit Theater, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-293-3682, citylit. org, $32, $27 seniors, $12 students and military.

Distracted Lisa Loomer’s play R centers on Mama (Rebecca Sparks) and the eﬀort she expends

trying to ﬁnd out what’s wrong with her nine-year-old son. Why can’t he sit still or stop cursing? Is it chemical, emotional, environmental? What starts out as comedy gradually gains gravity and ends up as a critique of our media-saturated ADD age. The talented supporting cast nimbly juggles multiple roles, and there are many clever, winking transitions from internal monologue to external action, but the piece wouldn’t go without Sparks’s touching, nuanced performance. Marc James directed for the Cuckoo Theater’s Project. —DMITRY SAMAROV Through 10/7: Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Thu 10/5, 8 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 773-5397838, propthtr.org, $30.

that professes love for, and parodies, jazz age theater. Set in the apartment of Broadway superfan the Man in Chair (played by a charming and witty James Spangler), the entire show is a re-creation of his favorite musical, which he often plays on the turntable when he’s blue. Having the cast emerge from his refrigerator sets the tone for an exceedingly goofy, slapstick send-up of tuner archetypes, though the musical within the musical quickly devolves into run-of-the-mill cases of mistaken identity and misunderstanding. Standout moments come during bride Janet’s immodest performance number “Show Off” and her chaperone’s “rousing anthem to alcoholism,” a ditty called “As We Stumble Along.” —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 10/7: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM (no shows Fri 9/22 and 9/29 or Sat 9/30), Sun 2 PM; also Wed 9/13, 1:30 PM, Skokie Theatre, 7924 N. Lincoln, Skokie, 847-677-7761, skokietheatre.com, $39, $34 seniors, $29 students. The Heavens Are Hung in Black Abraham Lincoln was a notoriously confounding man, and Shattered Globe Theatre is staging a confounding play about him. It’s spring 1862 when we start our two-and-a-half-hour slog through the 16th president’s days and dreams: The astoundingly grisly Civil War is going badly for the north, with a preening, paralyzed General McClellan in charge of the Union armies; the Lincolns’ third son, 12-year-old Willie, has only recently died of typhus; and Washington political factions are fighting it out over the question of freeing the slaves. Playwright James Still packs all this and too much more into his metaphor-heavy, pedantic script without doing any of it justice. Certain matters—like Lincoln’s tendency to pardon military offenses—get repeated over and over again to no particular end, while others—like his discussions of emancipation—are continually cut short. If not for Lawrence Grimm’s engaging, even playful Lincoln (and especially his powerful rendition of a speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V), Still’s pageant would have no center of gravity at all. —TONY ADLER Through

10/21: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, theaterwit.org, $15-$35. The Invisible Scarlet O’Neil Barbara Lhota’s play built around one of America’s first female superheroes, Scarlet O’Neil (whose adventures were featured in the funny papers from 1940 to 1956), feels right at home in the summer of Patti Jenkins’s Wonder Woman. But this Babes with Blades world premiere fails to live up to its potential. Under Leigh Barrett’s direction, the pace of the production starts off strong, then gets bogged down in exposition, digression, and some not-so-funny funny business. No question, the show features some fine acting—Chloe Baldwin is winning as O’Neil, and Lisa Herceg crackles as both a wise cracking receptionist and a brilliant inventor/movie star modeled on Hedy Lamarr. In the end, however, we’re still left wanting less. —JACK HELBIG Through 10/14: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard, thefactorytheater.com, $25, $15 students and seniors. Muthaland From the moment she R enters from the back of the auditorium, dragging heavy baggage (both a metaphor and a key part of the show), Minita Gandhi grabs our attention and keeps it for the full 90 minutes of this rich, resonant, sometimes hilarious, at times deeply moving autobiographical piece about an Indian-American woman in her 30s who’s still struggling to find her place in the world. As directed by Heidi Stillman, who also worked with Gandhi to develop the show, this gracefully told story avoids the self-indulgence and narcissism that drags down lesser solo works. It helps that Gandhi is a true chameleon, equally convincing whether playing her father, her mother, a dreamboat boyfriend, or a younger version of herself. —JACK HELBIG Through 10/7: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 5 and 8 PM, 16th Street Theater, Berwyn Cultural Center, 6420 16th St., Berwyn, 708-795-6704, 16thstreettheater.org, $22, $18 low income or resident of Berwyn. Rock of Ages Maybe it’s a generational thing, or maybe just a question of trying to get one more drop of blood from the

The Heavens Are Hung in Black ò EVAN HANOVER

Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of September 14

technical capacities of the theater, some with stripped-down staging. Danielle Agami, a Princess Grace Choreography Fellowship recipient, makes her debut. Sat 9/16, 7:30 PM, Visceral Dance Center, 2820 N. Elston, 773-772-1771, visceraldance.com, $32-$48.

F*ck You, Stephen Hawking! Rock. Past productions have approached Chris D’Arienzo’s 2005 jukebox musical as an aﬀectionate spoof of 80s hair metal, with a secondary streak of self-parody running through it. But in this new Drury Lane version, self-parody has become the point. Director Scott Weinstein seems to regard the book— about Sunset Strip rockers resisting a Giulianiesque eﬀort to clean up their gloriously sleazy neighborhood—as less a text than a target. The staging is full of jokey, raunchy topical subversions, mainly carried out by Nick Druzbanski as Lonnie, the endlessly saucy narrator. It works often enough to keep things amusing but also makes you less likely to care what becomes of the would-be lovers (Cherry Torres and Russell Mernagh) at the center of the show. Still, the period music survives. It’s hard to stop believing in “Don’t Stop Believing.” —TONY ADLER Through 10/15: Wed 1:30 PM, Thu 1:30 and 8 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM, Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace, 100 Drury Ln., Oakbrook Terrace, 630-530-0111, drurylaneoakbrook.com, $45-$60.

Spectrum Links Hall dancers explore what it might feel like to have a mental or physical handicap holding you back, then overcome those hurdles. Through 9/17: Fri-Sun 7 PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-281-0824, linkshall.org, $15.

COMEDY The Bat Live Theater scripts R typically begin with “Lights come up.” This improvised show bucks the

trope by skipping that line. Instead, comics keep the room dark and perform for an audience that can’t quite make out what’s going on. Presumably, night vision goggles will be conﬁscated at the door. Through 9/28: Thu 6 PM, iO Theater, the Mission Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com/chicago. David Koechner, Symphony of R Chaos! Koechner, who costarred in the Anchorman movies, is an alumnus

thing: they’ve all checked out the same public library copy of The Great Gatsby. Rogers shares excerpts from the book, and given he’s a former stand-up comic, here’s hoping he throws in some jokes. Sun 9/17, 3 PM, 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th, 773-684-1300, semcoop.com.

VISUAL ARTS Religious Change and Print, 1450-1700 Staﬀ at the Newberry Library have been working to preserve manuscripts, maps, and music from the years 14501700 AD, and the fruits of their labor are now on display. No touching! Opening Thu 9/14. Mon, Fri, and Sat 8:15 AM-5 PM, Tue-Thu 8:15 AM-7:30 PM. Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton, 312255-3700, newberry.org. Worms, Birds, People, and Air: The Art of Oh No and Dissociative Thinking Los Angeles-based Chris Johanson runs down the list of things he loves, then translates those things into papier-mache, woodwork, and prints. Some of the items on said list include: birds, pinot noir, cockroaches. Opening reception Fri 9/15, 8-11 PM. Soccer Club Club, 2923 N. Cicero, 312-455-1015, soccerclubclub.com.

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as he connects it to the emergence of the American cinema. The movie honors the silent-ﬁlm aesthetic with a majestic score and the narration in onscreen titles, though composer Alex Somers cuts loose with a little electronic noise whenever Morrison presents one of his abstract studies in peeling emulsion. Included is rare footage of the Chicago “Black Sox” playing the infamous 1919 World Series. —J.R. JONES 120 min. Fri 9/15, 2 PM; Sat 9/16, 5 PM; Tue 9/19, 8:15 PM; and Wed 9/20, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

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4 Days in France Acting on a whim, a professor in Paris sets out to explore the provinces; his abandoned boyfriend follows after him, and on the road both men engage in lots of sex with strangers. This meandering 2016 drama, the debut feature of writer-director Jérôme Reybaud, feels like a queer, 21st-century update on Wim Wenders’s road movies of the 1970s (Alice in the Cities, Kings of the Road, Wrong Move). Whereas Wenders’s characters often feel isolated, Reybaud’s connect easily with others,

of Chicago, where he was a staple at iO Theater, an improviser, quick to ﬁnd the funny in any scene, whose characters were impossible to ignore. He brings those characters back for an evening of stories and solo sketch. Sat 9/16, 7:30 PM, Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 W. Campbell, Arlington Heights, 847577-2121, metropolisarts.com, $45-$50.

United Flight 232 This outstandR ing play, remounted by the House F*ck You, Stephen Hawking! Theatre of Chicago after an acclaimed R Hawking, one of the most brilliant debut last year, is like watching everypeople alive, has for years warned that thing you always wanted to believe about the human capacity for goodness and self-sacriﬁce suddenly kick in at once. On a warm July morning in 1989, after the third engine and hydraulic systems of a DC-10 passenger plane carrying nearly 300 people both failed catastrophically in midair, the crew and passengers worked together to save more than half of those onboard when the plane smashed, upside down, into an Iowa cornﬁeld. The intensity of the moment, as revealed in Vanessa Stalling’s brilliant staging of a book by Laurence Gonzalez, called forth mysterious instincts, unusual acts of bravery, and fervent prayers among those who survived. With nine captivating performances, 232 is a religious experience. —MAX MALLER Through 10/21: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 and 7 PM; also Wed 10/18, 8 PM, Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 773-769-3832, thehousetheatre.com, $40-$45.

DANCE Fall Engagement Visceral Dance Chicago’s ﬁfth season opener includes pieces of work from the past, some using the

the end of days is coming soon. This show revolves around a married couple plunged into an existential crisis by their inability to make any meaningful contribution toward saving the multiverse. Damn you, Hawking! They just wanted to live out their picket-fence lives believing that the universe is eternal, and that airline food is a thing of the past. Through 10/21, Sat 4 PM, Drinking & Writing Theater @ Haymarket Pub & Brewery, 737 W. Randolph, 312-638-0700, $15.

4 Days in France

MOVIES More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS

LIT & LECTURES R Victor Prince Prince’s newest, The Camino Way: Lessons in Leadership From a Walk Across Spain, distills insights from his trek along the Camino el Santiago—an ancient 500-mile-long road traversed by pilgrims for centuries—into tangible business strategies. Thu 9/14, 6:30-8 PM, City Lit Books, 2523 N. Kedzie, 773-235-2523, citylitbooks.com. Brian Rogers The Whole of the Moon weaves together the narratives of six disparate characters linked by one

Dawson City: Frozen Time Bill Morrison, whose extraordinary documentary Decasia (2002) turned decomposing film stock into the stuff of avant-garde reverie, returns with another staggering journey into the past. In 1978 a construction crew in Dawson City, Yukon, uncovered hundreds of reels of silent film that were used as landfill after a local theater switched over to talkies in the 1930s. Drawing on these materials as well as archival photos and other movie clips, Morrison reconstructs the history of the frontier town from its gold-rush heyday to the present, even

using the Internet and their own charisma to forge bonds (both sexual and fraternal) with people unlike themselves. But as in the Wenders films, a desire for independence overwhelms any lasting sense of connection. At nearly two and a half hours, the film feels a little overlong, but the acute sense of transience makes a strong impression. In French with subtitles. —BEN SACHS 142 min. Fri 9/15-Thu 9/20. Facets Cinematheque. Home Again Hallie Meyers-Shyer—who grew up on the sets of her moviemaker mom, Nancy Meyers (The Intern, Something’s Gotta Give)—makes her writing and directing debut with this cloying romantic comedy about a lonely mother of two in LA. Depressed over her failed marriage and 40th birthday, the heroine (Reese Witherspoon) meets an amorous 27-year-old filmmaker (Pico Alexander, µ

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 5

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FEATURED LISTINGS

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Sidewinder Gallery

Sidewinder Gallery presents ‘Neo-Nouveau’ Friday September 8th, an exhibition of four contemporary artists from a variety of locations around the world, whose images display a highly evolved sense of line, shape, color and composition. Please contact brett@sidewindergallery.com for additional information. 773.961.8022

Performing Arts Studio

Training and Fitness through the Arts Theatre • Dance • Music Lessons Juggling • Acrobatics • Yoga Grand Opening September 18 630 W. Webster 1-E, Lincoln Park www.performingartsstudio.com

Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University

Opening Celebration: William Blake and the Age of Aquarius Saturday, September 23, 10AM-1PM A hands-on, all ages “happening” to celebrate the imaginative spirit that unites William Blake and the Age of Aquarius. Spudnik Press printmaking, Poems While You Wait, Old Town School and more. Join the jam!

Andersonville Arts Week

October 10 - 15 Over 70 local shops, restaurants, and businesses celebrate Andersonville’s thriving artistic community, now for an entire week! Featuring the Friday night Stroll & Soirée, art walk, expanded Farmers Market, culinary specials, pop-up makers market, public art reveal, and more. Information at: andersonville.org/aaw

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Vibrations B miscast) and his two partners (Nat Wolﬀ, Jon Rudnitsky), who so charm her mother (Candice Bergen) that she invites them to move into the daughter’s guest house. Witherspoon lacks the abandon the May-December love angle requires, and the movie is so tidily formulaic that it feels as if it’s been airbrushed; the send-up of Hollywood falls ﬂat too. —ANDREA GRONVALL PG-13, 97 min. Block 37, ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Lake, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place. It Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel It told a story of children who are menaced by a demonic clown in the late 50s and then reunited 27 years later when the curse returns to their hometown; this bigscreen adaptation dramatizes the childhood section alone, moving the action up to the late 80s and branding it “Chapter One” in the closing credits to drum up interest in a modern-day sequel. Director Andy Muschietti models the movie on Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me (1986), another King adaptation about young pals, and his talented teen actors (especially Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, and Jeremy Ray Taylor) deliver some good moments as the clique of grade-school losers, who begin to compare notes about their horrible visions and discover that a supernatural force invades the town periodically to prey on children. The serious dramatic themes ring hollow, however, leaving only the paperback boogety boogety to justify the Oscar-bait running time. —J.R. JONES R, 135 min. Block 37, ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Davis, Ford City, Harper, Lake, Logan, New 400, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place. The Midwife Catherine Frot and Catherine Deneuve light up this

6 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

French drama from writer-director Martin Provost, who knows how to write strong characters for women (Séraphine, Violette) but whose stars here are forced to do much of the heavy lifting. Frot brings her usual warmth to the role of Claire, a middle-aged midwife whose clinic is being absorbed by a big hospital, and the regal Deneuve plays against type as Beatrice, a frowsy old woman who was once mistress to Claire’s father and now shows up at her door terminally ill and hungry for solace. At one point Deneuve executes a difficult crying scene in order to sell one of Provost’s contrivances, but for the most part the veteran actresses salvage the soapy plot by playing their scenes together with a Gallic toughness. In French with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 117 min. Fri 9/15-Mon 9/18, 2, 4:30, 7, and 9:30 PM; Tue 9/19, 2, 4:30, and 7 PM; Wed 9/20, 2, 4:30, 7, and 9:30 PM; and Thu 9/21, 2, 4:30, and 9:30 PM. Music Box. Rat Film In this debut feature, documentary maker Theo Anthony crafts a convincing analogy between the rat infestation of Baltimore and the issues of race and class that also afflict the city. The movie begins with a dry observation of a rat stuck inside a trash can—rats can jump an average of 32 inches, the monotonous female narrator explains, and Baltimore trash cans are 34 inches high—and the image neatly introduces Anthony’s theme: how the structure of a place can stack the odds against those living inside. The metaphor may seem obvious, but Anthony’s blend of well-researched scientific and historical background with deep existential questioning recalls Werner Herzog’s best work, presenting a fresh take on a centuries-old subject with poetry and urgency. —LEAH PICKETT 82 min. Fri 9/15Thu 9/20. Facets Cinematheque. Rebel in the Rye Danny Strong, who scripted Lee Daniels’s marvelous The Butler, makes his directing debut with this formulaic biopic of

J.D. Salinger, covering the author’s life in the 1940s and early ’50s and focusing on his creation of The Catcher in the Rye. As with The Butler, Strong crams his script with as many events as possible, exploring few of them in depth, and his dialogue is riddled with cliches. Daniels overcame these flaws with wildly stylized direction and unpredictable performances, but Strong has no distinct visual style and, aside from Kevin Spacey as Story magazine editor Whit Burnett, Salinger’s first mentor, the cast here is flat. Fatally, the movie fails to convey the sympathy and imagination of Salinger’s prose—instead characters simply state over and over again how brilliant he is. With Nicholas Hoult as Salinger. —BEN SACHS PG-13, 106 min. Landmark’s Century Centre. Vibrations Recently R restored by UCLA, this 1968 sexploitation feature by Joe Sarno

oﬀers plenty of onscreen lovemaking, but it also holds up as a New York indie drama about women ﬁghting or indulging their sexual needs. A repressed poet, living in a small apartment on Times Square, bristles when her loose older sister comes to visit; they share a history of incest, and the older sister complicates things further by getting involved with a trio of swingers in the apartment next door. The sex scenes, shot from the waist up and with the lovers in a continuous state of orgasm, seem tame now; more potent by far is the internal friction between Sarno’s undeniably male gaze and his sincere desire to learn what women want. The occasional exterior long shots following characters down the old, seedy Broadway are delectable, propelled by Sandy McVane’s funky organ score. —J.R. JONES 76 min. Fri 9/15, 6 PM, and Wed 9/20, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center. SPECIAL EVENTS

Experimental State-Sponsored Films From India, 1966-1975 Simran Bhalla, a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University, curated this program of short works produced by Films Division, the ﬁlm production unit of the Indian government. 95 min. Bhalla speaks with University of Chicago professor Rochona Majumdar after the screening. Thu 9/21, 7 PM. Northwestern Univ. Block Museum of Art. F The Florida Project Sean Baker (Tangerine) wrote and directed this drama about a precocious six-yearold who lives near Disney World in Orlando. With Willem Dafoe. R, 115 min. Baker attends this outdoor screening; tickets at eventbrite.com. The ﬁlm opens for a commercial run on October 13. Tue 9/19, 7 PM. Ace Hotel. F v

Feed your brain. • Earn your Northwestern master’s in liberal studies or literature. • Build skills for professional and academic success, including critical analysis, writing, and research. • Learn from dynamic and diverse faculty. • Choose from a range of specializations or develop a custom plan of study. • Attend evening courses in Chicago and Evanston. Apply today — winter quarter applications are due October 15. sps.northwestern.edu/brain • 312-503-2579

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Consider the value of a Northwestern bachelor’s degree in today’s competitive marketplace. You may be closer to a Northwestern degree than you think. • Restart your academic career at a premier university. • Choose from 12 bachelor’s degree majors. • Take advantage of competitive tuition rates. • Transfer in credit — many students create a shorter path to degree completion by applying transfer credit. • Explore ﬁnancial aid and scholarship opportunities for qualiﬁed undergraduate students. Apply today — applications are accepted quarterly. sps.northwestern.edu/ugrad • 312-503-2579

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE Chicagoans

Uber and Lyft driver

Street view

Rational fashion

ò ISA GIALLORENZO

Dan Pittatsis, 70

EVERY DAY FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS, Abigail Glaum-Lathbury has worn one of six versions of the same jumpsuit. A professor of fashion design at the School of the Art Institute, Glaum-Lathbury created the outfit with Los Angeles-based visual artist Maura Brewer to “explore the possibility of a universal garment that could be worn in any situation,” she says. Together the pair form the Rational Dress Society, and sell the product, manufactured in the U.S., under the name Jumpsuit, calling it “an experiment in counterfashion.” Since devoting herself fulltime to the one-piece lifestyle, Glaum-Lathbury doesn’t miss her old clothes at all. She cherishes the reduced laundry load, she says, among other perks: “I think the thing that surprised me the most was just how little I missed the stress and anxiety of picking out the right outfit for the right occasion. I learned that I loved not having to pick out clothing or go shopping!” The unisex jumpsuit—which has been worn by at least two couples in their weddings—is sold according to a sizing system “that can accommodate 248 body types,” with videos available online to help potential wearers determine the best fit. Right now RDS is also promoting a movement called Make America Rational Again, for which it’s collecting “gently used and emphatically discarded” Ivanka Trump-brand garments to be turned into fibers for a special-edition jumpsuit, with proceeds going to the LA-based Garment Workers Center. A tote bag and poster with the MARA logo will be on sale at jumpsu.it soon. Designed by local studio Sonnenzimmer, the posters were made with paper recycled from Ivanka Trump’s books. —ISA GIALLORENZO See more Chicago street style on Giallorenzo’s blog chicagolooks.blogspot.com.

“To me, this isn’t even working,” Pittatsis says. “I would never, ever under any circumstances work for someone else ever again. I’m done.” ò LESLIE FREMPONG

THIS ISN’T FOR everyone. You cannot have road rage. You have to be somewhat friendly. I do mints and gum; I do not do water. My charming personality should be enough. I have a BMW with 250,000 miles, and I know where I’m going. Sometimes if I have a chore to do or an errand to run in Libertyville, I’ll put this thing on and start driving toward Libertyville, and then my wife will send me to Staples or whatever. If I have to go pick up my grandkids in Park Ridge, and I’ll pick up a couple people on the way there, great, it’ll pay for me taking my grandkids to lunch. Do I make enough money to make it worth my while? Sorta. I think this job would have a completely different vibe to it if you needed it to make ends meet. If you had to do it 55 hours a week, I don’t know. But $1,500 extra a month—that means a better bottle of wine at dinner, that means I can go to Whole Foods and not worry. I’m not rich by any means, but I’m fine. To me, this

isn’t even working. I would never, ever under any circumstances work for someone else ever again. I worked my whole life. I’m done. Once I picked up a woman at the Radisson Blu downtown. She was stunning, and I’m not easily knocked over by that. She looked like a retired supermodel. She had this faint smell of vanilla on her. She goes, “Do you have any time today?” She needed to go to another Raddisson in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, and she wanted me to wait for her for an hour and a half and drive her back. Either she was a high-end call girl, a drug dealer, or a lawyer. She had a little computer and an overnight bag. When she gave me a $50 tip, that eliminated the lawyer possibility. I said, “Well, if you ever need something like this again . . . ” She looked at me: “Oh, I don’t think so.” That was the oddest one of them all. I’ve only thrown one person out of my car ever, and it was a guy going from the South Loop to the West

Loop. Businessman, kind of nerdy looking, wearing like a cheap sport coat, and his shoes didn’t match. He goes, “I want to go down Roosevelt Road.” I said, “That’s fine, sir. Just so you know, Roosevelt Road is under construction. It’s a mess.” He said, “That’s how I wanna go. Go fuck yourself.” I said, “OK, fine.” So now we’re in total gridlock on Roosevelt Road, and there’s an uneasy silence, and he says to me, “Why did you go this way?” I said, “Well, sir, this is the way you requested me to go.” There’s a five- or six-second pause, and he goes, “You should have known better.” I just pulled over, and I said, “Please, sir, just get out of the vehicle. Don’t make me get out to open the door for you.” I don’t do Friday and Saturday nights. I’d rather do Saturday and Sunday mornings, where people are going to a farmers’ market, a ballgame, whatever. Rush hour, I’m not a big fan. I don’t need the aggravation. I don’t need the drunks. I want to be the drunk. —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD

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

SURE THINGS THURSDAY 14

FRIDAY 15

SATURDAY 16

SUNDAY 17

MONDAY 18

TUESDAY 19

WEDNESDAY 20

M Ch icago Reader ’s Annual Cockt a il Challenge Each year, a particular theme—in this case, “Decades”—is used as a jumping-oﬀ point for more than a dozen of the city’s best mixologists to craft seasonal cocktails. Each is available for drinking ASAP. 7-10 PM, Spin Chicago, 344 N. State, chicago.wearespin.com, $40-$50.

Ð Pl ei n Ar t Pa inte rs of Chicago Each of the 12 artists on display follows the French “En plein air” style of painting, working outdoors and without constraint. The city has never looked so fresh and so clean, clean. Opening reception 5-8 PM, Palette and Chisel, 1012 N. Dearborn, paletteandchisel. org. F

Ravenswood ArtWa lk Over the years, the warehouses on Ravenswood along the Metra tracks have been converted from industrial sites to artist lofts. This walk, spanning Ravenswood from Irving Park to Leland, is an opportunity to view local work and practice ballroom dancing. 11 AM-6 PM, ravensartwalk.org, $5 suggested donation.

Tours at Mainstrea m Pu mping St ati on and Mc Cook Reser voir Make the trek to Hodgkins for one of the last chances to see the inside of the city’s new waterworks system. 9 AM, tours every two hours, Mainstream Pumping Station, 6100 River Rd., Hodgkins, facebook.com/MetropolitanWaterReclamationDistrict. F

J The Secret Life of a Lesbian Ex-Wife Randi Wallace has had quite the journey: marriage led her to realize that she was queer and needed a divorce. Her solo show looks at her mind-set throughout the process and what she now faces in a culture she knows little about. 8 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, theannoyance.com, $6.

M Ch icago Underground Comedy This excellent showcase of local talent welcomes out-of-town headliner Ben Kronberg, whose rapid-ﬁre style cuts deep. “Do you think God created cancer because he likes to watch us race?” And so forth. 9:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, chicagoundergroundcomedy.com, $5.

Ô South Side Stories: Rethinking Chicago Art Through a variety of screen prints and posters, this display highlights watershed moments in the Black Arts Movement of late 60s and early 70s. 10 AM-5 PM, Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood, 773-702-0200, smartmuseum.uchicago. edu. F

8 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

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SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 9

Read Ben Joravsky’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.

CITY LIFE Pat Hill ò KEVIN SERNA

POLITICS

Pat Hill’s legacy

Lessons we can learn from the late, great police activist

By BEN JORAVSKY

or the last few days, I’ve been trying to think up a worthwhile way for Chicago to commemorate the life and legacy of Pat Hill, the great citizen activist, who died of cancer on September 3. She was 66—way too young. Given her love for sports, I figure the city should name a park for her—or maybe an indoor running track. With the controversy over Balbo Drive being named for an aviator in Mussolini’s air force, how about calling that downtown artery Pat Hill Drive? Like that will ever happen. Whatever memorial Chicago comes up with will undoubtedly emerge from the grass roots. Hill spent most of her adult life upsetting the hell out of Chicago’s ruling political class—I’m sure they’d just as soon forget she ever existed. Over the years, I turned to Hill for countless quotes and observations. Sometimes we’d get on the phone and talk politics for hours.

10 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

She was one of those fearless and principled Chicagoans who realize at an early age how corrupt and dysfunctional this city can be and decide the hell with that. Obviously, we don’t have nearly enough of this type. Born and raised on the south side, Hill graduated from Harlan High. She was a high school track star, coming close to qualifying for the 1968 Olympics in the long jump. In the 70s and 80s, she taught physical education at several public high schools. She became a Chicago police officer in 1986, at the age of 35—in order to, as she put it, “fight the repression in the force.” Hill pissed off the brass just by being who she was. She wore a short natural and favored African jewelry and hats. “I try to be polite and respectful to everyone I meet,” Hill once told me. “But some people feel threatened by a black person who shows ethnic pride.” As the leader of the African American Po-

lice League, she pushed for affirmative action on the force, joined marches against police brutality, championed the rights of officers to wear their hair in braids or dreadlocks, and sat on the “people’s side” in court cases involving police brutality. I met her in the early 1990s, when department honchos, irritated by her activism, wrote her up on bogus charges of insubordination. This wasn’t rare, by the way. Over the years, the department stuck Hill with dozens of horseshit charges. In many cases, she was defended by Joseph Roddy, a lawyer for the Fraternal Order of Police, who more typically defended cops accused of brutality. “Joe’s cool,” Hill once told me. “He always calls me Patty. And I send him a Kwanzaa card every year. I also gave him a red, black, and green liberation ﬂag to put in his office.” Roddy said of Hill: “Pat’s a great human being. You have to admire her. She’s absolutely fearless. The country needs more Pat Hills.” In 2003 a cabdriver named Steve Wiedersberg cooked up a campaign to get Mayor Richard M. Daley to name Hill as the police superintendent. Wiedersberg adored Hill because she’d had the audacity to run against Third Ward alderman Dorothy Tillman in 1999. Hill lost, in large part because Mayor Daley brought out the vote for Tillman.

Hill knew there was no way Daley would make her superintendent. But she went along with the effort, relishing the opportunity to weigh in with her views on policing. She called for hiring more police, “obviously with better training,” and especially black and Hispanic officers. At times she sounded more like a social worker than cop—she was light-years ahead of her time. “Police can’t do it all,” she told me. “There’s a thing called ‘integrated paradigm.’ That means you take all the agencies—police, health care, social service—and have them work in an integrated manner. In the case of Englewood—which I know a lot about ’cause I’ve worked here so long—you have lot of health issues, like mental illness, that become social issues ’cause they’re not treated. “No one public entity can deal with this all by itself. You need the schools and the churches and the social agencies—everything. You ain’t gonna solve it, people, by just bringing in the police to knock heads and throw people in jail.” (In contrast, Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed six mental health clinics in low-income, high-crime areas and dealt with the police manpower shortage by making cops work overtime. That’s our mayor—determined never to learn.) Needless to say, Daley passed over Hill for police superintendent in favor of a white guy named Philip Cline, who resigned in 2007 following two separate incidents where police ofﬁcers were caught on tape beating up citizens. Some things never change, huh? Even after she retired from the force in 2003, Hill’s activism didn’t wane. She fought against bringing the Olympics to Chicago. It upset her that the city was eager to squander hundreds of millions of dollars on the games, but couldn’t ﬁnd money to build a few indoor running tracks for high-schoolers, who still practiced in the hallways—just like they did when she went to Harlan. She said Chicago didn’t deserve the games because of its unresolved history of torturing suspects in police custody: “You dishonor the spirit of the Olympics by bringing it to the torture capital of the Western world,” she once told me. Pat Hill was unafraid to tell it like it is. Perhaps adopting her ideas about sane and compassionate policing would be the greatest tribute of all. v

v @joravben

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 | 7-10PM | SPIN 344 N STATE | CHICAGO PARTICIPATING ESTABLISHMENTS SPIN • TWO • THE BETTY • THE DRIFTER BILLY SUNDAY • SABLE KITCHEN & BAR • 312 CHICAGO REVEL ROOM • BARRELHOUSE FLAT • MONEYGUN PUNCH HOUSE • BERKSHIRE ROOM IL PORCELLINO • FRONTIER

Tickets are on sale now at chicagoreader.com/cocktail MUST BE 21+ PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 11

CITY LIFE TRANSPORTATION

Slippery when wet

After wiping out on lakefront algae, a cyclist wants the Park District to address the green menace.

By JOHN GREENFIELD

alk about a lousy way to spend your birthday. On Labor Day, Stephanie Reid was biking along the lakefront to 12th Street Beach, where she planned to meet up with friends to celebrate turning 30. Near Adler Planetarium she wiped out on a patch of slippery, algae-covered concrete, winding up with a broken arm, a dislocated shoulder, and some nasty road rash. Now she’s calling on the Chicago Park District to take steps to prevent similar mishaps—or worse—from happening to other folks. Reid works in HR for a West Loop marketing firm and lives in Logan Square with her sixyear-old daughter, Noelle. She’s a year-round bike commuter and uses cycling as her main form of transportation. In fact, Reid has been known to ride to gigs with her marching band and performance art group Environmental Encroachment via what she calls a “bike train,” towing Noelle on a trailer cycle attached to her seat post, with her sousaphone bringing up the rear in a baby trailer. Cycling solo around 11:30 AM on the day of the crash, Reid was headed southbound along the Lakefront Trail toward the party. It’s possible to bike to 12th Street Beach, which is located just south of the planetarium, by leaving the trail via a ramp next to the Shedd Aquarium and heading east to the end of Solidarity Drive. Instead, Reid exited the trail northwest of the aquarium, taking a path to the lowest level of concrete revetment that encircles the beaux arts building. From there one can ride east along the water to the Adler, circumnavigate that institution, and then reach the beach without dealing with motor vehicles. “I considered Solidarity Drive, but it seemed like going around the planetarium was the most direct way,” Reid says. “I’d done it before. You’re less impeded by cars.” She adds that it’s common to see people strolling, jogging, skateboarding, and biking on the stretch of revetment between the Shedd and the Adler.

12 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

Riding on that stretch on Labor Day, Reid detoured around some people on foot to a damp area of the promenade. “It looked like it was just wet, but it was actually coated with algae, which wasn’t really visible,” she recalls. “My bike came out from under me and I skidded across the concrete.” She came to a stop a foot from the water’s edge. “What if I’d fallen the other way and ended up in the lake with a broken arm?” Reid landed on her right side, feeling her shoulder shift on impact. She couldn’t move it, and the pain was intense, so she suspected it was dislocated. Her neck and ribs also ached, and parts of her shoulder and leg had been scraped raw. The pedestrians Reid had avoided were the ﬁrst people to come to her aid, and they used water from her bike bottle to rinse off the abrasions. A couple sitting on the concrete steps told her she was the second cyclist they’d seen crash on the slimy surface that morning. She gave her key to a stranger to lock up her bike, then took a Lyft to an urgent care center. She didn’t call 911 because she wanted to avoid a hefty ambulance bill. Reid eventually wound up in the emergency room at Rush University Medical Center, at Harrison and Ashland, where she was diagnosed with a lateral fracture of the humerus— the upper arm bone—near the shoulder. She spent ﬁve hours in the ER. “Luckily my friends were amazing and moved the party from the beach to the hospital, so half of Environmental Encroachment was there,” she says. One person who didn’t get the memo was Reid’s significant other, Pete Macaluso, a 28-year-old computer programmer. She called him after the crash, but he was biking to the party and didn’t pick up. That was unfortunate, because he wound up wiping out on the same stretch of wet revetment and struck his elbow, roughly a half hour after her collision. “When he went to the lifeguards at the beach for a Band-Aid, they were like, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve heard about other crashes at that spot,’”

A woman rides on the revetment by the Adler Planetarium.

Reid says. “That’s the thing that gets me.” Macaluso sent her a photo of his injury the next day; his elbow had swollen to the size of a baseball. Two days after her misadventure, Reid was back at work with her arm in a sling—due to the nature and location of the break, a cast wasn’t an option. “It’s just a dull ache, but it really sucks when I sneeze,” she says. “It makes sleep rather difficult.” She’s bummed because an orthopedic specialist recently told her she needs to stay off her bike for three to four months. The day after the crash, she returned to the scene and wrote “SLIPPERY—CAUTION!” on the concrete in pink chalk, with an arrow pointing to the patch of algae. She also posted warnings to various local Facebook groups for cyclists, as well as on the Chainlink, a social networking site for bike enthusiasts. In response, other Chainlinkers shared stories of their own mishaps. Ernesto Martinez-Ordaz said that he wiped out on algae near the planetarium in the summer of 1994 and badly scraped up his hip. He added that a couple weeks ago he was riding on the lakefront near Ohio Street Beach when a cyclist coming from the other direction slipped on algae and careened into his path. “I went over the handlebars and fell on top of his bike,” he wrote. “[The algae] was caused by lots of water on the path from the waves.” That’s what Chicago Park District spokeswoman Jessica Maxey-Faulkner said after I told her about Reid’s case last Wednesday morning. “The lake levels are high right now,” she responded. “[Algae] will happen when

ò COURTESY JOHN GREENFIELD

lake levels are high and we have warm water too.” That afternoon she told me that workers were cleaning up the site where Reid crashed. When I visited the revetment at sunset that evening, waves were indeed spilling onto the concrete, creating a hazardous situation for cyclists. I found some slick traces of algae, but there were also spiral marks on the promenade that might have been left by a machine used to scrub the promenade. (Maxey-Faulkner didn’t respond to an e-mail with a photo asking for conﬁrmation of this.) Reid’s not yet sure what her medical bills will be. “I don’t even want to think about the ER costs,” she says. But she’s planning to ﬁle a personal injury claim with the city, on the advice of bike lawyer Michael Keating (a Streetsblog Chicago sponsor). Moreover, Reid wants to do what she can to prevent other cyclists and runners from suffering the same misfortune. There are NO DIVING graphics painted on the revetment, she notes. “Maybe the Park District should add some signage saying, careful, it’s slippery.” Maxey-Faulkner didn’t answer my inquiry on whether the agency plans to install new warning signs or markings. “I understand that algae occurs naturally, but so do a lot of other hazards,” Reid says. “I just don’t want this to happen to anyone else.” Let’s hope the Park District does what it can to help ensure that a rolling bike doesn’t slip on the moss. v

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

By R

St r e d ea

aff

ò PHOTO BY ANDREW NAWROCKI

ARCHITECTURE

DANCE

LITERATURE

MUSIC

THEATER

Where does the Chicago Architecture Biennial go next?

Five best bets for fall dance

Eve Ewing explains it all

Redmoon’s Frank Maugeri is still going strong

FOOD & DRINK

Ten best bets for fall lit

Ten concerts and music festivals for your calendar this fall

BY ANJULIE RAO 14

COMEDY

Kellye Howard regularly kills in Chicago, and this fall she’ll go national. BY EMILY WASIELEWSKI 26

Five best bets for fall comedy BY STEVE HEISLER 27

BY IRENE HSIAO 24

From Achatz to zebra mussels: the Chicago Food Encyclopedia BY AIMEE LEVITT 34

Seven best bets for fall restaurant openings BY MIKE SULA 32

Five best bets for bar and brewpub openings

BY AIMEE LEVITT 18

BY AIMEE LEVITT 20

MOVIES

Four-alarm ﬁlm mecca at a former ﬁrehouse in Edgewater BY BEN SACHS 30

BY LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, AIMEE LEVITT, AND PETER MARGASAK 37

SMALL SCREEN

Five best bets for fall television

BY TONY ADLER 21

Ten best bets for fall theater BY TONY ADLER 22

VISUAL ART

Ten best bets for fall visual arts BY TAL ROSENBERG 17

BY STEVE HEISLER 29

Ten best bets for fall movies

BY J.R. JONES 31

BY JULIA THIEL 33

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 13

FALL PREVIEW

ARCHITECTURE The Chicago Cultural Center, where the main exhibit of the Chicago Architecture Biennial will be held. ò NORMAN KELLEY

the subject offers the CAB an opportunity to examine architecture through the lens of those who use Chicago’s buildings and infrastructure, to create a people’s history that can help other cities navigate and address legacies of injustice.

Where does the Chicago Architecture Biennial go next?

By ANJULIE RAO

n 1922 the Chicago Tribune held an architectural design competition for its new Michigan Avenue headquarters. The judges selected architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood’s proposal: a neo-Gothic tower, the kind typically seen in 12th- to 16th-century Europe, denoted by a buttressed crown and heavy ornamentation such as gargoyles, fantastical engravings, and scalloping. At the request of Colonel Robert McCormick, who headed the Tribune at the time, correspondents took stones from such monuments as the Great Pyramid, the Parthenon, Notre-Dame Cathedral, and 145 other architectural triumphs. Those archeological crumbs are included in the building’s facade, and according to the Tribune, “symbolized the newspaper’s global reach.” At the time it was built, the Tribune Tower was a revolutionary reprisal of the past: Howells and Hood appropriated an elegant but outdated style and in-

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stalled it in a city that was in the midst of rapid invention and innovation. Just as its antiquated neo-Gothic style contributed to a new architectural narrative, Tribune Tower serves as an interesting parallel to this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial and its theme, “Make New History,”—which likewise seeks to envision a new story for the city. The months-long festival aims to examine what contemporary architects are creating and contemplating through programs and exhibitions, primarily at the Chicago Cultural Center but also in various forms and at numerous venues all across the city. For its second iteration (the first took place in 2015), the curatorial team of renowned architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee (of the LA-based ﬁrm Johnston Marklee) is planning to revisit Chicago’s rich and vast architectural history—including the Tribune Tower’s design competition. One exhibit, entitled “Vertical

City,” is an installation in Yates Hall, on the fourth ﬂoor of the Cultural Center, where the lofty ceilings will accommodate 16- to 18-foot towers conceived of as “late entries” to the Tribune Tower’s design competition; the models will be accompanied by two re-creations of the Tribune Tower itself. While “The Towers” could potentially produce some noteworthy architectural ideas, the concepts behind the CAB in general pose a number of questions. The CAB is free and drew more than a million visitors in 2015. But whom is the biennial for? Whose history does this exhibition discuss? Is the CAB exclusively for those working within the industry, and does it beneﬁt Chicago only through the revenue it generates from tourism? The theme of “Make New History” is particularly problematic for Chicago, as its architectural and urban-planning histories have not always been on the side of its citizens. Still,

he way the curators are thinking about ‘Make New History’ isn’t as thematic,” says Todd Palmer, executive director of the CAB. “We’re not looking at it like, ‘Oh, it’s history. We already did that!’ History doesn’t go away.” Palmer instead sees a direct correlation between “Make New History” and the way architects are using their knowledge of architectural history in creating new buildings and city plans. “What’s interesting today is that what is innovative [in architecture] brings in history. One might not think of history as being innovative, so we are bringing these two seemingly opposite words—‘innovation’ and ‘history’—together and looking at conditions, preconditions, and precedents in the field.” Johnston and Lee have recruited more than 150 firms from all over the world whose practices embody the most innovative (and sometimes unusual) ways of applying history to their contemporary work. Many of these firms will be exhibited in a massive installation downtown in the maze of corridors and rooms in the Cultural Center. The biennial’s artistic statement, issued by the curatorial team, expresses a sense of urgency surrounding the theme. It states, “At a time when there is too much information and not enough attention—when a general collective amnesia perpetuates a state of eternal presentness—the importance of understanding the channels through which history flows in architecture is more important than ever.” For the general public, this rhetoric could be unapproachable. How can the public share the same sense of urgency? “The biennial does operate on different levels,” Palmer says. “Participants will be writing copy that resonates with people at Harvard and Venice and in Shanghai. That’s just a conversation that’s going to happen.” The exhibits will also be interpreted by volunteers, “guides and docents on the floor, who will be available to mediate those conversations” to the public. Palmer also emphasizes the educa-

FALL PREVIEW The DuSable Museum of African American History is one of the biennial’s anchor sites. ò OLU AKINTORIN JR.

tional opportunities for young people, including ﬁeld trips; Saturday Studios that, through the Chicago Architecture Foundation, will connect teenage students with architects in an on-site classroom setting; and a teen ambassadors program. According to Palmer, more than 15,000 Chicago Public Schools students will be engaged through the Chicago Architectural Foundation’s youth programs. Yet the attempts to solve the problem of translating the CAB’s theme to the broader public becomes more difficult when the biennial is placed in a city that has a far more complex relationship with its own history of architecture and city planning. In Chicago, “Make New History” can be problematic. Many neighborhoods still reel from the tragedies in public housing—from the early failures of modernism’s “Tower in the Park” model, which produced Cabrini-Green and the Henry Horner Homes, to the pitfalls of the Plan for Transformation. Many are still fighting for or have only recently regained public amenities such as libraries, parks, and schools after being demolished to make way for the Dan Ryan Expressway in the 1960s. Many people whose homes were torn down when the city cleared public housing projects are still waiting for residences that were promised to them decades ago. Daniel Kay Hertz, senior policy analyst at the Chicago-based Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, notes the resonance of architectural and planning decisions in Chicago. “What’s striking is how even well-intentioned, progressive initiatives have ended up historically creating massive disruptions in the lives of people without the political power to defend themselves,” he says. “I think you hear people remembering that when the city promises to upgrade transit, parks, or retail in lower-income neighborhoods—they are met with fear of displacement.” In other words, making new history in Chicago could (and should) mean revisiting past traumas inﬂicted by the city’s architectural history. The downtown exhibit will, however, address themes that relate to citizens’ relationships with the built environment. The Cultural Center show will be divided into four themes: building histories (the design of historic architecture and the stories that those buildings tell), material histories (the materials that make up buildings), image histories (how architecture is typically depicted), and most importantly, civic histories—a theme that

might manifest itself in works by architects that address the city’s complex relationship with its own design. It’s difficult to gauge how the international exhibitors might address the challenges and traumas that design and planning have posed and inﬂicted on cities. In the Cultural Center show, where artistic statements are difficult to grasp and exhibits will require heavy translation, how will civic histories that address Chicago’s complicated relationship with architecture manifest? Yet it’s clear that another component of the biennial is a signiﬁcant attempt to refocus the conversation around the city’s architecture and infrastructure and its relationship with citizens: the establishment of neighborhood anchor sites.

he 2015 biennial was mostly located downtown (with the notable exception of an off-site program at the Stony Island Arts Bank), but this year’s CAB is different. Jack Guthman is a prominent real estate lawyer and current chairman of the CAB. His 50 years of working with architects, developers, and real estate professionals in legal procedures surrounding zoning changes, landmark designations, traffic and transportation, and more has brought him in touch with some of the most inﬂuential individuals in Chicago’s design community. Since being named chair in 2016, Guthman has made the city’s residents a major priority of CAB. “I always talk about the two prongs of the biennial: they’re not mutually exclusive, but they’re both important,” Guthman says. “One, if we don’t put on an exposition of international import, then there’s no reason for us to be. On the other hand, this is in Chicago, funded by Chicago philanthropies, families, and corporations. We have an obligation to Chicagoans and Chicago communities to continue this enormous growth.” In addition to facilitating the opening of the biennial alongside Expo Chicago, Guthman also began thinking about how to incorporate neighborhood museums and institutions into the overall planning for CAB. He enlisted six neighborhood museums to host local exhibits for the biennial: the DePaul Art Museum in Lincoln Park, the DuSable Museum of African American History in Washington Park, the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture in Humboldt Park, the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen, the Beverly Arts Center in Beverly, and the Hyde Park Art Center.

“It occurred to me that I had relationships with ﬁve of the six directors,” Guthman says. “I knew they are diverse, and I knew they have quality curators.” All exhibits will be organized, curated, and executed by the local staff, something that Guthman made a priority. “Each [site] has chosen topics that should resonate,” he says. “You don’t impose. We want to come to your community and keep to your mission and vision and program.” Guthman submitted the proposal to the Chicago Community Trust, which provided $200,000 for each site. The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture (NMPRAC) is mounting a permanent rotating exhibition that encompasses stories of its home in the Humboldt Park Stables and Receptory. According to the museum’s director, Billy Ocasio, who was also alderman of the neighborhood for 16 years, NMPRAC plans to cover the long history of diverse populations in the area. “We have a very unique neighborhood and building that talks to architecture,” Ocasio says. “But we’re mounting an exhibition that goes beyond the architecture. It will talk about the the building, but also who lived in Humboldt Park, the lifestyle they had, their contributions and their struggles.” Germans and Scandinavians replaced Danish and Norwegian residents in Humboldt Park during the late 19th century, and beginning in the 1950s the neighborhood became home to a thriving Puerto Rican population. Today Humboldt Park is experiencing yet another transition: rapid gentrification. According to Ocasio, all populations will be represented in the exhibit, through partnerships with the

Swedish Museum, Polish Museum of America, DANK Haus German American Cultural Center, and more. These institutions will provide a connection between the vastly different racial and social groups that have occupied the neighborhood. Partner institutions will provide artifacts and photographs from each demographic at various periods in time, yet the common thread between each exhibit phase is the idea that Humboldt Park has always been a meeting place—whether for Germans or Puerto Ricans or, hopefully, for the newest wave of residents moving in. “This is a place where concepts got developed, where ideas came from,” Ocasio says. “Humboldt Park has always been a meeting place across all nationalities where they talked about their struggles, their futures.” The DuSable Museum is taking a more speciﬁc look at Chicago’s south side through the lens of architectural photographer, critic, and now vice president of the DuSable Museum, Lee Bey. Bey’s photographs have documented the unique structures at the University of Chicago, including its hodgepodge of neo-Gothic buildings and works by modern masters like Mies van der Rohe and Eero Saarinen, as well as the surprising appearances of stark modernist structures, such as Pride Cleaners on 79th Street. At the upcoming exhibit, entitled “A Southern Exposure,” Bey’s images will continue this tradition in a manner that asks how the neighborhood, and the broader city, might go about making a new history for this area. “There’s two narratives for the south side,” Bey says. “First, there’s absolutely nothing there. It’s bombed out, jacked up. There’s crime. Or, second, that there’s the Obama Library coming and there’s great things that

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FALL PREVIEW The NMMA was created as the result of an agreement between community members and the Park District. ò COURTESY CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE BIENNIAL

are going to happen. The exhibit will address the history of the south side going forward as somewhere in between.” While much of his photography exclusively showcases buildings, Bey’s work in “Southern Exposure” will include people—residents and passersby—as a means of elevating the architecture and the people who use it. In many ways, the exhibit is actually making new histories. “Too often, the history of the neighborhood stops when black people move in,” Bey says. “This isn’t some place that got left behind when the white people left. There is a really rich vein of architecture, and there are people who live there and who are taking care of these buildings or buying these buildings, who are loving and using these buildings.” Though the DePaul Art Museum will display works by an international artist in the upcoming exhibition “Ângela Ferreira: Zip, Zap, and Zumbi,” museum director and chief curator Julie Rodrigues Widholm sees the DAM’s role as connecting international perspectives with local opportunities. Portuguese artist Ferreira will be reconstructing unbuilt works by architects Mies van der Rohe and Pancho Guedes as a way of unpacking issues of colonization and race in architecture. Guedes’s building was originally designed for a South African organization called Zip Zap Circus that seeks to empower postapartheid youth after decades of racism and denigration. “We’re connecting [the work] back to Chicago by inviting local youth-empowerment groups to use the artist’s reconstructed forms for performances, classes, and meetings for students, ﬁlling these structures with locally relevant [youth] enterprises,” Widholm says. “We’re outside of downtown, but still in an affluent area. We are thinking of how we could use this platform to create space for people who are ‘on the margins.’ How do we give them visibility?” Other neighborhood sites plan for exhibits that make clear associations with their immediate architectural and civic assets. Beyond the NMPRAC and DuSable, anchors like the Beverly Art Center are exploring their neighborhood’s unique architectural legacy on the fringes of Chicago. Its exhibit, entitled “Elevations,” will be divided into three parts: the area’s real estate history and its unique topography (Beverly is the highest elevation point in Chicago), as curated by architectural historian James Gorski; the present (contemporary architectural photography by

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photographer Rebecca Healy); and the future, in the form of urban planning and architectural drawings. The Hyde Park Art Center will focus its efforts on material studies: architect Amanda Williams will draw on her practice of highlighting blighted or discarded buildings to lead a seminar with Illinois Institute of Technology students that discusses reused and salvaged building materials. Their explorations will be displayed in one of HPAC’s galleries. The Art Center will also mount a large-scale installation by artists Sara Black and Raewyn Martyn that reconnects architecture’s relationships with Chicago’s former lumber industry. Anchor sites are more than museums: they’re also works of architecture that exist as a result of communities’ efforts to take control of their abandoned infrastructure. The National Museum of Mexican Art, for example, was created as the result of an agreement between community members and the Park District that converted an old boat craft shop in Harrison Park into a vibrant arts hub that celebrates Mexican art and culture. The Roundhouse wing of the the DuSable Musuem—a Daniel Burnham-designed Park District building located in Washington Park—will be reactivated after almost 80 years of dormancy, per Guthman’s arrangement with Expo. After the NMPRAC survived a major arson incident in 1992, a community group co-led the building’s restoration alongside the Park District. The anchor sites are repurposing architec-

tural history into case studies that demonstrate how citizens are engaging with architecture and planning by taking ownership over their built environment. Within the anchor sites, the CAB no longer becomes about ideas, but about power.

rchitecture is an instrument of power,” says architect Marshall Brown, a professor at IIT and Cultural Center exhibit participant. “It is never apolitical, and I am suspicious of architecture being disengaged. . . . It doesn’t produce social conditions but reﬂects them.” The curatorial team echoed this sentiment in an interview given to Curbed Chicago in April 2017. When asked about the biennial’s ability to respond to social issues of our time, Mark Lee stated, “It’s very important to understand the role of the architect in the built environment, in the sense that the role of [an architect] is [as] one of many players, and as participants. And oftentimes the role of the architect is to give form to forces that are already there. I certainly think that an architect has a position to make certain statements about these social-political issues, but it’s also a very limited one.” As a medium architecture is magnified by its size, price tag, and lasting effect on the community in which it is built. Architecture does not inherently cause social or economic stratiﬁcation, but to separate the maker from the medium means the architect bears no

responsibility for the health and equity of communities. The anchor sites, however, recognize both the impact that people can have on their built environment and the historic impact that architecture has had on people. Taking the biennial outside of the Loop provides opportunities to address power: who has it, who’s willing to give it up, and what’s possible when local groups are given agency to reclaim it. Bey sees his project, as well as the CAB’s expansion into neighborhoods outside of downtown, as an opportunity to provide quality case studies for how citizens regain an ownership stake in their built environment and work toward solutions to architectural problems, including blight. His photographs of the Auburn Lakes, for example, are more than an opportunity to depict the beauty of south-side Auburn Gresham—they tell a story of how residents worked with the Park District to restore a once-neglected natural area, eliminating a potential barrier to future development. The site hasn’t become a thriving community, but as Brown noted, even if the park’s restoration didn’t successfully lead to residential development, it reﬂects a neighborhood dedicated to trying to make improvements. Recognizing the power of infrastructure necessitates that architects do more than converse with each other in the great halls of gilded buildings—it requires that power be ceded and redistributed. That recognition warrants more than docent tours and “translators” for complex ideas placed on display. Palmer’s plans for student programming will enrich the young people’s educations and spark their interest in the built world. But when students return home to their neighborhoods, what will they see? In his earlier coverage of the 2017 CAB and its pairing with Expo, Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin wrote, “The pairing of the art and architecture shows also could displace, if only temporarily, the drumbeat of bad news about gang-related shootings.” CAB is an opportunity to put forth new narratives, allowing the residents of neighborhoods to respond to a physical environment that has historically segregated and victimized them. The hope is that the 2017 CAB becomes, metaphorically speaking, more than a room full of Tribune Towers. It has potential to inspire residents to see their city not simply as a place. Rather, it’s a process that they can control. v

FALL PREVIEW

VISUAL ARTS Bill Walker, For Blacks Only 4, 1979 ò COURTESY HYDE PARK ART CENTER

Ten best bets for fall visual arts By TAL ROSENBERG

Chicago Architecture Biennial Aside from the main exhibition taking place at the Cultural Center, this year’s biennial boasts a number of smaller satellite shows, including new “anchor sites” in various neighborhoods; “Past Forward: Architecture and Design at the Art Institute,” an installation devoted to the museum’s collection; and many related productions at smaller galleries. Read more about it in Anjulie Rao’s story about CAB on page 14. Through 1/7/18, various dates and locations, main exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-3316, cityofchicago.org. F

“Hebru Brantley: Forced Field” Hi, it’s Hebru Brantley! You might remember him from such places as the “Chi-Boy” mural in the Wabash Arts Corridor or the music video for Chance the Rapper’s “Angels.” This wide-ranging survey of the Bronzeville multimedia artist is possibly the ﬁrst large-scale institutional showcase of his work (not counting “Parade Day Rain,” at the Cultural Center, in 2014). Through Sun 11/26: Tue-Thu 11 AM-5 PM, Fri 11 AM-7 PM, Sat-Sun 11 AM-5 PM, Elmhurst Art Museum, 150 Cottage Hill Ave., Elmhurst, 630-8340202, elmhurstartmuseum.org, $9, $8 seniors, free students and kids 18 and under.

“Jennifer Packer: Tenderheaded” The Renaissance Society continues its recent streak of solo shows by bold, talented, and upand-coming artists. New York painter Packer will display recent work, contemporary portraiture and still lifes that convey the watery warmth of symbolist art. Through Fri 11/5: TueFri 10 AM-5 PM, Sat-Sun noon-5 PM, Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis, 773-702-8670, renaissancesociety.org. F

“Glenn Kaino: Sign” Conceptual artist Kaino’s last show in Chicago, “Leviathan,” featured pieces that found colorful, clever ways of addressing global politics, such as a pyramid of scales with candies on

them, or statues made of 3-D scanned and printed rubble from protests in Athens and streets in Syria. Expect more daring and creative work at his return to Kavi Gupta. Fri 9/15Sat 10/28: Tue-Fri 10 AM-6 PM, Sat 11 AM-5 PM, Kavi Gupta, 835 W. Washington, 312-432-0708, kavigupta.com. F

“Michael Rakowitz: Backstroke of the West” The Chicago-based Iraqi-American artist receives his first major museum show. The exhibit promises some elaborate, tantalizing installations, especially Enemy Kitchen, a sometimes-operating pop-up food truck that will serve Iraqi dishes made from recipes Rakowitz and his mother collected. Sat 9/16-Sun 3/4/18: Tue 10 AM-9 PM, Wed-Thu 10 AM-5 PM, Fri 10 AM-9 PM, Sat-Sun 10 AM-5 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660, mcachicago.org, $12, $7 students and seniors, free kids 12 and under and members of the military, free for Illinois residents on Tuesdays.

“William Blake and the Age of Aquarius” William Blake was the artist of the century— and that’s not the 18th or 19th, when he was alive, but the mid-20th, more than 100 years after he died. This exhibit at the Block lays out how the Romantic ﬁgure inﬂuenced the seem-

ingly un-Romantic midcentury American period. Sat 9/18-Sun 3/11/18: Tue 10 AM-5 PM, Wed-Fri 10 AM-8 PM, Sat-Sun 10 AM-5 PM, Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston, 847-491-4000, blockmuseum.northwestern.edu. F

racism, and local government. Thu 10/12-Sun 12/10: Tue-Sat 11 AM-6 PM, Thu until 7:30 PM, Sun noon-5 PM, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outside Art, 756 N. Milwaukee, 312-243-9088, art. org, $5, free kids 12 and under.

“Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil”

“Bill Walker: Urban Griot”

This show marks the second major survey of a Brazilian artist at the Art Institute. The ﬁrst, “Hélio Oiticica: To Organize Delirium,” ﬂaunted the freewheeling spirit of the midcentury multimedia innovator; “Inventing Modern Art in Brazil” scales back the setup but focuses on an equally imaginative figure, the female modernist painter Amaral. Sun 10/8-Sun 1/7/18: Sun–Wed 10:30 AM–5 PM, Thu 10:30 AM–8 PM, Fri-Sat 10:30 AM–5 PM, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, 312-443-3600, artic.edu, $25, $19 students, seniors ($5 discount for Chicago residents), free kids under 14; free for Illinois residents Thursdays 5-8 PM

“Dapper Bruce Laﬁtte: Kingpin of the Antpin” New Orleans artist Lafitte creates colorful, intricate drawings of life in the Louisiana city, such as boxing matches and marching bands. Though his artworks at ﬁrst appear celebratory, their joyfulness belies the ways in which he addresses the city’s problems with poverty,

As Deanna Isaacs recently wrote, Walker was one of the muralists who worked on the Wall of Respect, a short-lived public artwork whose reputation still stands. This show at the Hyde Park Art Center focuses on drawings and paintings Walker made between 1979 and 1984. Sun 11/5-Sun 4/8/18: Mon-Thu 9 AM-8 PM, Fri-Sat 9 AM-5PM, Sun noon-5 PM, Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell, 773-324-5520, hydeparkart.org. F

“Hervé Guibert”

Not much information about this event exists at the moment, but Guibert was a fascinating person—a French writer and photographer who worked at Le Monde, was a close friend of Michel Foucault, and cowrote the ﬁlm The Wounded Man. Iceberg Projects has put on fantastic, informative shows about HIV and AIDS, and Guibert, who died at age 36, was instrumental in changing French attitudes toward the disease. November, Iceberg Projects, 7714 N. Sheridan, icebergchicago.com. F v

v @chicagoreader.com SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 17

LITERATURE ò DANIEL BARLOW

FALL PREVIEW

Eve Ewing explains it all

By AIMEE LEVITT

ere is a sign that you’ve become a person of consequence: you’re standing in line at a coffee shop, waiting to pay for your drink, when one of the baristas recognizes you and declares her love for you by using your Twitter name. Instead of backing away slowly in alarm, you respond with perfect poise, “Thank you! That’s so sweet!” Wikipedia Brown, aka @eveewing, aka Eve L. Ewing, is a person of consequence. She has, at the moment, nearly 85,000 followers who engage with her in discussions about racism, politics, education, lost dogs, ways to entertain young relatives, potato salad, and whatever else she happens to be thinking about. Her inﬂuence is such that she once tweeted, “where the waffles at” and 16 people retweeted it. There was no deep hidden meaning, she says. She just wanted waffles. In her offline life, Ewing is a sociologist at the University of Chicago who studies racial inequality in schools, particularly the Chicago Public Schools. She’s also a poet and an artist: her first book, Electric Arches, was recently published by Haymarket Books. You could describe it as a collection of poetry, prose, and art that’s based on Ewing’s experiences as a black girl growing up in Logan Square and Hermosa in the 80s and 90s and you’d be accurate. But, like Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric, which Ewing read as she put her own book together, its vision is much more expansive. It’s not just about her own comingof-age. It’s about her city and the power of the imagination.

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“I see myself as doing one big project with many parts and manifestations,” she says. “I’m trying to build a city that is worthy of how much we love it.” In her scholarly research, Ewing studies how and why the city’s inequalities came to be. On Twitter, she asks her followers directly how those inequalities have affected their lives. And in her art, she imagines how things could be different. In the introduction to Electric Arches, she compares this process to how, when she was a little girl, she was only allowed to ride her bike up and down a single block so her mother could keep an eye on her. The street wasn’t a good place for a child to play: the cement was cracked, and the neighborhood was full of gangs. But Ewing

didn’t feel constrained, either by geography or her circumstances; in her mind, she was free to have glorious adventures wherever and whenever she wanted. (In those days, she signed all her schoolwork “Eve .L. Ewing,” and now she uses her middle initial as an homage to her younger self.) In Electric Arches, she says, “I’m trying to articulate what freedom looks like and feels like to someone like me: Black women. People who grew up in Chicago and are trying to keep a place in a city that’s trying to push us out and replace us. Imaginative children. People from the neighborhood. People who have lived through and are living the aftermath of the decline of the American city and postindustrial capitalism. People from cities that

trade on images of blackness while pushing black people out.” One of Ewing’s favorite poems in Electric Arches is “Arrival Day,” a response to a quote by the activist Assata Shakur: “Black revolutionaries do not drop from the moon. We are created by our conditions.” In Ewing’s imagining, the revolutionaries do arrive from the moon, joyfully parading through the streets, “hammering the iron of the / jail cell doors into lovely wrought curls” and singing “while / they smashed a bottle on the squad cars . . . whatever was near enough to say ‘this / here is christened a new thing.’” It’s a vision of liberation. “I’ve been reading it out loud a lot,” Ewing says. “People cry a lot. I see them inside the poem while I’m talking, coming with me to another place and time.” Throughout the book, Ewing refuses to depict herself as a victim. “There’s a convention in poetry, especially poetry by people of color, to bear witness to trauma,” she says. “When it’s expected of you, when [it’s] something you don’t do on your own, it becomes a spectacle.” This is something she actively resists. When she was a little girl and had nightmares, her mother would ask her to come up with an alternative ending: the monster wasn’t chasing her so he could eat her, he was trying to warn her that her shoe was untied. This was a way of learning to control the things that caused her anxiety. In a series of poems called “re-tellings,” she recounts a series of potentially traumatizing events—being called “nigger,” a time she saw four boys accosted by cops in Hyde Park—and imagines that instead of feeling paralyzed and helpless, she has magical powers to make things better. And so a racist woman becomes “possessed by a mighty and exuberant ghost-spirit” that makes her dance, and the boys ﬂoat into the air, leaving the cops grasping at their shoelaces. “Eve is the kind of person who has a lot of clarity about her work,” says Julie Fain, Haymarket’s cofounder and editor. “She knows it very well. She knows what she’s trying to do and say. The book has struck a nerve in the way she’s been able to bring the personal into the political and have fun with it while being incredibly serious.”

wing got into the habit of writing and drawing as a high school student; she spent 90 minutes every day commuting to Northside College Prep, and since this was in the era before smartphones, she passed the

time with her journal and sketchbook. (Her father was a cartoonist whose strip Jack Stiff ran in the Reader in the early 90s.) At Young Chicago Authors, she learned that a lot of storytelling happens in what she calls “in-between moments,” and that writing about the world around her in little snippets—as she does now on Twitter—could be just as important as a doorstop-size Great American Novel. After college at the University of Chicago, she taught middle school science and then English in the Chicago Public Schools. She loved everything about the daily work of teaching— acting loud and silly in the classroom, getting to know her students—and she loved that she was entrusted with what she felt was the sacred task of helping them feel safe and cared for so they could become the best people they could be. But while she was there, CPS instituted sharp budget cuts. It was a rude awakening. “It astonished me that we would be asked as educators to respond to this budget crisis and it would be harmful to our students in ways that have nothing to do with them or us or our families or anyone in the building,” she says. “There was this idea that we could build all these beautiful things that were so precarious and so dependent on the decisions of people that didn’t seem to love us or care about us.” Schools that educated the white and affluent, she noticed, didn’t seem to suffer from this lack of love and care. Ewing’s usual approach to the insurmountable number of problems of teaching was to tackle a different one every day, but she realized that this inequality was too big a problem to solve from within the confines of the classroom. So she left for the Harvard Graduate School of Education to try to ﬁgure it all out. She wrote her PhD dissertation on

the impact of the 2013 school closings on the students of Bronzeville; an expanded version will be published next year by University of Chicago Press as When the Bell Stops Ringing: Race, History and Discourse Amid Chicago’s School Closings. “I ﬁgured it out in broad strokes,” she says. “I’m always discovering new and terrible things about schools. It’s bad. But I’ve also been discovering new and wonderful things about schools. There’s a lot of resilience and creativity. That’s part of being in Chicago.” That spirit is in Electric Arches too. While the audience for When the Bell Stops Ringing is educators and scholars and policy makers, Electric Arches was written for the students themselves. She still keeps in touch with some of her former CPS students—they are the reason she never swears on Twitter—and, on the advice of her friend and editor Nate Marshall, she consulted them about which piece of art she should use for the cover. (“If you think about who you want the book to speak to,” he remembers telling her, “you have to ask those people.”) They chose a painting by the Trinidadian artist Brianna McCarthy of a young girl with a face full of stars. “I encourage people to judge the book by its cover,” Ewing says. Electric Arches has already received an enthusiastic early response, including a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Marshall isn’t a bit surprised. “One of the things that excites me about Eve and poets like her is that she’s not just a poet,” he says. “I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong with being ‘just a poet,’ but I believe that the best poets are people who are interested and engaged in the world in a variety of ways. I think that’s reflected in her art, and it’s something that invites people in.” Ewing’s Twitter followers, meanwhile, have been delighting her by tweeting her pictures of their copies of the book being read. She may be meeting some of them later this fall IRL— she’s got an extensive book tour lined up. She’s also got seven different projects under way, including a young adult novel that she’s very excited about. And she’s still imagining a future of hope and safety for all the kids of Chicago and the future she describes in “Arrival Day”: “i could not / believe i had lived to see it—the promised light, descended to us at last.” v Electric Arches By Eve L. Ewing (Haymarket) v

v @aimeelevitt

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FALL PREVIEW Chicago Book Expo ò SEDONA BARNEY

Ten best bets for fall lit

By AIMEE LEVITT

The Hunting Accident by David L. Carlson and Landis Blair

The Hunting Accident is the story of how Charlie Rizzo uncovered the story of his father Matt’s friendship with his Stateville Prison cellmate Nathan Leopold, of Leopold and Loeb infamy. Carlson wrote that story down, and Blair illustrated it, and now it’s a handsome doorstop of a graphic novel that Mary Schmich will help introduce to the world. Tue 9/19, 7 PM, Unabridged Bookstore, 3251 N. Broadway, 773-883-9119, unabridgedbookstore.com. F

Chicago Book Expo

For six years now, the Chicago Book Expo has been one of the best chances Chicago writers and readers have to meet and mingle and swap books and autographs. Details about this year’s exhibitors and readers are still forthcoming, but the lineup always contains a good mix of readings, talks, and practical writing advice. Sat 10/1, noon-5 PM, Columbia College, 1104 S. Wabash, chicagobookexpo.com. F

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

Egan hasn’t published a novel since 2010, but that was the Pulitzer-winning A Visit From the Goon Squad, so obviously there was a bit of pressure to produce a worthy follow-up. Manhattan Beach is out in October—it’s set in World War II-era Brooklyn and tells the story of a teenager who becomes the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s only female diver. Wed 10/11, 7 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-7699299, womenandchildrenﬁrst.com. F

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates Coates borrowed the title of his new book We Were Eight Years in Power: An American

20 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

Tragedy from the lament of black politicians in the South after the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. In this collection of essays, which includes “The Case for Reparations,” Coates explores the pretty obvious modern-day parallels, but also the social movements that emerged during the Obama era. Tue 10/17, 7 PM, Francis Parker School, 2233 N. Clark and Wed 10/18, 7 PM, Evanston Township High School, 1600 Dodge Ave., Evanston, familyactionnetwork.net. F

The Cavalcade of Authors Some literary festivals give you a chance to shake hands with your favorite writer. At the Cavalcade of Authors, you’ll get to tour the city together, go out to dinner, have a dance party, and play cards in your pajamas. This year’s visitors include bestsellers Brenda Jackson, Mary Monroe, and Naleighna Kai. Fri 10/13-Sun 10/15. Aloft Hotel and various locations, 888-854-8823, thecavalcadeofauthors.com, $25-350.

their Chicago counterparts, including Jac Jemc, Nate Marshall, and Coya Paz, to create a multimedia live-magazine show that will close the festivities. Tue 10/17-Sat 10/21, various times, various places, 773-552-7440, litluz.org, $15-100.

University of Chicago Humanities Day Not to be confused with the Chicago Humanities Festival, the University of Chicago Humanities Day is a chance for U. of C. profs to lecture on their favorite subjects to members of the general public. Topics include the art of forgery, curses against horses and charioteers in ancient Rome, and Trump and Putin’s battles with the media. There will also be lunchtime tours of campus museums and the Reynolds Club Bell Tower. Sat 10/21, 9:30 AM-4:30 PM, University of Chicago campus, 773702-7423, humanitiesdayuchicago.edu. F

Lit & Luz Festival

The Living Inﬁnite by Chantel Acevedo

Half a dozen writers and artists will be arriving from Mexico City on October 17 for Make magazine’s annual Lit & Luz Festival. While they’re here, they’ll participate in readings, conversations, and performances in both English and Spanish and work with some of

Acevedo’s new novel is based on the true story of the Spanish princess Eulalia, who travels to the New World in the 1890s, ﬁrst to revolutionary Cuba, and then to the 1893 World’s Fair. Acevedo’s own visit to Chicago will probably be less eventful, but you never

know. Mon 10/23, 6:30 PM, City Lit Books, 2523 N. Kedzie, 773-235-2523, citylitbooks.com. F

Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis by Liesl Olson Olson is the director of the Newberry Library’s Chicago Studies program and also the author of Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis, which tells the story of how famous and not-so-famous Chicagoans helped revolutionize literature in the ﬁrst half of the 20th century. So naturally she’s giving a talk about it at the Newberry. Thu 10/26, 6 PM, Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton, 312-943-9090, newberry.org. F

No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks In honor of Brooks’s centennial, the Poetry Foundation has collaborated with the papercutout-puppetry geniuses of Manual Cinema to create No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks, making its world premiere on the Foundation’s annual Poetry Day. Fri 11/17-Sun 11/19, various times, Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State, 312-787-7070, poetryfoundation.org. F v

v @aimeelevitt

FALL PREVIEW

THEATER

Frank Maugeri ò BRIAN JACKSON

Redmoon’s Frank Maugeri is still going strong By TONY ADLER

rank Maugeri had been with Redmoon Theater for 23 years when it collapsed in December 2015. He’d worked his way up from volunteer to producing artistic director at the Chicago-based company, known for its inventive urban spectacles performed everywhere from neighborhood streets to the White House and involving everything from an otherworldly river procession to a fantasia built around a nonexistent Norwegian pop star. And he most definitely loved it. Redmoon, the 49-year-old Maugeri told me during a recent phone interview, “fit my spiritual nature, it fit my emotions, it fit my community-galvanizing impulses, and it fit my need and desire to create ritual. Losing that felt, at the time, massive.” The cause of Redmoon’s death appears to have been a classic case of overextension. The theater had always gone big, but in its final year it was going bigger still, moving to new digs in a $30,000-a-month Pilsen industrial space and premiering an ambitious waterborne spectacle, the Great Chicago Fire Festival, with a high-profile imprimatur from the city. In the end, the fire literally fizzled in front of thousands of onlookers and the owner of the industrial space sued for two months’ unpaid rent. “We made a bet on that building,” Maugeri says, “and we made a bet on the festival, and both of those did not turn out in our favor. That’s what took us down.” Whatever the cause, the result was devastating to Maugeri. “It was incredibly sad to me,” he says. “I was very depressed and distressed, and the loss of that magic—or what I feared was the loss of magic—sat on my heart in a heavy, frightening way.” It got so bad for him that a friend staged an informal intervention. As Maugeri remembers it, “He was very angry because for the first few months I was constantly begging for help, like, ‘Oh my God, what’s gonna happen?’ . . . And he

said, ‘Hey, you know what? You don’t know the difference between good luck and bad luck. This may be the best thing that ever happened to you.’” Maugeri resisted that thought at first. But as even a brief conversation with him makes abundantly clear, he’s a constitutional optimist with a near-mystical confidence in everyone’s ability to access and address the universe. About a month into his mourning he was offered a job as community programs artistic director for the Chicago Children’s Theatre, and accepted it in part, he says, because the theater was moving into a renovated police station: “Take an old police station and transform it into a site of hope,” he says, “it’s perfectly aligned with who I am as a person on this planet.” Now Maugeri is getting back into the spectacle business, in a way. His new nonprofit, Cabinet of Curiosity Events, is designed to create original rites and ceremonies, both for clients who want, say, a new kind of bar mitzvah (“That’s exactly the kind of thing I would totally leap at!”) and to express his own aesthetic vision—not to mention his fierce sense of the cosmic. “I’m a spiritual person,” says Maugeri, a Chicago-born Catholic who saw his first play when he was 21 (Hystopolis Puppet Theater’s The Adding Machine) and attributes his sense of the theatrical to attending mass. “I practice prayer. I practice meditation. . . . I think the Cabinet is the way that I’m trying to figure out how to turn that into an artistic experience for others. “If anyone thinks I’m bringing Redmoon back, they’re wrong,” he warns. “Redmoon got big and its ambitions were always very large, and my thing with the Cabinet, partly, is . . . to create really intimate experiences that are provocative, important, meaningful, and relevant.” By the time you read this you’ll have already missed the Cabinet’s debut public event, Sur-

prise! Death Is Not the End, scheduled for Sunday, September 10, at Links Hall. Created with the help of frequent collaborator Seth Bockley, it’s meant to be “a funeral for old ideas”—very much including Maugeri’s mourning for Redmoon—“and a birthday party for a new way of living.” Death took on a more complex set of meanings on July 21, when Maugeri suffered the first of a pair of grand mal seizures (the kind associated with epilepsy) that put him in the hospital for a total of 20 days. The source of the seizures isn’t known as of this writing, but Maugeri has already inserted them into his ongoing conversation with divinity: Bockley, he told me, “is writing a gratitude song that the audience gets to sing with a cast member . . . to kind of celebrate themselves and one another and recognize out loud how amazing their life is.” The next Cabinet extravaganza after that will be Illumination, a new take on Redmoon’s old Boneshaker Halloween fetes. Maugeri half-jokingly calls his ideas for it “quite Redmoony— but more so, they’re Maugeri-oony . . . . “I’m working with a lot of fractured-glass sculpture, building a giant disco ball that a person can sit inside of. Right now it’s the shape of a moon, oddly enough, with this moon character who lives inside its belly.” Among

the other attractions he has in mind: “ritual creatures” on stilts, swathed in light-shifting plastic and crowned with car lights; a “futuristic elotes cart” for dispensing s’mores; aerialists wearing refractive costumes; and “a team of mobile chandelier carriers” with generator backpacks, who “can go to different spaces in the party and create moments of intimacy for one or two people.” Ironically, Illumination will take place at Moonlight Studios, a private event space at 1446 W. Kinzie—i.e., the same place Redmoon occupied before the disastrous move to Pilsen. Proceeds will benefit research into a rare genetic condition called retinal vasculopathy with cerebral leukodystrophy (RVCL), whose symptoms, according to the U.S. government’s Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center “may include loss of vision, mini-strokes, and dementia” as well as death within a decade of its onset. Meanwhile, Maugeri has his first commission to develop a new family ceremony: a baby naming, or, as he puts it, “a ritual of inviting this child into the world,” adding, “I’m trying to ﬁgure out how I can carve out what is kind of a new medium. For me, anyway. I’m ﬁguring out a little bit how to get there, and I think it’s one brick at a time.” v

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 21

Chicago International Latino Theater Festival

SEPT 7 – NOV 5

ò SOPHIE GARCIA

Ten best bets for fall theater By TONY ADLER

When a museum guard touches a famous painting, a remarkable journey across the ages ensues.

THE REMBRANDT Jessica Dickey Directed by Hallie Gordon Featuring ensemble members Francis Guinan and John Mahoney A Chicago premiere by

Major Production Sponsor

Tickets start at $20 steppenwolf.org 312-335-1650

22 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

The Toad Knew News items always ID James Thierrée as “Chaplin’s grandson,” but he deserves something more like “physical theater genius” or “cunning surrealist.” Back at Chicago Shakespeare after a ten-year absence from the theater, the creator of Farewell Umbrella will help the company inaugurate its new space, the Yard, with The Toad Knew, a meditation on sibling love. 9/19-Sat 9/23: Tue-Fri 8 PM, Sat 8:30 PM, The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, chicagoshakes. com, $48-$88.

Fun Home Based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir of familial love and fecklessness, Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori’s exquisite musical has had a hit run on Broadway and a well-received tour. Now it’s ready to be released into the wild of

regional productions. Gary Griffin directs. 9/1911/12: Tue-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 PM and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, victorygardens.org, $15-$75.

Chicago International Latino Theater Festival Without visits from the world’s theaters, Chicagoans literally don’t know what they’re missing. Here’s a chance to ﬁll in some of the blanks. Artists from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Colombia, and, yes, Chicago present 11 works, ranging from a world premiere to a reimagined version of Strindberg’s Miss Julie. 9/29-10/29: Various locations, times, and prices, clata.org.

Choir Boy Tarell Alvin McCraney got a share of the glory last winter when Moonlight—adapted

from his play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue—won the best picture Oscar. But his achievement doesn’t stop there. His trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays amounts to an early masterpiece. Coming after the trilogy, in 2012, Choir Boy follows a gay kid’s attempt to navigate a black all-male prep school known for its gospel choir. 9/27-11/12: dates and times vary, Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, 773-338-2177, raventheatre.com, $43, $38 seniors and teachers, $15 students and military.

Evening at the Talk House Talk is never cheap in a play by Wallace Shawn, author of Aunt Dan and Lemon and the guy who had a famous dinner with Andre. This 2015 dark comedy offers what the New York Times’s Ben Brantley called an “excavation of moral cowardice in a fascist age”—and no, it isn’t set in Nazi Germany. 9/29-11/19: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 PM and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, A Red Orchid, 1531 N. Wells, 312-943-8722, aredorchidtheatre.org, $35.

A Memory Palace of Fear Sure, zombies are scary, but few things haunt a house like, say, the threat of eviction. A Theater Oobleck production, curated by Martha Bayne and Andrea Jablonski and featuring contributions by a coterie of artists, this “immersive theater installation” explores “the ways the spaces we call home can turn from refuge to menace and back again.” Tours start every 30 minutes, the ﬁrst two of them on each date geared for younger audiences; the ones after that may be too much for kids under ten. Theater Oobleck at Silent Funny, 10/19-10/31: dates and times vary, Silent Funny, 4106 W. Chicago, theateroobleck.com, $10 suggested donation.

Yerma Mariticide seems to be in vogue. Like Machinal, so powerfully staged by the Greenhouse Theater Center over the summer, Federico García Lorca’s 1934 tragedy concerns a woman made murderous by a patriarchy whose demands she can’t satisfy. Max Truax directs a Theatre Y-Red Tape Theatre coproduction

using a new adaptation and songs based on Lorca’s poems. 10/27-12/10: dates and times vary, Theatre Y, 4546 N. Western, theatre-y.ticketleap. com, $25, $20 students and seniors.

The Minutes Already scheduled for a Broadway run even though the Steppenwolf world premiere won’t open for another two months, Tracy Letts’s new comedy purports to expose “the ugliness behind some of our most closely-held American narratives.” It’s directed by Anna D. Shapiro, who also staged Letts’s august August: Osage County, and boasts a killer nine-member cast—including Kevin Anderson, whose visits to Steppenwolf are few and far between. Steppenwolf Theatre, 11/9-12/31: dates and times vary, Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, 312335-1650, steppenwolf.org.

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Lizzie The Lizzie of the title is Lizzie Borden, famously reputed to have given her mother and father a total of 81 whacks with an ax. An all-female rock band revisits Lizzie’s legend in this show, which will also mark the debut of Firebrand Theatre, a new musical theater company “committed to employing and empowering women.” 11/11-12/17: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Firebrand Theatre at the Den, 1333 N. Milwaukee, ﬁrebrandtheatre.org, $20-$45

Crystal They’re calling this a “breakthrough ice experience,” which seems like a poor choice of words—one pictures a skating pond with a big hole in the middle and somebody in a knit cap desperately trying to climb out. Still, danger is Cirque du Soleil’s business—as is really, really fabulous design. How will the Montreal-based megaproducer of circus spectacles transfer its aesthetic to frozen water? 11/16-11/19: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3:30 PM and 7:30 PM, Sun 1 PM-5 PM, Cirque du Soleil at Sears Centre Arena, 5333 Prairie Stone Pkwy., Hoffman Estates, 847-6492222, cirquedusoleil.com, $36-$138 v

v tadler@chicagoreader.com SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 23

FALL PREVIEW

DANCE Faye Driscoll’s Thank You For Coming: Play; pictured: Sean Donovan, Alicia Ohs, Brandon Washington, Paul Singh, and Laurel Snyder ò WHITNEY BREWER

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Five best bets for fall dance By IRENE HSIAO

Shen Wei Dance Arts SEPTEMBER 23-24

Find hundreds of Readerrecommended restaurants, exclusive video features, and sign up for weekly news chicagoreader.com/ food. 24 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

The New York-based company makes its Chicago debut with Folding and Rite of Spring, two iconic pieces by choreographer Shen Wei, best known for his contribution to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics— an exquisite homage to Chinese landscape painting. The two works on the bill date from the early 2000s and emphasize Shen’s commitment to abstraction and spectacle. Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, 312-341-2300, auditoriumtheatre.org, $29-$68

Reggie Wilson/Fist + Heel Performance Group Citizen OCTOBER 12-14 Inspired by a portrait that hangs in Versailles of Jean-Baptiste Belley, a freed slave turned soldier and politician, Citizen juxtaposes ﬁve solo performances in an exploration of the idiosyncrasies of the individual spirit. Carried out by a spare cast in the span of an hour, the

piece also features video projections and Reggie Wilson’s postmodern mix of blues, folk, and dances of the African diaspora. 7:30 PM, Dance Center at Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan, 312-369-8300, colum.edu/dance-center/ performances, $30, $24 seniors

Performing Home OCTOBER 13-15 The second Chicago Architecture Biennial gathers artists and architects from more than 20 countries together under the theme “Make New History” (see Anjulie Rao’s feature about the CAB on page 14). In an associated program curated by Cynthia Bond, choreographers, artists, scholars, and activists investigate the diverse meanings of what we call home. 7 PM, Links Hall, 3111 N. Western, 773-281-0824, linkshall. org, $10

Elevate Chicago Dance OCTOBER 19-21 What has dance become in Chicago in 2017? Through ten programs in nine locations all

around town, 40 local companies give us a taste of the current dance community. Among the styles featured are tap, butoh, Afro-fusion, disco, and the broad category of so-called contemporary dance. This one-time-only festival is the culmination of several years of work by the Chicago Dancemakers Forum and the New England Foundation for the Arts. Various locations and times, chicagodancemakers.org/elevate, free-$30

Faye Driscoll Thank You for Coming: Play NOVEMBER 9-12 The second part of Faye Driscoll’s Thank You for Coming trilogy channels emotions central to the aftermath of the 2016 election: rage, anxiety, and the disturbing sense that what we see and hear have nothing to do with reality. Driscoll and dancers focus on shadows, stutters, repetitions, and gaps to construct and then deconstruct a fictional autobiography to investigate the dissonance between the spoken and the lived. Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, 312-397-4010, mcachicago.org, $30 v

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SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 25

FALL PREVIEW

COMEDY Kellye Howard

Worth a listen

ò MIKE JUE

By EMILY WASIELEWSKI

rowing up, comedian Kellye Howard felt invisible. Her parents showered attention on her two siblings, so Howard tried to steal it back. “I wrote stories and cried until my dad would sit down and listen to them,” she says. “I’d interrupt very heated backgammon games.” Howard no longer relies on tears or game-crashing shenanigans. Over the last 11 years she has honed her act, becoming a staple in Chicago comedy and electrifying both north- and south-side crowds. When Kellye Howard shows up, other comics shrink to the corner of the bar. Nobody wants to perform after she destroys. Though Howard has remained local, this fall she’s targeting a national audience. She’s recording her inaugural album live at Timothy O’Toole’s on November 15. She’s also ﬁnalizing the script for a webseries, slated to come out early next year.

Her parents and siblings forced her to become tenacious, and her new nuclear family now provides inspiration for her act. After living in the city until 2015, she and her husband and two 16-year-old daughters moved to the north suburbs for the calmer pace. The clash between what the family had known living in the city and what they’d been thrust into by relocating shocks her even now. From day one, as she started unpacking the truck, she says, “I was scared shitless when I saw a herd of Caucasians running; I assumed there were aliens chasing them. Or a tsunami.” Howard was discovered in a Foot Locker while studying theater at Columbia College. A promoter overheard her venting to a coworker about a family of customers who’d claimed to speak no English but were obviously fluent in the language. Within a week Howard was opening for Damon Williams at a Holiday Inn in Matteson, Illinois. She quickly moved to Los

Angeles, imagining stardom on the stand-up stage. But at the time, she admits, she didn’t even know what a set was supposed to be structured like, or how one was constructed. Wilted, she returned to Chicago after two years and got to work. Howard was certain in her bombastic delivery style, but her material mused on the rest of the world rather than on her own insecurities as a black woman. Only recently, after encouragement from friends and a spiritual adviser, has she begun to recognize the power of her own voice. Howard continues to reshape her comedy

OVER

routine in an effort to be more honest and raw, steering into uncomfortable, emotionally charged areas. She’s experienced the deaths of two of her infant children, one at seven weeks and the other at 15 months; coped with a multiple sclerosis diagnosis; and dealt with marital inﬁdelity. “I’ve overcome so much that I feel like I’m the unicorn of black women,” she says, “someone that statistically should have fallen long ago but refuses to.” Kellye Howard album recording Wed 11/15, 7 and 9 PM, Timothy O’Toole’s, 622 N. Fairbanks, timothyotooles.com, $5. v

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Nick Oﬀerman ò CARLO ALLEGRI

est. 1967

Celebrating our

Golden Jubilee th

Five best bets for fall comedy

ANNIVERSARY

WeLoveyou ,

By STEVE HEISLER

YouPeople! youpeople!

Nick Oﬀerman: Full Bush Tour On the TV show Parks and Recreation, Nick Offerman’s character Ron Swanson was known for his love of red meat, his carpentry, and his bushy mustache. Swanson was a man’s man, and Offerman shares almost all these burly traits. He returns to the city that launched his career as part of his “Full Bush” tour—shows that offer comedic advice about surviving in the wild and taming body hair, among other topics. Fri 12/1, 7 and 9:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312-462-6300, thechicagotheatre. com, 7 PM, $39-$171.

Under the Gun and Lincoln Lodge merge Chicago’s best-curated and highest-caliber stand-up showcase the Lincoln Lodge has found a more permanent stage at Under the Gun Theater, a bastion of improv and sketch comedy in the center of Wrigleyville. Angie McMahon, who runs Under the Gun, has championed independent comedians since the theater opened in 2014; her partnership with Lincoln Lodge producer Mark Geary, which began at the beginning of September, will only elevate both parties. Open run: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Under the Gun Theater, 956 W. Newport, 773-2703440, underthegun.theater, $10.

The Daily Show and Trevor Noah Coveted spots as correspondents on The Daily Show have been ﬁlled by Chicago talent since its inception in 1999—well, 1996 if you

just steps from the Dempster “L” stop

Tue - Sat 10 - 6

847-475-8665

801 Dempster Evanston count the Craig Kilborn years, which I don’t. Stephen Colbert, Steve and Nancy Carell, Dan Bakkedahl, and recently Jordan Klepper (see page 29) have shone as straight-faced, satirical reporters. This fall the show travels to the city that some of its most memorable cast members once inhabited to shoot for a week at the Athenaeum Theatre. Its current host, the affable South African transplant Trevor Noah, will be sticking around for two more days to do stand-up at the Chicago Theatre, then will return just a week later for two more shows reflecting his outsider’s view of the United States. Mon 10/16-Thu 10/19, 10 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6875, athenaeumtheatre.org. F Fri 10/20-Sat 10/21, 7:30 PM and 10 PM; Sat 10/28, 7 PM and 10 PM. Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312-462-6300, thechicagotheatre.com, $35-$75.

Nerd Comedy Festival I firmly believe there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure, nerdy or otherwise, and the performing comics of this annual shindig agree, putting up shows with a complete lack of irony about stereotypical nerd obsessions. ’Tis: A Dungeons and Dragons Improv Show performs at the whim of a “dungeon master”

whose story lines are made up on the spot. Wig Bullies explores the vast regions of space through the lens of the ﬁrst queer astronaut and his genderqueer robot pal. (There will also be wigs.) The festival ends with a cosplay competition; it’ll be tough to nerd-shame from under a furry Pokemon helmet. Thu 9/14-Sun 9/17, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, stage773.com, $15 per show, passes $85-100.

Never miss a show again.

Shark Tank: The Musical In case you’re unfamiliar, Shark Tank is a reality show where small-business owners pitch their concepts to a panel of potential investors, most notably Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Jennifer Estlin, owner of the Annoyance Theatre, has transformed this engaging series into an improvised musical with products made up on the spot and panelists giving the inventors the third degree. Mick Napier, artistic director of the Annoyance and director of some of the ﬁnest Second City revues in recent history, plays Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful—a man known for his sick ﬁrst-degree burns on contestants. Details forthcoming; expected to launch early October. v

EARLY WARNINGS Find a concert, buy a ticket, and sign up to get advance notice of Chicago’s essential music shows at chicagoreader.com/early.

v @steveheisler SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 27

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FALL PREVIEW

SMALL SCREEN Search Party ò JASON KEMPIN

Five best bets for fall television By STEVE HEISLER

Nathan for You

be ashamed he wasn’t in the Oval Office during 9/11. (Um . . . ) This fall Klepper will star in The Opposition, occupying the former Colbert Report and Nightly Show slot and satirizing the concept of “fake news” on both sides of the left-right divide. Debuts Mon 9/25, 10:30 PM, Comedy Central

Nathan Fielder saves struggling businesses by taking the longest possible route for the shortest possible gain. In one instance, he enticed customers to ﬁll up at a particular gas station by lowering prices. But the deal required a rebate—in order to cash it in, people had to hike up a mountain and answer a series of riddles. Fielder follows the old maxim: it’s about the journey, not the destination. Returns Thu 9/21, 9 PM, Comedy Central

At Home With Amy Sedaris

Stranger Things Despite its convoluted sci-fi plot, Netflix’s Stranger Things has become a sensation even among people who aren’t fans of the genre, in the same way Game of Thrones has brought fantasy to a larger audience. Last season theories flew around Facebook like engagement-ring selﬁes. And it earned the coveted conversational prize: no spoilers! Returns to Netﬂix Fri 10/27, 2 AM

Search Party Alia Shawkat, who memorably portrayed Maeby Fünke on Arrested Development, stars

in this dark comedy-drama that became a sleeper among critics. When Chantal, a girl in her early 20s, is said to have died, Shawkat’s character, Dory, who went to high school with Chantal, becomes skeptical and sets off to ﬁnd her. Dory’s obsession bleeds into the rest of her life, especially her relationship with Drew, played by Chicago improv expat John Reynolds. He’s her levelheaded foil—a strikingly subdued role for Reynolds, who typically plays big, scene-stealing characters. Returns Sun 11/19, 9 PM, TBS

The Opposition Chicago veteran Jordan Klepper stands out as a correspondent on The Daily Show, and not just because of his tall hair. He takes controversial subjects to the extreme, poking America-size holes in pundits’ talking points and conspiracy theories. Leading up to the 2016 election, he attended Trump rallies, earnestly seeking to understand the candidate’s followers, and stumbled on one man who adamantly argued that Obama should

The onetime Chicagoan—and alum of the Annoyance Theatre and Second City—launches a caricature version of a Martha Stewart program with the help of other Chicago talents. Rachel Dratch, Scott Adsit, and Dave Pasquesi are slated to appear, and the show is coproduced by Paul Dinello, who previously joined Sedaris and Stephen Colbert in creating the sketch show Exit 57 and the lauded Strangers With Candy. Anything goes on At Home, where crafting, cooking, cleaning, and adventurous sexual positions are demonstrated for viewers to follow along with, much like Sedaris’s two DIY homemaking books, Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People (2011) and I Like You: Hospitality Under the Inﬂuence (2008). Grab some yarn and a lovemaking wedge. Debuts Tue 10/24, 9:30 PM, truTV v

v @steveheisler

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 29

FALL PREVIEW

FILM Chicago Filmmakers’ new home at 5720 N. Ridge in Edgewater. ò RICHARD A. CHAPMAN

Four-alarm ﬁlm mecca By BEN SACHS

his October, Chicago Filmmakers— which screens independent cinema and offers filmmaking classes on the north side—will open the doors of its new location in Edgewater, a former firehouse located at 5720 N. Ridge. Erected in 1928, the two-story building features a towering facade with brown brick and terra-cotta elements laid out in a geometric design, broad windows, and a public garden on its northern side. Near the roof sits an intricately carved stone medallion, a popular feature of city buildings from the early 20th century that speaks to the pride the designers and builders took in their craftsmanship. Because the firehouse was declared a historic landmark in 2008, the city prohibited Filmmakers from changing the exterior, yet the interior has been adapted to suit the organization’s purposes. The garage is now a screening space, complete with surround sound and movable risers that allow for elevated seating. The second ﬂoor houses offices, two classrooms, and a projection booth designed by ace projectionist James Bond, with a 16-millimeter projector and a DCP (digital cinema package) system, the ﬁrst in the organization’s history. “Sometimes these firehouses get sold to individuals who make them into homes,” explains Brenda Webb, Chicago Filmmakers’ executive director since 1982. “But Alderman [Harry] Osterman really wanted to see the building be reused for cultural or community purposes. Through his efforts, the city issued a request for proposals, and we submitted one. So it was no inside job—we didn’t know the

30 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

right people or anything to get the space. We just submitted a proposal to the city in August 2015, and in October of that year the city made the decision. Then over the next two years we were negotiating the agreement with the city. It was not your ordinary sale of a building—it was a redevelopment agreement.” As part of that agreement, construction on the firehouse was to begin immediately after the sale, which was finalized in February 2016. “That was the result of the city’s growing concern that they had about organizations buying buildings at low costs and then letting them sit vacant for a really long time as they fund-raise to do the construction,” Webb says. “The city felt that if they were going to do this, they needed to know that it was actually happening and that the building was not going to remain vacant for years. The challenge that it posed for us as an organization was that we didn’t have a lot of time to fund-raise. Normally, you buy a building, then you fund-raise, and you take people through [the space] and you tell them about how great it can be once it’s finished. But we had to start construction right away.” Chicago Filmmakers has continued to operate during construction, holding classes at the Andersonville location it has occupied

for the past two decades. Yet the organization hasn’t hosted any screenings in the past year because Webb didn’t want to program anything until the physical move had been completed. Originally she’d expected the firehouse facility to open in late 2016, but things didn’t go according to plan. Three-phase electricity had to be installed to power the building’s elevator, which took months, and securing an occupancy license from the city took longer than she expected. With screenings suspended, Webb reconsidered how Chicago Filmmakers would choose the films it shows. Ultimately she decided the organization would no longer have a program director but instead would broaden the scope of its screenings by drawing on multiple curators. “As part of our evolution, where we want to be more open to the community, we want the exhibition to be more open and diverse as well,” she explains. “This might mean involving a person who’s interested in documentaries to curate documentary programs or working with somebody who’s more interested in experimental film to curate experimental films. So the program director position is now a programs manager position, which reflects the notion that this person is working with other people to evolve curation.”

Webb has already reached out to Floyd Webb (no relation), who programs the Black World Cinema series at Chatham 14. “Because of our proximity to Uptown, which has a large community of African immigrants, we’re working with Floyd to develop a series that might appeal to that community. We want to see if that’s a community looking for programming and, if so, how can we connect with them.” To start the series off, Floyd Webb will host repeat screenings of the films he presents in Chatham, though Brenda Webb hopes his programming may become more specific to the local immigrant community. Floyd Webb’s involvement may reflect a new emphasis on engaging the Edgewater community, but it also marks a return to Filmmakers’ early days: in the late 70s and early 80s, he organized the now-defunct BlackLight Film Festival, a showcase for African and African-American cinema, at Filmmakers’ old space in River North. Brenda Webb also plans to bring other familiar faces to the firehouse: in November she’ll host a screening of new work by Adele Friedman, a local artist who’s been presenting films and videos at Filmmakers since the early 1980s. Webb is also negotiating with the venerable underground director Jon Jost, who has presented numerous works at Filmmakers over the years, to host a screening of his latest project in the near future. Webb is enthusiastic about the new programming arrangement and expects to receive valuable input from her yet-to-benamed programming committee. The move toward collective programming speaks to how Chicago Filmmakers will engage people who live near the new space. Webb hopes to involve students from nearby Senn High School in classes and programs. She feels this expanded mission will enhance the organization. “The most exciting aspect of having this building is playing more of a civic role,” she says, adding that she wants the former firehouse to be open to all sorts of community organizations. “We see this as a place where block clubs can have meetings. We want it to be a center of activity.” By engaging more people, Chicago Filmmakers hopes to create a larger community for filmmakers and film lovers than ever before. v

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Ten best bets for fall movies By J.R. JONES

Battle of the Sexes The 1973 tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King was a carnival—the equal rights movement as prime-time game show, broadcast on ABC to an audience of 90 million. This makes it ﬁne material for the offbeat comic ﬁlmmakers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine), and publicity materials show how carefully they’ve replicated the famous match, with Emma Stone a ringer for King and Steve Carell a perfect choice to play Riggs the pig. But the real question is whether they can conjure up the casual chauvinism of the era without turning this into Anchorman 3. September 22

Blade Runner 2049 According to the original Blade Runner (1982), Los Angeles should be heavily populated by human replicants by 2019. So I guess we’re right on schedule. Yet this long-awaited sequel takes place 30 years after the events of the first movie, as a new “blade runner”

(Ryan Gosling), charged with tracking down runaway replicants, enlists the aging hero of the original (Harrison Ford) in a new adventure. Ridley Scott, director of the old Blade Runner, is busy with other things (his drama All the Money in the World opens in December), so 2049 has been entrusted to Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, who earned his sci-fi stripes with the disorienting Arrival. October 6

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Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House Liam Neeson stars as Mark Felt, the FBI agent who leaked information on the Watergate scandal to the Washington Post, in this biopic from Tom Hanks’s Playtone production company. Playtone’s historical dramas include two credible HBO miniseries, John Adams and Band of Brothers, and writer-director Peter Landesman demonstrated a knack for slow-building paranoia with Kill the Messenger, his drama about the ill-fated investigative reporter Gary Webb. With Neeson in the J

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Novitiate

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continued from 31 lead, this will probably paint Felt as a noble guardian of democracy, but perhaps it will also explore his less savory days administrating the bureau’s notorious COINTELPRO program. October 6

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Sight & Sound recently ranked Vertov’s dreamlike Soviet documentary Man With a Movie Camera (1929) number eight on its list of the greatest ﬁlms ever, but what about Vertov’s later work? This fall University of Chicago Film Studies Center presents a trio of Vertov’s “poetic documentaries” from the sound era, screening in archival prints with new subtitles. Three Songs About Lenin (1934), Lullaby (1937), and The Three Heroines (1938) all hewed to the Stalinist party line, though Vertov’s abiding sense of reverie left him out of step with the socialist realism of the era. October 6 through November 10

The Florida Project No one could stop talking about the fact that Sean Baker’s indie drama Tangerine (2015)

was shot on iPhones, but what really gave his tale of transsexual sex workers its tart ﬂavor was the ongoing sidewalk tour of West Hollywood. Baker’s follow-up, The Florida Project, features name actors (Willem Dafoe, Caleb Landry Jones), but again the terrain promises to play a prominent role: centered on a precocious six-year-old, the story unfolds in a budget motel on a highway near Disney World. October 13

Chicago International Film Festival The long-running festival turns a page with Mimi Plauché’s first edition as artistic director, and this year’s schedule offers some choice prospects: Blade of the Immortal, a samurai adventure from Japanese bad boy Takashi Miike (Audition); Faces Places, a documentary trip through the French countryside with the winsome Agnès Varda (Cleo From 5 to 7) and street photographer JR; and In the Fade, a drama about neo-Nazi violence in Hamburg by German-Turkish maverick Fatih Akin (The Edge of Heaven). Among the other highlights: an international ﬁlm noir series and documentaries on architecture and design, showing in concert with the Chicago Architectural Biennial. October 12 through 26

Novitiate This indie drama about Catholic nuns in the wake of Vatican II was produced, written, directed, shot, edited, and primarily acted by women, but the real minority perspective comes from writer-director Margaret Betts, a woman of color whose family is close with George and Laura Bush. Betts’s work with UNICEF in Africa led her to the letters of Mother Theresa, which taught her that “nuns are deeply romantic and intensely emotional people” whose world offers “a unique and profound way to explore the subject of the way women love.” If that sounds too gauzy for you, how about Melissa Leo as a fuming Mother Superior? November 3

The Killing of a Sacred Deer What is Greek madman Yorgos Lanthimos up to this time? His international breakthrough Dogtooth (2009) welcomed audiences into a family whose children are so cloistered they live in an alternate reality, and The Lobster (2015) took place in a dystopian society where singles are forced to ﬁnd a mate or be turned into an animal of their choice. Details on this new freak-out are scarce, but Colin Farrell plays a surgeon enamored of a teenage boy; a trailer shows Yanthimos playing around with the icy white spaces of a modern hospital (and of Nicole Kidman, as the surgeon’s wife). November 3

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Irish playwright Martin McDonagh made an auspicious filmmaking debut with In Bruges (2008), starring Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell as philosophical Irish hit men, then lost his footing with the violent crime comedy Seven Psychopaths (2012). His third feature sounds more like his first, with Frances McDormand as a woman whose daughter has been murdered; when the local police prove more interested in harassing the black populace than ﬁnding the killer, mom takes advantage of the title billboards to make her case against them. November 10

UCLA Festival of Preservation Every few years, UCLA’s Film and Television Archive, one of the best ﬁlm research facilities in the U.S., presents a touring festival of its newly preserved films, which lands here at the Gene Siskel Film Center. This year’s lineup offers some real treats: Ernst Lubitsch’s witty and elegant Trouble in Paradise (1932); Laurel and Hardy’s funniest feature, Sons of the Desert (1933); Howard Alk’s historic documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971); Juleen Compton’s long-lost indie drama about a woman in search of herself, Stranded (1965); and John Reinhardt’s Open Secret (1948), a murder mystery that plays out against a small town’s anti-Semitism. October 7 through November 1 v

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SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 33

FALL PREVIEW

FOOD & DRINK

From Achatz to zebra mussels By AIMEE LEVITT

few years ago, the food historian Bruce Kraig learned from his friend and colleague Andrew Smith that plans were under way for a food encyclopedia of New York City. The news bruised Kraig’s midwestern pride. “I thought, if those SOB New Yorkers can do one,” he says, “we can do one for Chicago!” He e-mailed another friend and fellow Chicagoan, Colleen Taylor Sen, with whom he’d collaborated on Street Food: Everything You Need to Know About Open-Air Stands, Carts, and Food Trucks Across the Globe. Sen was equally incensed. “Yes,” she wrote back. “We’ll show them!” Shortly after they finished writing their book proposal, Kraig was driving back to Chicago from southern Illinois, where he lives part of the year, and decided to stop off at the offices of the University of Illinois Press in Champaign. Kraig edits the press’s Heartland Foodways series of books about midwestern food, and he showed the editor in chief his and Sen’s proposal. The editor looked at it for about five minutes, he recalls, and then asked, “When can you get this done?” That was back in 2015. They handed in the final manuscript in early 2017, several months ahead of their deadline (“an unusual phenomenon,” Sen notes proudly). The Chicago Food Encyclopedia makes its debut later this month with readings at Chicago Gourmet and the Book Cellar. The book itself was a logistical beast. Kraig had previously worked on the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and knew that the best way to start writing an encyclopedia was by making lists of notable food people, places, and events. But he and Sen quickly realized they had significant gaps in their knowledge. Kraig felt most comfortable with the 19th century, while Sen’s area was the early 20th century and Prohibition. They recruited a third editor, Carol Mighton Haddix, a former food editor at

34 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

the Tribune who was not only an expert in current food history but also knew lots of writers who could help with the writing. (Among them is Reader senior writer Mike Sula, who wrote the entry on Korean food and also insisted on contributing one for Jeppson’s Malort. “We said, ‘OK, as long as we don’t have to taste it,’” Kraig recalls.) Grants from the Julia Child Foundation and Les Dames Escoffier Chicago helped pay the contributors and cover the costs of permissions for artwork. “Our idea was to show that Chicago is the central city of American food history,” Kraig says. They wanted to emphasize not just chefs and restaurants, but also Chicago’s role as a center of food technology and manufacturing. The city’s first restaurant, the Lake House, established in 1839, relied on the latest transportation to serve east-coast oysters to its customers, ﬁrst off boats that traveled through the Great Lakes via the Erie Canal, and very soon after, the railroad.

The railroad, of course, made Chicago the capital of the meat-packing industry—which Upton Sinclair, in turn, made infamous in The Jungle—but the three editors learned that it was also an important city for candy and beer. (Charles F. Gunther, whose collection of Civil War memorabilia formed the kernel of the Chicago History Museum, was a candy man, specializing in caramel. “So Chicago history begins with candy,” Kraig says.) Much to their surprise, aside from Malort, there is no deﬁnitive Chicago drink, though Sen says she gave a talk recently where someone suggested the Mickey Finn; it does, after all, have local origins, since it was named for a State Street saloon owner who was in the habit of drugging and then robbing his customers. The Encyclopedia also emphasizes the contributions of immigrants, with entries for all the city’s major ethnic groups, as well as some smaller but still inﬂuential ones, such as Hungarians. “Immigration is always changing

the makeup of the city,” Sen says. “Even since we began working on the book, there have been new groups. More Somalis are coming in now, for example. That’s what makes Chicago great: it’s a point of entry. People are always coming in.” One of the most important groups of newcomers is, of course, the African-Americans who came from the south during the Great Migration. “A lot of Chicagoans don’t think of African-American foodways,” Kraig says. “African-Americans are a very large population of Chicago with a lot of restaurants, but in many histories, they’re hardly mentioned. And now soul food restaurants are disappearing. Part of it is cultural: more black chefs are getting trained in classic cuisine, and they tend to do that. Then there’s the idea that soul food, if I can use that word, is perceived not to be healthy. That’s wrong. It’s how you make it. And, finally, there’s racism. We have a very segregated city. A lot of white folks don’t go into the south and west sides.” Though they spent two years immersed in food, the three editors did very little eating, aside from testing a small collection of recipes for Chicago’s most famous dishes. These include Ann Sather cinnamon rolls, deep-dish pizza, and shrimp de jonghe. “It’s still debated whether some of these iconic recipes were created in Chicago or not,” Haddix admits. “For some there’s no definitive answer, like chicken Vesuvio. Maybe someone will find the answer one of these days.” Even before the three editors finalized the list of entries—there would be nearly 400, from Grant Achatz to zebra mussels—they knew that, in order to keep the encyclopedia down to a manageable size, they wouldn’t be able to include everything. Still, they think they’ve assembled a book that’s informative and entertaining as well as portable. The best way to read it, they all agree, is a little bit at a time, skipping around. “I hope people read it in bed,” Haddix says. “It has so many short, quick entries that are really interesting. Turn to any page and you’ll find something new.” “There’s so much rich history here,” Kraig adds. “Yes,” Sen agrees. “Every city really should have one.” v

@aimeelevitt

FALL PREVIEW Erling Wu-Bower of Paciﬁc Standard Time ò DEREK RICHMOND

Seven best bets for fall restaurant openings By MIKE SULA

Marisol Peter Toalson, Robert McAdams, Cody Hudson (seated), and Jon Martin of Lonesome Rose

OPENED 9/8 Wouldn’t it be a rich reward to cook at the Museum of Contemporary Art? That’s what’s happening to chef Jason Hammel, who’s been rewarding his guests at Logan Square pioneer Lula Cafe since 1999. The new space will be designed by Chris Oﬁli, an artist best known for painting with elephant poo; whatever he does to it, Marisol will be an intellectually exercising place to eat. Hammel’s food will “incorporate vibrant vegetables and handmade pastas, alongside meticulously sourced meat and seafood,” according to an anonymous source on the restaurant’s landing page. 205 E. Chicago, 312-799-3599

ò CLAYTON HAUCK

Funkenhausen OCTOBER Mark Steuer was kicking ass when he was cooking southern food at Carriage House. He was kicking ass when he was cooking Argentine cuisine at El Che Bar. He was probably kicking ass when he was in diapers. There’s a good chance Mark Steuer will kick ass when he starts cooking German dishes at this “Bavarian beer hall.” There’s some French action going down too, because, well, Germany and France are friends (for now). Let’s hope the space isn’t suddenly occupied by a bunch of angry little boys in Nazi costumes. 1709 W. Chicago

S.K.Y. FALL Folks will need to rely on their wits when they google this project and see that the ﬁrst result is a Ticketmaster link to buy basketball tickets. (Go Sky!) Here’s a hint: go to the Reader

Restaurant Finder page about a month after this Pilsen restaurant opens, and I’ll let you know how well Stephen Gillanders—the former executive chef at Lettuce Entertain You’s erstwhile but always intriguing Intro—pulls off the gorgeous-looking plates he’s been posting on Instagram. 1239 W. 18th

equally mysterious “New American Classic” cuisine. I’m not too worried about just what that means, because Jimmy Papadopoulos, formerly of Bohemian House, will be calling the shots in the kitchen, and whatever “ﬁsh, meat, vegetables and grains” he’ll be serving will surely be interesting. 564 W. Randolph

Bellemore

Paciﬁc Standard Time

LATE FALL

Who is Mr. Bellemore? A dashing cad with a dark secret? A jolly butler who sneaks a nip of sherry now and then? A stone-faced banker with a secret heart of gold? Perhaps you’ll find out when this curious concept from the Boka Restaurant Group opens in the West Loop. Named for a “mysterious ﬁgure,” the restaurant has a menu that traffics in the

Wish you could eat in sunny southern California? Venture there for a few hours when a “new partnership” blossoms between One Off Hospitality and two of its veterans, Cosmo Goss and Erling Wu-Bower, of the Publican and Nico Osteria, respectively. The paper of record (i.e. its press release) goes on to describe a “tiny, pastoral farm off the Santa Bar-

bara coast” that will be housed in the former Tavernita. 151 W. Erie

Lonesome Rose “SAFE TO SAY FALL”

Make a run for the “borderlands” when the frequently buttoned-up Land and Sea Dept. (Longman & Eagle, Parsons, etc) takes a shot at Tex-Mex, or rather “the food inspired by the rich cultural histories of the regional states of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States.” That’s according to an online job listing posted for a line cook, sous chef, and ﬂoor manager. It’ll be in the former home of Logan Square’s late, lamented Ronny’s. 2101 N. California v

v msula@chicagoreader.com SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 35

FALL PREVIEW Danny Shapiro of The Moonlighter ò NICK MURWAY

Five best bets for bar and brewpub openings

By JULIA THIEL

Prairie School

and restaurant in the former Graham Elliot Bistro space: not only Matthias Merges and Alex Bachman, longtime partners in Folkart spots including Billy Sunday, Yusho, A10, and Old Irving Brewery, but also Graham Elliot himself. Chef Michael Shrader is leaving Old Irving to run the kitchen, and Bachman is developing the drink menu, which will include vintage cocktails and spirits (Bachman also owns a company called Sole Agent that specializes in sourcing rare and vintage spirits). 841 W. Randolph

LATE SEPTEMBER

A collaboration between Heisler Hospitality and Jim Meehan, founder of New York’s PDT bar, Prairie School is inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright—both the design of the physical space and the drinks will reflect the architect’s aesthetic. The bar, which occupies the northeast corner of the Google building in the West Loop, will serve minimalist cocktails from Meehan and head bartender Kristina Magro (Pub Royale, Queen Mary) and has a Japanese tap system designed specifically to dispense whiskey highballs. The space itself, according to a press release, “combines Prairie School, Bauhaus and classic Japanese tea house influences.” 326 N. Morgan

Jolly Pumpkin EARLY OCTOBER

Jolly Pumpkin has been steadily expanding throughout Michigan for the past several years, with brewpubs in Ann Arbor, Detroit, Traverse City, and Royal Oak in addition to its original taproom in Dexter. Its ﬁrst foray outside the state opens in Hyde Park this fall, where the brewpub will serve staples from its other locations, like the Perfect Fried Chicken Sandwich and truffle fries, along with menu items specific to Chicago. And while Jolly

36 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

The Moonlighter TBD Pumpkin brews only sour beer, its parent company (Northern United Brewing) owns several other brands that produce wine, spirits, hard cider, and nonsour beer—all of which will be available at the brewpub. 1504 E. Harper Ct., jollypumpkin.com

Mousetrap EARLY OCTOBER Off Color’s new 8,000-square foot brewery and taproom will offer not only 16 traditional beer taps but also one cask line, one sake tap, and one tap for coffee or batch cocktails, according to founder John Laffler. Because the space has a

full tavern license it’s not limited to serving beer produced onsite, and Laffler says that it’ll have beer from other breweries and a full cocktail list. The sake, however, will be Off Color’s own— it’s a recipe the brewery’s currently working on. And the space is designed for experimentation: in the future it’s where “all the wild fermentation, R&D projects, and bizarre stuff” will be done, Laffler says. 1460 N. Kingsbury

Gideon Sweet MID-OCTOBER Some of the biggest names in Chicago dining are coming together to launch this bar

A lot has changed on the Logan Square cocktail scene since Danny Shapiro, Andy Gould, and Kristofer Nagy opened Scofflaw at the corner of Armitage and Kedzie. Now, ﬁve years later and with a couple more bars under their belts (Slippery Slope, Heavy Feather), the same trio is returning to that original corner: the Moonlighter will be a casual neighborhood bar directly across the street from Scofflaw. Along with bar fare like burgers and wings from chef Mickey Neely, it will feature 20 beer taps, cocktails from Shapiro, and a 2,000-squarefoot patio with built-in fireplaces. 3204 W. Armitage v

v jthiel@chicagoreader.com

FALL PREVIEW

MUSIC Ron Trent performs at 20 Years of Rush Hour in October.

solo pieces and chamber works for ensembles large and small, complemented by preconcert discussions, an academic conference, and U.S. premieres of work by young Russian composer Marina Khorkova. —PETER MARGASAK a Thu 8/5 and Fri 8/6, 8 PM, Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago, 915 E. 60th. F b Also Sat 8/7, 3 PM, Pianoforte Studios, 1335 S. Michigan, $15. b

20 Years of Rush Hour

Ten concerts and music festivals for your calendar this fall

OCTOBER 6

Amsterdam-based label and distributor Rush Hour is a linchpin of the international electronic scene, and it’s got a soft spot for Chicago—earlier this year it released a sixLP box set by local deep-house legend Ron Trent, who’s on tonight’s bill. This anniversary show also features Rush Hour cofounder Antal, whose 2017 cassette mix in the Altered Soul Experiment series is a cross-genre exploration of Japanese music. —LEOR GALIL a 10 PM, Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, $20, $17 in advance, $25 after midnight, $10 before 11 PM with student ID, 21+.

John Walt Day, the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, Warning, and more

Matthew Lux’s Communication Arts Quartet SEPTEMBER 21 Matthew Lux is the Kevin Bacon of Chicago music, connected to just about every important living player in the city. He’s been a key presence in local jazz, rock, soul, and dance-music circles since graduating from Lane Tech in 1991, but it’s taken him till now to release his ﬁrst album as a leader. Contra/ Fact (Astral Spirits) presents a brooding jazz quartet with trumpeter Ben Lamar Gay, drummer Mikel Patrick Avery, and reedist Jayve Montgomery, and tonight the band plays in its honor. —PETER MARGASAK a 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10, 18+.

Hideout Block Party SEPTEMBER 23 AND 24 The Hideout Block Party returns from a twoyear hiatus with a lineup including many of the musicians who’ve helped build the community that’s rooted in the cozy venue. Day one celebrates the 60th anniversary of Sputnik’s launch in 1957 with bands featuring players born that year—including Jon Langford (Skull Orchard), Rick Rizzo (Eleventh Dream Day), and Ira Kaplan (Condo Fucks). Steve Albini curated day two, which doubles

In Sight Out with Vince Staples, Chance the Rapper OCTOBER 13 AND NOVEMBER 17

as a 20th anniversary party for his studio Electrical Audio; among the performers are Man or Astro-Man?, Screaming Females, and Dianogah. —LEOR GALIL a 1 PM on Sat 9/23, noon on Sun 9/24, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $20-40. b

Hyde Park Jazz Festival SEPTEMBER 23 AND 24 This annual fest showcasing Chicago’s rich jazz scene includes some great out-of-town headliners in the two-day lineup of its 11th iteration, among them trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, and the duo of drummer Andrew Cyrille & Bill McHenry. As usual, though, locals provide most of the heat: to name just two, veteran saxophonist Ari Brown leads a group with Oliver Lake, and flutist

Nicole Mitchell debuts a collaboration with Malian kora master Ballaké Sissoko. —PETER MARGASAK a 1 PM, multiple venues, $5 suggested donation per show, $125 Jazz Pass available for priority seating at all shows. For the full lineup, see hydeparkjazzfestival.org. b

Power in Sound: The Music of Galina Ustvolskaya OCTOBER 5 THROUGH 7 Organized by composer Nomi Epstein of Aperiodic and adventurous ﬂutist Shanna Gutierrez, this festival shines overdue light on the work of Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya, who died in 2006—it’s the ﬁrst major survey of her brooding but often lyrical work outside her homeland. Local musicians will perform

Even though it’s turning 50 this year, the MCA wants you to know it’s still cool. So it’s collaborating with the kids at Pitchfork on a monthly conversation series called In Sight Out, where writers talk to musicians about music, art, and culture. In October, southern California rapper Vince Staples chats with Pitchfork managing editor Matthew Schnipper; in November, Chance the Rapper sits down with journalist and former Ebony editor Adrienne Samuels Gibbs. And congratulations if you scored tickets to Solange’s talk this week! —AIMEE LEVITT a 6 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago, mcachicago.org, Vince Staples sold out, $20, $10 for students. b

Warning OCTOBER 26 UK doom band Warning have split up twice since forming in 1994, and for the past decade they’ve mostly been gone. These absences J

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have grown the band’s cult, which it attracted for its melodic savvy and the bold, beautifully melancholy vocals of front man Patrick Walker (who’s since started a similar project called 40 Watt Sun). After reuniting to perform 2006’s heart-wrenching Watching From a Distance at Dutch metal fest Roadburn this spring, Warning make a rare trip to the U.S. —LEOR GALIL a 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2109 S. State, $23, $17 in advance, 17+.

MusicNow, Vijay Iyer: A Portrait NOVEMBER 13

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Pianist, bandleader, and composer Vijay Iyer has become the face of a new breed of musician, conversant and comfortable in myriad styles and always curious to try new things. Though his roots are in jazz, he’s moved into the world of contemporary classical music, and this portrait program presented by the CSO’s MusicNow series offers a wide-angle view of his recent activity—including the ﬁrst local performance by his duo with trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and a reading of his chamber composition “Time, Place, Action,” dedicated to poet and thinker Amiri Baraka. —PETER MARGASAK a 7 PM, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, $28. b

Chicago Fringe Opera’s As One NOVEMBER 16 THROUGH 19

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Chicago Fringe Opera, which has built a reputation for edgy productions of contemporary English-language work, stages the local premiere of this 2014 transgender comingof-age story. Baritone Jonathan Wilson and mezzo-soprano Samantha Attaguile sing the pre- and post-transition versions of the cham-

ber opera’s single character, Hannah. As One features music for string quartet by Laura Kaminsky (Alexandra Enyart will conduct members of the Chicago-based Zafa Collective), a libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed, and Reed’s accompanying video. —DEANNA ISAACS a 7 PM, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, $20-$40. b

John Walt Day NOVEMBER 25 Chicago rapper and singer John Walt, a member of crucial hip-hop collective Pivot Gang, would’ve turned 25 on November 25, 2017; he was stabbed to death in River West in February. Pivot has since launched a foundation in his name to benefit young people interested in the arts, and all proceeds from this concert (where every member of the collective will perform) go to the foundation. Saba and Joseph Chilliams—both of them among the best rappers in the city—are even harder to turn down when they’re turning up for the community. —LEOR GALIL 6 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, $18. b v

ARTS & CULTURE

The DuSable Museum’s Roundhouse is the site of a major “pop-up” show of emerging French and Chicago-area artists by Paris’s Palais de Tokyo; art critic Christian Viveros-Fauné will moderate a forum titled “Criticism in the Post-Truth Age.” ò COURTESY EXPO CHICAGO

VISUAL ART

How the Expo fair fares By DEANNA ISAACS

n 2014 art critic Christian Viveros-Fauné and his Artnet News colleague Blake Gopnik made a five-minute, tongue-incheek video in which they pretend to be billionaire collectors on the prowl at the New York edition of the Frieze art fair. Their opening line, before taking on their pseudopersonas, goes like this: “We hate art fairs.” Why? Gopnik asks. “Because,” ViverosFaune answers, “it’s where the sausage is made.” The hope is there’ll be a lot of sausage made this week as Expo Chicago hosts its sixth annual fair at Navy Pier, launching a frenzy of art activity. For the ﬁrst time since 2012, when director Tony Karman salvaged the massive event (which, under various names, goes back to 1980) and brought it back to its original home on the water, the fair will have a ﬁve-day run. That means it’ll overlap with the opening of the second Chicago Architecture Biennial.

Expo runs September 13 to 17; the biennial, headquartered in the Cultural Center, opens September 16 and continues through the ﬁrst week of January. Karman says the overlap is strategic, intended to boost attendance for both. The fair drew 38,000 people in 2016, Karman says; this edition has 135 galleries from 25 countries. That’s down ten from last year, but Karman explains that the number is also strategic, and the important thing is quality. “We still had a long waiting list, and we’re limited by size anyway,” he points out. “It’s only 170,000 square feet. There could be 80 galleries or there could be 160, but this is probably the sweet spot.” It doesn’t look like any scrappy satellite fairs will surface this year (an announced stARTup show was canceled), but there are dozens of allied exhibitions and events in museums and galleries around the city, including

a major “pop-up” exhibit of emerging French and Chicago-area artists by Paris’s Palais de Tokyo in the DuSable Museum’s historic Roundhouse, and images of artwork literally popping up on the city’s digital billboard network. More emerging artists will be featured in Expo’s 30-gallery “Exposure” section, and there’s daily “Dialogues” programming on the pier, with artists, critics, and curators in conversation. Viveros-Fauné is part of that programming. A New York-based curator and critic for publications like the Village Voice and, most recently, Artnet News, he’ll moderate a forum titled “Criticism in the Post-Truth Era.” But Viveros-Fauné has a broader resumé than most critics: he’s run a cutting-edge New York gallery, Roebling Hall, and headed two art fairs, one of which was the Next show when it was part of Art Chicago at the Merchandise Mart, in the Artropolis era, 2007-2009. (That

job caused him to temporarily, and rather notoriously, lose a gig as a critic for the Village Voice over concerns about conﬂict of interest. He was subsequently rehired.) So though he says he’s not an expert on the art market, Viveros-Fauné has some perspective on questions like how the global increase in the number of major art fairs (up from a handful when the ﬁrst Chicago fair was launched to hundreds recently) is affecting the gallery business. I asked him that last week. “Buyers aren’t going to galleries the way they used to,” he says, “they’re going to the fairs instead.” That’s unfortunate, he adds, “but the art fairs provide some really important glue and, more significantly, the grease that gets the wheel moving.” Or, you know, the sausage made. What about auctions? “There’s a lot more money at the top of the auction market on specific pieces, and more volume at the art-fair level. I hate to put it this way, but one’s varsity and the other’s junior varsity.” The Internet? “Going up, but still a tiny fraction of what art fairs and auction houses do,” he says. “I don’t think we’ve gotten to the point where we can Amazon art yet.” Astronomical prices? “I think at this point the art market provides a perfect mirror image of the macroeconomic problems that America and the world is having. There’s a disparity in resources, and a weakening middle class. The Expo team’s doing a great job, but I think in general, at all fairs, the middle market’s having a tough time.” v

v @DeannaIsaacs SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 39

ARTS & CULTURE

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

Jared David Michael Grant, Ramona Kywe, Adam Bitterman, Brian McKnight, and Tom Jannson ò JAN ELLEN GRAVES

THEATER

Our Town gets integrated By TONY ADLER

very classic play comes with its own set of commonplaces—those little hooks we pick up in school, giving us the shorthand we need so we can appear at least halfway educated. Long Day’s Journey Into Night is autobiographical. The girl in The Glass Menagerie is Tennessee Williams’s sister. Nothing happens in Waiting for Godot, but nothing is the point because it’s absurd. So what are the commonplaces for Our Town, the undeniably classic 1938 Pulitzer Prize winner by Thornton Wilder, getting a solid, intriguingly revisionist revival now from Redtwist Theatre? Well, we can say it’s elegiac (excellent word for a commonplace). We might add that it’s a tender look back at small-town New England, where life was allegedly homey, kindly, quiet, stoic, certain, mostly Protestant, and entirely white. And we’d be right, up to a point. Set in tiny, mythical Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, during the first two decades of the 20th century, Wilder’s masterpiece feels like a requiem for an America that few even among its original audience might’ve experienced but were happy enough to believe in when what waited for them outside the theater was

a world already deep in the Great Depression and on its way to war. The play’s narrator, known as the Stage Manager, maps things out for us: “Up here is Main Street. Way back there is the railway station. . . . Polish Town’s across the tracks, and some Canuck families.” The rest divides up according to Christian denominations: Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Unitarians close in, Baptists “down in the holla’ by the river,” and a Catholic church for the Poles and Canadians. The town’s two leading families are the Gibbses and the Webbs, each moderately prosperous, with its weary patriarch (Dr. Gibbs, the general practitioner, and Mr. Webb, who publishes the biweekly local paper), its no-nonsense matriarch (who addresses her husband by his honoriﬁc rather than his ﬁrst name), and its pair of children (one male, one female). The elder Gibbs child, George, is Biff Loman without the Oedipal issues: a big-hearted high school sports star who struggles with math but loves the outdoor life and has a plan in place to buy a farm. He’s sweet on the elder Webb child, Emily, who excels in school but has no plans other than George. He declares his affection for her

40 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

by carrying her books and buying her an ice cream soda (as distinguished from a phosphate, which costs less.) We’ll see their wedding in the second of the play’s three acts. Given all the sexism, white privilege, youname-it oozing from a mere overview of Our Town, it’s not surprising that Redtwist chose to open its production to all the people apparently excluded from Wilder’s script. Under director James Fleming, the cast features a black artist, Nicole Michelle Haskins, as Mrs. Webb; a gender-ﬂuid artist, Jaq Seifert, as George; and several artists with Latinx surnames in various roles—among them the sweetly self-possessed Elena Victoria Feliz as Emily. It doesn’t stop there, either: hearing-impaired Richard Costes plays the Stage Manager, using his own voice and stylized gestures that amount to a kind of ASL lite. Joel Rodriguez performs the role of the milkman, Howie Newsome, from a motorized wheelchair. Under the circumstances, it actually comes across as odd that Doc and Mrs. Gibbs are embodied by white actors (Brian Parry and Jacqueline Grandt, both engagingly folksy). What’s odder still, though, is that Fleming’s casting does next to nothing to transform, much less subvert, the play. Certainly, seeing such variety onstage heightens our awareness of the many constituencies Wilder didn’t contemplate referencing back in 1938—the people who couldn’t have a home in Grover’s Corners. Yet his writing manages to accommodate them all just the same, for two reasons. The ﬁrst is purely mechanical: by using a narrator, dispensing with realistic scenery, and explicitly acknowledging the cast members as actors, Wilder obviated the need for verisimilitude, ethnic or otherwise. The second is just this: that the ultimate subject of Our Town is life and death and the fact that latter comes inevitably to anyone who gets to experience the former. Nobody gets excluded from that. v R OUR TOWN Through 10/8: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-7287529, redtwist.org, $30-$40.

v @taadler

Nejla Yatkin ò CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

DANCE

The Garden of the Phoenix takes center stage in a new immersive work LEAVING CHICAGO CONVINCED choreographer Nejla Yatkin that she needed to be making art for Chicago. While traveling the globe for a year-long project, Yatkin got a taste of how the rest of the world perceives her hometown—negatively—and returned on a mission to showcase the city’s beauty. Jackson Park’s Garden of the Phoenix is the stage for Yatkin’s newest site-speciﬁc piece, choreographed for the newly formed South Chicago Dance Company. “Many people that hear about the south side of Chicago immediately think of gang violence and police brutality, but this place represents the total opposite of the public view,” says Yatkin. “We need to celebrate and emphasize the positive and peaceful places of the south side.” Working with South Chicago Dance Company allows Yatkin to highlight the creativity of the local community, and Garden of the Phoenix is an ideal location for a choreographer heavily inﬂuenced by the patterns, forms, and fractal structures in nature. Dancing With Garden of the Phoenix takes viewers all over the grounds, and this participatory, immersive element is an essential aspect of Yatkin’s work, which seeks to change the viewer’s relationship with his or her environment: “I want to focus my creative energy in Chicago to make public places more enjoyable and peaceful through the presence of dance and movement,” she says. “Dancing in public spaces creates community and puts people at ease. The goal is to explore and make people become aware, both intimately and broadly, of the interaction of people, movement and the environment.” —OLIVER SAVA DANCING WITH GARDEN OF THE PHOENIX Fri 9/15, 6 PM, Garden of the Phoenix at Jackson Park, 6401 S. Stony Island, 773-256-0903, nytdance.com. F

ò MALI ANDERSON

THEATER

Sparkfest sparks some magic By JUSTIN HAYFORD

rasing the Distance, the 12-year-old theater collective that aims to “disarm” the stigma around mental illness, regularly creates two kinds of magic. First, the ensemble concoct eloquent, harrowing scripts from verbatim interviews with people experiencing mental illness, scripts as artful and insightful as any created by well-pedigreed playwrights. Second, they find actors who perform these

texts with such grace, candor, and passion it’s difficult to believe they’re acting at all. It’s hard to ﬁnd more theatrical immediacy on any stage. Much of this magic is on display in Sparkfest, the company’s ﬁrst festival of new works, although in one of the three pieces, that spark is largely absent. The Lies We Tell, devised by Mariana Green,

ARTS & CULTURE Charlotte Drover, and Adam Poss, typifies the company’s magical work. It focuses on thirtysomething Chris, a high-functioning addict, loaded from the age of 12, barreling destructively through life in maelstrom of lies. As performed by the mercurial Josh Odor, Chris is a fascinating, aggravating figure whose superficial frankness masks a tangle of evasions, elisions, and contradictions. “It was fun,” he says of a particularly manic phase. “It was supposed to be fun. It wasn’t fun, actually. It was torture.” Odor’s performance turns the “typical addict” into a heartbreaking tragic figure. On the other end of the magic spectrum is Stacy Stoltz’s Walk a Mile, in which Stoltz performs interviews she conducted with her father, mother, and stepmother about their “formative stories”: family deaths, wartime trauma, alcoholism. While the stories are often compelling, they’re just as often excessively discursive, and Stoltz and director Matt Hawkins struggle to keep the show headed in a discernible direction. Moreover, the bulk of the stories have little to do with experiencing mental illness. In another festival, the piece

might make more sense. One might argue that the enthralling Breathe With Me, devised by Millie Hurley and Maura Kidwell, also belongs in a different festival. It interweaves the monologues of three caregivers: Olive, a “relocation designer” who helps debilitated seniors create homelike environments as they move to assisted living; Avery, a nurse in a pediatric ICU; and Sam, a nonprofessional caretaker tending to his dying father. Through carefully observed stories (Avery lies alongside a terminal child and simply stares deeply into her eyes) we experience the emotional and psychological toll the long-term caretaker suffers. While it’s problematic to place such understandably trying experiences in the context of mental illness, the exquisite performances by Dave Belden, Susie Griffith, and Shariba Rivers make this piece, ironically, the festival’s highlight. v R SPARKFEST Through 9/24: Thu-Fri 8 PM; Sat 2, 5, and 8 PM; Sun 2 PM (see website for individual showtimes), Filament Theatre, 4041 N. Milwaukee, 872-529-1383, erasing thedistance.org, $15 in advance, $20 at the door, passes $33-$72.

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Stacy Stoltz performs in Walk a Mile.

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42 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

BALDUR HELGASON

RIOT FEST

Fri 9/15 through Sun 9/17, noon-10 PM, Douglas Park, 1401 S. Sacramento, $79.98 per day, $149.98 two-day pass, $198.98 three-day pass, all ages

or six years now, Riot Fest has been an outdoor spectacle, taking over a public park for days to celebrate “punk,” whatever that means in 2017—this year it runs from Friday, September 15, through Sunday, September 17. Riot Fest is now carrying on without cofounder and producer Sean P. McKeough, who died at age 42 in November. Spurred in part by McKeough’s passing, organizers discontinued Riot Fest’s Denver edition, leaving this hometown party the last one standing. Chicago’s Riot Fest seems to be slimming down too, after growing fast its ﬁrst few years outside—the 2017 lineup is 91 acts, down from more than 120 last year. As a brand, though, Riot Fest is as ambitious as ever— earlier this year it staffed up an online magazine on its website, and in July it launched a pop-up restaurant in Wicker Park called Riot Feast. The quality of the fest’s

bookings hasn’t fallen off a bit, despite the slightly less gargantuan bill— though I suppose you should know that I say this as a fan of Jawbreaker, who’ve reunited after 21 years to play this Riot Fest. Part of that consistency comes from familiar names, in keeping with tradition: Is Riot Fest even allowed to do this without Andrew W.K. and Gwar? (Other high-profile repeaters include third-wave emo heartthrobs Taking Back Sunday, prehistoric indie-rock juggernauts Dinosaur Jr., and old-school punk romantics the Buzzcocks.) Speaking of tradition, the festival features ten acts playing classic albums in full, and in our preview package Luca Cimarusti revisits all of them. You can also read Ed Blair on Riot Fest’s editorial approach, Kevin Warwick on the bands worth showing up early to see, and several pieces by yours truly—I talked with Mr. W.K. and one of the

creators of a new Jawbreaker documentary, Don’t Break Down, among other things. A healthy number of this year’s performers challenge the notion that punk has to be played with guitars, among them raunchy pop experimentalist Peaches, electronic mutant Tobacco, and hip-hop spacemen Shabazz Palaces. Rapper Vic Mensa probably belongs in that category too, and he’s also one of ten locals on the bill—not a record for Riot Fest, but better than Lollapalooza has ever done. Not that you need me to tell you this, but you can ﬁnd festival rules, recommended transit options, and other information at riotfest.org. That site is also a good place to start if you’re anxious about last-minute changes to the schedule or the set times—at least if you’re not already following @RiotFest on Twitter. v

v @imLeor SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 43

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bassist Ross Lomas—has remained intact, releasing records at a fair clip (they have a new one called Momentum coming in November on Hellcat). Vintage GBH calling cards such as “Give Me Fire” still conjure images of bare-knuckle brawls between gangs of skins and ’hawks. Next hustle over to FISHBONE (1:45 PM, Radicals Stage), the Los Angeles conglomerate that helped birth a high-energy new strain of funk- and ska-infused alternative rock (horns included) in the late 80s and early 90s. Their volatile sound teeters on the edge of chaos, as each instrument seems to pull in a different direction, but the best songs—including the 1991 favorite “Sunless Saturday,” which they might get to after playing all of 1988’s Truth and Soul—bring this mayhem into line behind the power and magnetism of front man Angelo Moore. To keep your adrenaline cranked, you’ll want to catch at least a bit of local hardcore powerhouse LA ARMADA (2 PM, Heather Owen Stage). They moved here from the Dominican Republic a decade ago, and their most recent EP, 2014’s Crisis, explodes with grindcore-loyal blastbeats, dagger-sharp guitar squeals, and bilingual shrieks and growls. They’ll brutalize every one of their 30 minutes onstage.

R I OT FEST A N D SHI N E To see some of the best acts on the bill—including Downtown Boys, Invsn, and Fishbone—you’re gonna have to skip brunch. By KEVIN WARWICK

on’t use brunch as an excuse for getting a late start on your Riot Fest plans this weekend—not only because brunch deserves better (I think), but also because those coveted huevos rancheros will be on special in perpetuity to cure your hangover. Lug your corpse out of bed, submerge it in coffee, and drag it to Douglas Park by noon. It’s easy to never mind the opening bands at a mega music festival in favor of the marquee acts—some of them inexplicably reunited, some of them Nine Inch Nails—but early arrivals can catch several of Riot Fest’s most out-of-bounds artists, maybe even with elbow room to spare. Here are nine worth applying sunscreen to see.

FRIDAY

What better way to begin a fest steeped in rememberwhen punk than with a reclusive experimental electronic musician? TOBACCO (12:35 PM, Riot Stage), aka the leader of Black Moth Super Rainbow, spreads clouds of sinister, smoky synth over his creeping, vocoderized vocals. It’s dance music for a Francis Bacon painting, and as it melts into the air it leaves chemtrails in its wake. Chase that with INVSN (1:25 PM, Roots Stage), fronted by Dennis Lyxzen of Swedish posthardcore powerhouse

BA L

DUR

H EL GA S

Refused. This project leans toward postpunk instead, and broods more than it sasses—Sara Almgren, a bandmate of Lyxzen’s in the (International) Noise Conspiracy, is also a key member. Lyxzen is such a reliable performer, working the stage with a purposeful, reckless abandon, that his showmanship alone is worth a minute or ten. Unless you absolutely have to watch all of Invsn, next you can see WARM BREW (1:45 PM, Rise Stage), a hiphop trio from west LA who tip their Lakers caps to their G-funk godfathers. The 2016 EP Diagnosis (Red Bull Records) is a chill, percolating demonstration of what these self-proclaimed “Ghetto Beach Boyz” can do.

SATURDAY

Unlike many of the classic punk bands Riot Fest reanimates, English street-punk agitators GBH (12:55 PM, Riot Stage) have never stripped the studs from their leather jackets. Since 1978 the core of their lineup—vocalist Colin Abrahall, guitarist Colin “Jock” Blyth, and

SUNDAY

Perhaps the most hyped early-set band at Riot Fest are politically outspoken Providence punks DOWNTOWN BOYS (1 PM, Rise Stage), who just released Cost of Living (Sub Pop), produced by Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto. Their music is raucous and eclectic (hello, saxophone), and Victoria Ruiz’s lyrics, which alternate between Spanish and English, are blunt and in your face. Downtown Boys aim to challenge the regressive status quo, and their rising status ought to help them advance their DIY agenda. Playing simultaneously are UPSET (1 PM, Heather Owen Stage), fronted by former Vivian Girl Ali Koehler, whose straight-ahead mix of indie rock and pop punk ought to put a little bounce back in your step as you march toward Jawbreaker. Former Hole drummer Patty Schemel is in the band too, which is a fun wrinkle. Both Downtown Boys and Upset will wrap up their sets before CULTURE ABUSE (2 PM, Heather Owen Stage), who on last year’s Peach (6131 Records) treat the sound of melodic 90s rock to better production than it often got back in the day. Catchy but deﬁnitely a little damaged, Culture Abuse fuses bits of Jay Reatard-style garage to the heavy guitar thrum of grunge’s heyday. v

v @kevinwarwick SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 45

EARLY WARNINGS NEVER MISS A SHOW AGAIN

Â®

CHICAGOREADER.COM/EARLY

please recycle this paper

You can go back to school, too! 46 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

Learn to play with us this fall! New adult group classes are now open! Browse our class schedules online at oldtownschool.org

YO U G OT YO UR RIO T FE S T I N MY PEAN UT BUT T E R!

oughly one in every nine acts on the Riot Fest lineup comes from Chicago, so if you circulate in Douglas Park all weekend you’re going to see some locals whether you mean to or not. But I’ll be honest: This far into festival season, I’m tired of talking about bands. So I’m going to treat these ten acts as though they were peanut butter. I’d like to see you stop me! Once I committed to this idea, the next logical step was to plot the bands on the two axes fundamental to peanut butter: crunchy versus smooth and sweet versus salty. (I give it two years before you’ll see a chart just like this on the wall of an artisanal grocery in Logan Square.) This may be the least useful exercise of my music-writing career, but at least it’s not cheesy.

Gentle readers, witness our dumbest way yet of rounding up the local acts on the bill. By LEOR GALIL

Cap’n Jazz (Sunday 4:25, Riot Stage) Oh messy life! Oh messy knife!

Real Friends (Sunday 1:45, Radicals Stage) Smooth as butter, with an occasional hunk of processed peanut to remind you it’s punk.

CRUNCHY

La Armada (Saturday 2:00, Heather Owen Stage) Like stuﬃng your face with handfuls of peanuts still in their shells.

Ministry (Friday 6:05, Riot Stage) Maybe don’t lick the dark side of the spoon. Turnspit (Saturday 1:00, Heather Owen Stage) Their punk energy stirs things up just enough to keep the oil from separating.

Vic Mensa (Friday 7:25, Rise Stage) Every bite is a surprise! How many recipes is this guy using at once?

SWEET

SALTY Knuckle Puck (Saturday 2:30, Rise Stage) You’ll want some jelly with this sassy poppunk—or anything else that might make your ex . . . jelly.

Lawrence Arms (Saturday 5:30, Rise Stage) Tastes best right out of the jar the morning after a long night of drinking.

Sleep on It (Friday 1:50, Radicals Stage) When poppunk takes cues from the Edge, it’ll be airy enough to spread with an index card.

Orwells (Sunday 3:00, Rise Stage) A glass of milk will keep this stuﬀ from getting stuck to the roof of your mouth—but you’re on your own with your brain.

SMOOTH SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 47

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48 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

The Chicago Theatre provides disabled accommodations and sells tickets to disabled individuals through our Disabled Services department, which may be reached at 888-609-7599 any weekday from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. © 2017 MSG Sports & Entertainment, LLC. All rights reserved.

Stills from Don’t Break Down

T H E R EUN ITED J AWBR EAKER FO LLOW A D O C U ME N TARY O N THE BAN D I N T O C HICAGO Don’t Break Down: A Film About Jawbreaker unpacks the group’s legend, even for people who don’t know it has one. By LEOR GALIL

hese days Jawbreaker are almost as unapproachable as they are influential. Unlike most (if not all) of the other big-name punk bands partaking of the great 21st-century reunion boom, this San Francisco trio seem to have retained some of the mystique that surrounded their original pre-Internet run. Jawbreaker’s sophisticated, gritty pop-punk has attracted a cult of fans whose worship of the band can be off-putting to outsiders—and there are a lot of outsiders. The band’s music passed through an obscure twilight before the advent of streaming and downloading, so that it was often difficult to find. DGC let Jawbreaker’s lone major-label album, 1995’s Dear You, go out of print after it sold around 40,000 U.S. copies (a failure by industry standards at the time). For many years, if you couldn’t find used copies, the only way to buy Jawbreaker’s music was through Blackball, a one-man label run by the group’s drummer, Adam Pfahler. After their breakup in 1996, their renown continued to grow among punks, but they still felt like a secret. It’s fair to say that most folks who’ve never scribbled the lyrics to the chorus of “Boxcar” in the margins of their school notebooks don’t know the Jawbreaker legend, or even that there is a legend. Jawbreaker certainly don’t have the same cachet as Riot Fest’s other reunited headliners—the Replacements and the “original” Misfits. Perhaps the solution is the new Jawbreaker documentary Don’t Break Down, which has its Chicago premiere on Thursday, September 14, at the Logan Theatre.

them special. The band split up after Bauermeister and Directors Tim Irwin and Keith Schieron began working Schwarzenbach got in a fistfight in the tour van, and Don’t on Don’t Break Down after their first joint feature, the Break Down explains at least some of the reasons for it: 2005 Minutemen documentary We Jam Econo. “I wasn’t when Jawbreaker formed at NYU in 1986, Schwarzensure if Keith would want to do another one or not,” Irwin bach and Pfahler were already close, having been friends says. “He right away expressed interest in doing one, and in high school, and Bauermeister struggled with feeling the band he wanted to do was Jawbreaker.” Schieron like a third wheel. Adding stress was the fierce blowback connected with Pfahler, and it turned out he’d liked We Jawbreaker got for signing with DGC: they’d previously Jam Econo—no small compliment, given that the drumtaken a hard stance against the co-optation of undermer co-owns San Francisco movie-rental institution Lost ground punk by major labels (a genuine scourge in the Weekend Video. post-Nirvana years), and after Dear You came out, some In 2006, Schieron and Irwin began filming interviews former fans went so far as to buy conwith each band member individucert tickets just to heckle the group. ally, beginning with bassist Chris JAWBREAKER As the September Club took the Bauermeister. (Not everybody had Sunday 8:45 PM, Riot Stage reins on Don’t Break Down, Schierstayed in touch after the breakup.) DON’T BREAK DOWN: A FILM on’s health deteriorated, and he died Schieron came up with the idea of ABOUT JAWBREAKER from a brain tumor on December 31, getting Bauermeister, Pfahler, and Thu 9/14, 8:30 and 10:30 PM, guitarist-vocalist Blake Schwarzen2016. “Getting the film done—it’s Logan Theatre, 2646 N. wrapped up in a lot more emotion bach together to listen to Jawbreaker Milwaukee, $15, early show sold out, all ages than just what the premise is itself,” masters in a San Francisco studio, Irwin says. Last month, the final edit and those 2007 sessions turned into the band hashing out their past. “We of Don’t Break Down premiered in really struggled for a while about how to approach that San Francisco, the night before Jawbreaker played their first public reunion show at the Rickshaw Stop—a venue footage in terms of the editing,” Irwin says. “Like, how only a little bigger than the Empty Bottle. The group had would we couch that in the film?” After a series of stops and starts for the directors, already played a private gig in Oakland, but Didier says the YouTube clips he’s seen of that set can’t compare to in summer 2015 they began working with filmmaking the Rickshaw concert. “Whatever they did between the collective the September Club (based in Milwaukee and Los Angeles), which helped refashion the documentary shows was amazing,” he says. and get it finished. The September Club’s Dan Didier, best A Jawbreaker reunion set means a lot to an ordinary known as the drummer for the Promise Ring, coproduced fan of the band, and Irwin is far from an ordinary fan. For him the Rickshaw gig represented the culmination the film; he says the challenge was framing the narrative of more than a decade of work—much of it done with a of the band’s career as a gripping story. “We went back to the raw footage,” he says. “We watched every single friend who was no longer alive to enjoy the payoff. “With frame and boiled it down from there, trying to focus on a Keith and everything, it was wrapped up in a lot more for me than just seeing Jawbreaker play,” he says. “It was three-act structure: Is there an antagonist? Can there be magical.” v a resurrection?” The September Club found two narrative threads to help a Jawbreaker neophyte understand what made v @imLeor

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 49

50 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

W HIC H OF THE ALBUMS GE T T ING P L AY ED AT RIO T F EST AC T UA LLY D E SERVE IT? Old favorites from Dinosaur Jr. and the Wu-Tang Clan still sound fresh, but a few of these alleged classics have passed their expiration dates. By LUCA CIMARUSTI

harmonies like this anymore? Occasional ﬂourishes of 90s alt-rock angst date this album a bit, but from That Dog. they’re charming, not gross.

BUILT TO SPILL

ostalgia is the name of the game at Riot Fest. Since its early days, the festival has featured artists playing their most-loved albums front to back, and this year it’s ramped up the number of these sets to ten. But how have the years treated these alleged classics? I’ve listened to all ten, and they’re arranged below in order of initial release.

DINOSAUR JR.

You’re Living All Over Me (1987)

Sunday 6:35, Riot Stage

This album suffers from mid-80s SST Records-standard production quality (no low end, drums that sound like milk cartons), but its songs are still the type of heartfelt bangers that can give you warm fuzzies all day long. Dino’s best effort handsdown—totally timeless.

FISHBONE

Truth and Soul (1988)

Saturday 1:45, Radicals Stage I realize that a lot of people hold Fishbone in high regard, but in this day and age Truth and Soul just sounds like a ska-funk version of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Sorry? At least they’re probably more exciting than this live.

DANZIG

Danzig III: How the Gods Kill (1992)

Saturday 5:20, Roots Stage

It’s such a bummer how badly Danzig has ruined his reputation. All the little ways he’s embarrassed himself—the asinine stage banter, the prima donna antics, the three-foot Taz ﬁgurine left behind in his vacant LA mansion—make it easy to forget

Keep It Like a Secret (1999)

that his early work with his eponymous metal band is completely fucking sick. Their third album is so good: heavy, dark, catchy, and fun, beefing up and slowing down the energy that made the Misfits so great a few years before.

WU-TANG CLAN

Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)

Saturday 8:00, Radicals Stage

Stone. Cold. Classic. Wu-Tang’s 36 Chambers might be the best hip-hop album of all time. It still sounds as fresh, intimidating, and brilliant as the day it was released. Are “hologram” versions of dead band members still a thing at festivals? Wu-Tang badly needs one of ODB for this set.

MIGHTY MIGHTY BOSSTONES

Let’s Face It (1997)

Sunday 3:20, Roots Stage As far as third-wave ska goes, this has got to be the best out there. On Let’s Face It the Bosstones sound almost like a modern-day version of the Specials, with tons of monster choruses and excellent musicianship. I even think Dicky Barrett is kind of an awesome singer. This was the record I most dreaded revisiting, but shockingly it holds up. That “knock on wood” song still sucks, though.

Sunday 4:20 PM, Rise Stage Breezy, pretty indie rock like this will never go out of style, especially when it’s executed so ﬂawlessly. Keep It Like a Secret is the type of album that transcends generations, and it will probably inspire kids to start jangly little bands for as long as the biosphere holds up.

LAWRENCE ARMS

Oh! Calcutta! (2006)

Saturday 5:30, Rise Stage The Lawrence Arms play beery, obnoxious midwestern pop punk, and this gruffly catchy album is probably as good as that sort of thing gets. Unfortunately, the years haven’t been kind to the band—at the end of the day, Oh! Calcutta! is just kind of annoying.

MAYDAY PARADE

A Lesson in Romantics (2007)

Friday 7:00, Radicals Stage

Leave it to Riot Fest to remind me that some people actually get nostalgic about post-Fall Out Boy bands. Incredibly ﬂaccid and safe, Mayday Parade’s pop punk reeks of the mid-aughts in the worst way. This makes the Lawrence Arms sound like Slayer. Hard pass.

THAT DOG.

BAYSIDE

Sunday 2:15, Riot Stage

Saturday 4:00, Rise Stage

Retreat From the Sun (1997) It’s a shame Retreat From the Sun didn’t propel That Dog. to superstardom, because this is some gorgeous, next-level pop majesty. And why don’t you hear rock bands working out vocal

The Walking Wounded (2007)

This sounds exactly like the Mayday Parade, except with some minor-key “darkness” added. Overall a better result, but I can’t say I’m jazzed about having to listen to it. v

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 51

AN EVENING WITH...

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TY MAXON

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52 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

wed 9/27

JOHN KADLECIK

with...

(furthur, dso, phil & friends)

Jay Lane (Furthur, Rat Dog, Primus)

sat sept 23

Joe Gallant (Illuminati) Benjie Porecki (Keller's Grateful Gospel)

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PR EC IOUS RIO T F ES T MOME NT S W I TH ANDREW W. K .

probably two weeks’ worth of sodium in it—which I guess in one way is good, because it helped me retain water that I needed to then sweat out.

He’s been on every lineup since 2012, but what does he remember?

Do you remember your most awkward moment at the fest?

By LEOR GALIL

What’s the most inspiring thing you’ve seen at Riot Fest? The entire operation is its greatest achievement. Putting on the quantity of acts that Riot Fest organizes is superhuman. The biggest achievement, and really the crowning glory of each Riot Fest that we’ve participated in, has been the atmosphere. I’ve been to many festivals that were on a similar scale that had a horrible atmosphere, that was very unpleasant, very stressful—sometimes it’s an almost indescribable haze hanging in the air. You just don’t want to be there, and it permeates everything. That’s the hardest thing, because that’s a spirit. It’s the ﬁrst thing to be tarnished by bad vibes, and at the end of the day it’s the last thing that you remember. To me the greatest thing about Riot Fest is that it feels amazing. It just has a great spirit.

What’s the most unusual thing you’ve seen at the festival? I think it was last year. I went in, like every Riot Fest, more or less not planning on eating until after

the show. Just drink lots of ﬂuids and maybe have some small amount of food right upon getting up so there’s some kind of sustenance to work off of—that’s when you hope that whatever stored body fat that you have will be there ready for you during your set. It’s a very physical show; you just don’t want to be burdened by a belly full of food. There was all this really appetizing free popcorn. It was a very robust ﬂavor—like a cheddar-chipotle popcorn or something. I had a bite, I said, “Wow, that’s really good.” I remember looking out the window of the dressing-room trailer and literally seeing pallets of this popcorn—case after case, stacked up, like they had too much to even give away. That’s why we had ten bags in our dressing room. I said, “Whoa, I guess I’m gonna eat all of this.” I ate this entire bag of popcorn. Then I realized there was

A tour manager that I really loved working with, during a very particular brutal summer tour, he had a hard time—I really loved this guy, and loved working with him, and I guess he didn’t feel the same way about working with me. He just fell away from us, and he wouldn’t return my efforts to communicate. I don’t know which Riot Fest it was—one of the last three years or something—but I was walking from one end of the festival back road to the other, and out in the distance I see this guy coming towards me. The tour manager. My first instinct was first to say hi, and then I remembered how he didn’t really like me. I got scared and thought, “Oh, is he gonna try to punch me?” Then I thought, “Maybe I shouldn’t say anything to him, or maybe I should apologize and try and make things better.” Next thing you know, he walked right by and I don’t even think he saw me. I’ll probably remember that moment for the rest of my life, but nothing happened. Out of all the things I saw and experienced that day, that’s the only one I really remember.

What’s your most joyful Riot Fest memory? The times I got to interact with Dave Brockie of Gwar. I got to do several interviews with him, where the two of us were either interviewed as a duo or we interviewed each other. Getting to see him and his operation, from the inside at times, and from backstage—those ones really stand out. He was so visually compelling that he sears his image in your brain. When he died I was really sad—he was a real big part of that experience and that tradition, and I’m really glad that Gwar is continuing in his honor.

What are you planning to do this year that might be different from all the previous years?

ANDREW W.K.

Sunday 8:30 PM, Heather Owen Stage

ò ASHLEE REZIN

ew faces are as synonymous with Riot Fest as that of Andrew W.K. The irrepressibly positive personiﬁcation of partying has appeared on every lineup since 2012. “Every year that we’ve gotten to play, I’ve always been surprised,” he says. “Each time we get invited back, I’m actually even more shocked, more amazed, more humbled, and moved by the gesture.” Did I mention he’s positive? By now it really wouldn’t count as a Riot Fest without Andrew W.K. He’s got so many memories of the festival— albeit blurry ones—that I decided to ask him about a few of the most superlative stories he’s saved up.

I wanted to offer the audience something different, because maybe they had seen us play every time. We asked if we could play a different stage, so that we could play later at night—just to change it up, just so that I could remember this year as being different from all the others. v

v @imLeor SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 53

54 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

P UNK ’S N O T DEAD, A ND NE ITHER IS PUBLISH ING HELGAS

Riot Fest launches an online magazine—because sometimes Twitter just isn’t enough.

sked to explain the logic behind launching Riot Fest’s online magazine, managing editor Ben Perlstein calls the approach “the reverse Pitchfork.” He explains: “They got the website and then the festival. We had a festival and then the website.” Riot Fest founder Mike Petryshyn had been hoping to expand Riot Fest’s website for some time, and after Perlstein mentioned last winter that he’d been wanting to jump from artist management into a more creative career, Petryshyn offered him the editor’s chair at the new Riot Fest Magazine. Perlstein, former manager to Tommy Stinson and comanager of the reunited Replacements, had become close with Petryshyn while making the arrangements for the Mats’ 2013 reunion performances. By the time the magazine launched in earnest on April 1, 2017, former Reader staff writer Miles Raymer had come aboard as editor at large. “Miles Raymer is family, basically,” Perlstein explains. “Miles’s sister was Sean’s better half for about 15 years.” Sean McKeough, Petryshyn’s most important partner in the business of Riot Fest, died at 42 in late 2016. The other main staff contributor to the magazine is Riot Fest’s creative director and social media manager. Also known as Riot Fest Twitter Guy (“We don’t don’t use his name in public,” Perlstein explains), this anonymous wit runs the Riot Fest Twitter account, which effortlessly pivots from promoting the festival to smacking down queries about its lineup to helping folks land dates or get dogs adopted. It’s one of the great Chicago Twitter accounts, hitting the sweet spot between gruff and generous that’s a trademark of the city. “Riot Fest Twitter Guy really set the tone for the website when he became Riot Fest Twitter Guy,” says Perlstein. “The kind of snarky ‘I know more than you but I’ll share it with you’ vibe.”

BALD UR

By ED BLAIR

Perlstein elaborates on the in-house dynamic: “The people that Mike surrounds himself with, like me and Riot Fest Twitter Guy and Miles—we all get it. We all get what Riot Fest is about, and the tone, and we make sure that the people that are writing are on board with that.” Raymer solicits and coordinates freelancers, Perlstein edits (making sure the copy fits the house style), and Riot Fest Twitter Guy “writes all those wacky articles like manatees farting and stuff.” This is Perlstein’s ﬁrst job as an editor, and while he admits that a lot of his current process is “trial and error, seeing what works,” he also notes that Petryshyn had never run a music festival when he founded Riot Fest. So far Riot Fest Magazine’s content has included listicles about festival acts and their side projects, updates on the Lake Michigan Bat Creature, and a DIY advice column by Alex White of White Mystery, which takes a practical and battle-tested look at punk praxis. Perlstein hopes to have more contributions from artists in the future, drawing on the festival’s established relationships with hundreds of acts—he mentions an upcoming feature with Angelo Moore from ska-punk band Fishbone, where he’ll discuss the song “Subliminal Fascism” (from the 1988 album Truth and Soul, which the band will play in its entirety on Saturday) in light of the Reagan-era political climate that spawned it and today’s Trumpian shitshow. Riot Fest Magazine doesn’t have many editorial mandates, but Perlstein does bring up one. “We try to stay apolitical,” he says. He decided not to run an article

that compared Trump GIFs to a Hitler documentary on Netﬂix, for instance. “We’re not going to talk about it, but we’ll let Angelo from Fishbone talk about it. We’ll give him a voice.” This is a strange position for an editor to take in 2017, especially one working for an operation that’s already so pointedly confrontational on Twitter, but as Perlstein talks about the future of Riot Fest Magazine, its desire to maintain political neutrality begins to make sense. Alienating almost half of your festival’s potential audience is a bad play. Perlstein says emphatically that this is just a start. He promises special content during the festival—the magazine will have access to many of the performers—but he’s cagey with details. He hopes to build a portal similar to Vice or the A.V. Club, with recurring features, video content, and more. “We want to get to a place like that, but we’re not in any rush,” he says. “It’s not advertiser driven. It’s basically our own advertisement. So we get to control the narrative.” The primary goal of Riot Fest Magazine, as he makes clear, is selling Riot Fest. That’s the biggest difference between it and the outlets Perlstein aspires to compete with—they’re ostensibly journalistic outlets ﬁrst. For Perlstein and Riot Fest Magazine, though, “It all ties back to the festival.” v

v @ourcityburning SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 55

Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of September 14

MUSIC

ALL AGES

PICK OF THE WEEK

On their debut full-length, glammy garage greats Sheer Mag allow themselves some dad-rock indulgences

ò MARIE LIN

SHEER MAG, FLESH WORLD

Fri 9/15, 9:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $15, $13 in advance. 17+

THURSDAY14

Frode Gjerstad Trio with Steve Swell 9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b

Frode Gjerstad once explained the concept of his group Detail as “too free for the jazzers and too jazzy for the improvisers.” The 69-year-old Norwegian reedist, who currently favors alto saxophone and B-flat clarinet, has struck that balance throughout his career. Gjerstad grew up in Stavanger, Norway, which had next to no free-music scene. He figured out early on that he’d have to get out of town to find like minds, and so he’s developed longstanding relationships with musicians from Europe, South Africa, and the U.S., including nonidiomatic improvisers (Derek Bailey, John Stevens), free-jazz greats (Bobby Bradford, Hamid Drake), and straightup noisemakers (Lasse Marhaug, Anders Hana). He’s also been a mentor for younger Norwegian improvisers such as the two who accompany him on his current U.S. tour. Drummer Paal Nilssen-Love began playing with Gjerstad 28 years ago, when he was just 15; bassist Jon Rune Strøm, who’s in his early 30s and plays with Friends & Neighbors and Universal Indians, has been in the trio since 2010. They stand squarely with Gjerstad in his in-between space, propelling his darting lines and scuffed timbres with shifting rhythms, low-end counterpoints, and surges of pure sound. New York trombonist Steve Swell, who plays with the trio tonight, is no

56 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

PHILADELPHIA FIVE-PIECE Sheer Mag’s glammy, lo-fi garage rock has been taking the world by storm since they released their first single in 2014. Fueled by a handful of blown-out 45s, a megahyped Coachella slot, and a raucous live show, Sheer Mag have become one of the most beloved independent bands in America. In July they released their long-awaited debut full-length, Need to Feel Your Love (Wilsuns), and for the first time in Sheer Mag’s brief life, it sounds like they’re allowing themselves to get a little indulgent, trading in no-nonsense, feel-good power-pop jams for a range of dad-rock homages. “Meet Me in the Street,” the album’s opener, is a rowdy brawler of a tune, with Thin Lizzy-inspired harmonized guitars and lyrics about fighting cops. More than once, Sheer Mag dive headfirst into smooth, cushy disco. But these scrappy, soulful Philly kids make it work, never getting too fancy or over-the-top with their suddenly wider sonic palette: at the root of it all are the same melodic guitar jangle and raspy vocals that dominated their earlier singles, and Need to Feel Your Love sees Sheer Mag continuing down their path to greatness. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

Rainer Maria

stranger to their work. Three years ago he joined the group in Chicago to record the live album At Constellation, where his rubbery phrasing, hushed vocalizations, and intuitive anticipation of dynamic shifts ﬁt right in. —BILL MEYER

ò SHAWN BRACKBILL

Rainer Maria Olivia Neutron-John opens. 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $20. 21+ Rainer Maria have as many lives as a cat. Formed in 1995 in Madison, Wisconsin, the three-piece emerged with a style and energy that situated them comfortably within the ranks of other midwestern emo bands of the day: their sound combined trembling, loosely woven guitars with half-screamed vocals volleyed between bassist Caithlin De Marrais and guitarist Kaia Fischer. But as Ian Cohen wrote in a recent Stereogum interview with the group, when Rainer Maria called it quits in 2006, they did so as a quintessential Brooklyn indie band, successful enough to sell out big clubs and tour full-time. Last month they dropped a reunion album, S/T (Polyvinyl), and neither time nor distance—the band’s members are now spread out across the northeast—has aﬀected their cohesiveness. S/T contains the same cast-iron melodies and soaring spirit that buoyed the band’s previous album, 2006’s Catastrophe Keeps Us Together. It doesn’t hurt that some of these songs build on thoughts the band began thinking years ago. “Hellbore,” for instance, originated from an idea Fischer and drummer William Kuehn toyed with in a 2001 practice session; the

song’s cavernous spaces and melodic lunges hark back to Rainer Maria’s past even as they push the group forward. —LEOR GALIL Rock, Pop, Etc Chameleons Vox, Soft Kill, Cemetary, Silent Age 8:30 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Doro, Devil in Disguise, Amulance, Comfort Scarcity 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Sam Evian, Parent, Bunny 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Hoops, Lala Lala, Amy O 9 PM, Empty Bottle Jan James, Blue Lincolns, Camilo Restrepo 8 PM,

Heartland Cafe Jay Som, Stef Chura, Soccer Mommy 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Tony MacAlpine, Felix Martin 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Moderatto 8 PM, Thalia Hall F Moms, Erers 9:30 PM, Township Of Montreal, Showtime Goma & Nancy Feast 8 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, 18+ Orwells 8 PM, House of Vans, 17+ F Pipes, Rachel Swain, Jodi Walker 8:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn F Quayde Lahue, Tarantula, Udusic, Heated 9 PM,

Bryson Tiller ò ROLEXX

MUSIC

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Quenchers Saloon Queers, Ataris 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, sold out, 17+ Retirement Party; Bloodsport: the Movie, the Band; Pelaﬁna 9 PM, Burlington Son of a Gun, Sir Coyler, Second Hand Suits 9 PM, Reed’s Local Strand of Oaks, Jason Anderson 8 PM, SPACE b Toasters, Beat the Smart Kids, DJ Chuck Wren 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen Folk & Country Kip Moore 7:30 and 10:30 PM, Joe’s Bar, sold out Tom Russell 8 PM, FitzGerald’s Blues, Gospel, and R&B Ruthie Foster, Matthew Skoller Duo 8 PM, City Winery b Jazz Dana Hall Quartet 9:30 PM, California Clipper Robert Irving III Quintet 8 and 10 PM, also Fri 9/15 and Sat 9/16, 8 and 10 PM; Sun 9/17, 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Experimental Tobacco, High Tides, J Alvarez 10 PM, Smart Bar Christopher Willits 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ International Devon Brown & Love This 6 PM, Wild Hare Kalapriya Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 6 PM, Willye B. White Park F b Lunasa Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 7 PM, Irish American Heritage Center F b Brenda K. Starr 9 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont Tcheka, Eva Salina Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 7 PM, Hideout F Vox Sambou, Los Hijos de la Montana Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 8 PM, Martyrs’ F Miscellaneous Don’t Break Down: A Film About Jawbreaker Early show sold out. 8:30 and 10:30 PM, Logan Theatre b

FRIDAY15 Orindal Records Showcase Dear Nora headlines; Nicholas Krgovich, Karima Walker, and Advance Base open. 8:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $12. 21+ After ending his long-running indie-pop project Casiotone for the Painfully Alone in 2010, Chicagobased musician Owen Ashworth launched Orindal Records. It was part of a musical rebirth, but more a spiritual move than a sonic one: the label’s first release, a 2011 split, features one of the first singles from Ashworth’s post-Casiotone project, Advance Base, which like its predecessor trades in warm, wistful songs. When I wrote a Reader feature about his career ahead of Advance Base’s 2015 album, Nephew in the Wild, Ashworth told me he saw Orindal as a home for recordings that otherwise wouldn’t exist. That approach dovetails with the intimacy of Ashworth’s music, which while associated strongly with the indie pop of the 2000s continues to resonate; the ﬁrst Orindal artist who didn’t share the name Ashworth (Owen’s brother Gordon also records for the label) was onetime Chicagoan Julie Byrne, whose elegant Not Even Happiness is among the most critically acclaimed releases of 2017. Tonight’s performers show how far Orindal’s reach has extended in six years. Tucson experimentalist Karima Walker put out her debut full-length,

Hands in Our Names, in March, and its songs reverberate most during their quietest moments. Vancouver’s Nicholas Krgovich has been pals with Ashworth since the days of Casiotone; his 2015 Orindal release, On Cahuenga, finds a meeting place between sumptuous R&B vocals and spacious keyboard melodies. Headliners Dear Nora broke up in 2008, but they were already plotting a reunion tour when Ashworth approached the band about reissuing 2004’s Mountain Rock. Its largely acoustic songs are sweet and all too brief, and aﬀect a shambolic attitude that bolsters the earnestness at their hearts. —LEOR GALIL

Bideew Bou Bess 8:30 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Riblja Corba 10 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont Vox Sambou, Tcheka Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 7 PM, the Promontory F b Yao Ye Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 6 PM, Ping Tom Memorial Park F b Classical Zoya Shuhatovich 7:30 PM, PianoForte Studios b Fairs & Festivals Riot Fest: Nine Inch Nails, New Order, A Day to Remember, Dirty Heads, Vic Mensa, Ministry, Death From Above, and others See our festival guide on page 43. Noon, Douglas Park b

Bryson Tiller H.E.R. and Metro Boomin open. 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 1106 W. Lawrence, $55$159. b On his sophomore album, True to Self, Bryson Tiller keeps doing Bryson Tiller things, like lamenting over trap-infused 808s about a girlfriend’s emotional distance and the impending end of their relationship—which may also be related to some questionable behavior of his own. “I’m busy, it’s no wonder you upset with me,” he sings on his summer single “Somethin Tells Me.” “You found a Magnum inside of my bag / Don’t know how to explain this / That was in there way before we started dating.” Tiller’s take on R&B—he called his 2015 debut record Trapsoul—is of the Drake-ian variety, empowering black men in their 20s to be vulnerable and in their feelings when it comes to women. On “Run Me Dry,” though, Tiller curses the ex who took advantage of his love for her. Over a Caribbean groove that makes you want to dance, Tiller sings, “Used to break my neck for you / Spend my paycheck on you. . . . You made me obsessed for you / Thought I had the same eﬀect on you.” What truly kept Tiller in rotation this summer, however, was his collab with Rihanna on DJ Khaled’s “Wild Thoughts.” Here he’s most exciting when he ﬂexes a little lyrical bravado in his amorous pursuits: “Yeah I treat you like a lady, lady / Fuck you till you burned out, cremation.” —TIFFANY WALDEN Rock, Pop, Etc The Band Camino, Wldlfe, Hardcastle 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Cap’n Jazz, Rapper Chicks 11 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Captain Coopersmith, Lunar Ticks, King of Mars 9 PM, Martyrs’ Dan Croll, the Dig 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Elliott Brood, Max Subar, Half Gringa 8 PM, Schubas Roky Erickson, Death Valley Girls, Strychnine 9 PM, Empty Bottle Flotation, Root Cause, Wrecked, White Pony 8 PM, Cubby Bear GBH 11 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Haim, LPX 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, sold out b Lung, Cell Phones, Dirtybird, Bringers 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Monk Parker, Honey & the 45s 9 PM, Burlington New Found Glory, Bayside, Radar State 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, sold out, 17+ Oh Wonder, Jaymes Young 7:30 PM, the Vic, sold out b Orphaned Land, Pain, Voodoo Kungfu, Darkfall, Terranaut 6:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn b

SATURDAY16 Tim Berne’s Snakeoil 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $12 in advance. 18+ Phantom Works, Imelda Marcos, Out 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Redlyon, Eric Tessmer, Electric Slave 8 PM, Elbo Room Ed Sheeran, James Blunt 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena Sneezy, No Turn on Red, Humphrey-McKeown, Local Motive, Well Known Strangers 7:30 PM, Joe’s Bar Sam Trump, Krystal Metcalfe, Localvores, Avery Young, Avantist, Astro Samurai, Cole DeGenova 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Uncle Lucius, Dead Horses 9 PM, FitzGerald’s Witchtrap, Sauron, Nefarious, Lethal Shock 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Hip-Hop Just Juice 6:30 PM, Subterranean b Palmer Squares, Netherfriends 9 PM, Logan Bar and Grill Dance Courtesy, Olin 10 PM, Smart Bar Tim Engelhardt 10 PM, Spy Bar Andre Hatchett, DJ Emmanuel, Gene Hunt 10 PM, the Promontory Oliver 10 PM, the Mid Sub Focus 10 PM, Sound-Bar Blues, Gospel, and R&B J.C. Brooks, North 41 8 PM, SPACE b Nora Jean Bruso 9 PM, also Sat 9/16, 9 PM, Kingston Mines Vance Kelly & the Backstreet Blues Band 9 PM, also Sat 9/16, 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Smokey Robinson 8 PM, Ravinia Festival b Mike Wheeler, Mary Lane 9 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends JW Williams Blues Band, Laretha Weathersby 9 PM, also Sat 9/16, 9 PM, Blue Chicago Jazz Robert Irving III Quintet 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Lowdown Brass Band with MC Billa Camp 9:30 PM, also Sat 9/16, 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club Typhanie Monique Quartet 9 PM, Winter’s Jazz Club Willie Pickens Quintet 9 PM, also Sat 9/16, 8 PM, Green Mill Trio Mokili 10:30 PM, California Clipper Matt Ulery’s Loom Large 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ International Ark Band 6 PM, Wild Hare

In press materials for his intense new album, Incidentals (ECM), reedist and composer Tim Berne notes that the addition of guitarists Ryan Ferreira and David Torn (who also produced the record) grants some leeway to his core quartet, Snakeoil. The guitarists mostly work to ﬁll out the sound ﬁeld, letting Berne and clarinetist Oscar Noriega dig deeply into the leader’s serpentine compositions. Following along with this dense avant-garde jazz can be a challenge, but pay attention to the jagged patterns of pianist Matt Mitchell—on the 26-minue behemoth “Sideshow” he functions as a kind of tour guide, pulling players from section to section and nudging listeners forward. Mitchell maintains an intractable sense of movement through every twist and turn, allowing drummer Ches Smith to contribute coloristic bowing or darkly melodic vibraphone. This music is packed with ideas, but there’s little here as satisfying as how Berne and Noriega blow their twinned lines, slaloming through color and groove with razor precision. Their moments of improvisation are inspired too, creating giddy, breathlessly spontaneous constellations of sounds. This concert features just the core quartet. —PETER MARGASAK

M Gun Golden Donna, Justin Long, and Sold open. 10 PM, Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, $20, $15 before midnight, $12 in advance, $5 before midnight with student ID. 21+

A 2013 Resident Advisor proﬁle of Detroit producer Manuel Gonzales latched on to a particular phrase he’d used to describe his music: “It’s kind of punk.” Gonzales, who records and performs as M Gun, likes his techno and electro with serrated edges, convulsive synths, and corrosive percussion. But as harsh as his music can be, Gonzales never lets his aﬀection for aggressive tones disrupt his ability to lure people into a trance—and get them moving. That balancing act is on display on Gonzeles’s debut full-length, last year’s Gentium (Don’t Be Afraid), where he sometimes tamps down his punk proclivities in favor of a more equanimous sound. The most aggressive elements on “Half Past 3,” for instance, are squiggles of distorted synths and stomping J

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 57

bottom lounge ON SALE NOW

MUSIC

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continued from 57

percussion, which mostly serve to boost the plaintive house melody that serves as the song’s guiding spirit. —LEOR GALIL

09.18 COAST MODERN SALT CATHEDRAL

09.19 ASGEIR TUSKS

10TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW

09.23 HAKEN

SITHU AYE / MAMMOTH

09.26 THE EARLY NOVEMBER & THE MOVIELIFE HEART ATTACK MAN

101WKQX QUEUED UP ARTIST SHOWCASE

10.04 WELSHLY ARMS WARBLY JETS

ALT NATION PRESENTS

10.05 ATLAS GENIUS

FLOR / HALF THE ANIMAL

10.10 TRUCKFIGHTERS AUTUMN OF THE SERAPHS 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY NIGHT ONE

10.11 PINBACK

DRAGON DROP NIGHT TWO

10.12 PINBACK PAPER MICE

Slaughtbbath Part of a two-day festival presented by Metal Threat that begins Friday, September 15, with a show headlined by Colombian thrash band Witchtrap. Slaughtbbath headlines; Communion, Slutvomit, Sacrocurse, Isenblast, and Hellwaﬀe open. Reggie’s Music Joint, 2105 S. State, $20, $16 in advance. 21+ South American metal fans have been enjoying this Chilean monster for 15 years, and it’s time for the U.S. to catch up: Slaughtbbath have been releasing a stream of vile and vicious black metal via demos and EPs, only once slowing down enough to grind out a full-length, 2013’s Hail to Fire. But hot on the heels of the past few years’ worth of blistering split sides with the likes of Vultur, Ill Omen, and Hades Archer, they’ve just dropped a ﬁller-free compilation, Contempt, War and Damnation (Hells Headbangers), that’s as good a place to start as any. This show is the second half of a two-night stand booked by Metal Threat that showcases several great South American acts—not just Slaughtbbath but also fellow Chileans Communion (who just dropped two killer self-releases) and Colombian thrash band Witchtrap (on Friday). —MONICA KENDRICK

REACT PRESENTS

10.14 TERRAVITA RIOT / CHIME

10.21 LA FEMME SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS

10.27 THE MAIN SQUEEZE REACT PRESENTS

10.28 CRANKDAT 10.29 BRUJERIA

PINATA PROTEST REACT PRESENTS

11.02 A TRIBE CALLED RED 11.04 THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA VEIL OF MAYA / SILENT PLANET THOUSAND BELOW

11.08 GIRAFFAGE

Wire Noveller opens. 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Metro, $26. 18+ It’s mind-boggling to me that Wire released their revolutionary debut, Pink Flag, four decades ago— and that there was a time when each new album from the band felt like it had the potential to change the postpunk landscape. That’s long since ceased to be the case, and sometimes I take for granted that Colin Newman and Graham Lewis (along with current drummer Robert Grey and second guitarist Matt Simms) are still making records—good ones, even. Their recent Silver/Lead is another strong outing, even though it treads familiar turf. The best songs, including the chugging “Short Elevated Peri-

od,” are characterized by powerful melodies whose elegance fits neatly with the streamlined instrumental attack. On the intimate, midtempo “Diamonds in Cups,” the lyric “The path that is progress is under repair” raises a theme of uncertainty that extends through much of the album. Some tunes feel overly slick, larded with 90s production tics such as plasticky synth pads, but that’s a minor quibble. —PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Anti-World System, Burn in Effgy, 2 Minute Minor, Definition Hero 9 PM, Heartland Cafe Apocalyptica 7:30 PM, Park West, 18+ Black4, Outdrejas, Fist-a-Gon 9 PM, Wire, Berwyn Brand X, Moulder Gray & Wertico 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Buzzcocks, Slaves 11 PM, Cobra Lounge, sold out, 17+ Chris Dertz & the River, No Thank You, Tobacco Bandits, Fieldmates 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Dinosaur Jr., Built to Spill 11 PM, Bottom Lounge, sold out, 17+ Fall Out Boy 6:30 PM, House of Blues Fifth Star Band, Keegan Cruz, Lauren Anderson, Life#9 8 PM, Elbo Room Jessica Marks, Drea the Vibe Dealer, Christopher Church 9 PM, Hideout Marsh Boys, Cola Wars, Dirty Horse 9 PM, Burlington Picture This, Zigtebra 8 PM, Schubas b Pkew Pkew Pkew, Fitness, Jacob Horn Trio, Bad Mechanics 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Roosevelts, Diving Bell 9 PM, Subterranean Soft Candy, Voluptuals, Hermit Kingdom 10 PM, Cole’s F Sun Foot 6 PM, Hideout Terrapin Flyer 8 PM, SPACE b TLC, Sugar Ray, Biz Markie, All-4-One, O-Town, Snap! 7 PM, Ravinia Festival b Dance ATB 10 PM, the Mid Matt Lange 10 PM, Sound-Bar Rey & Kjavik, Halloran, Inphinity, Dustin Sheridan 10 PM, Spy Bar Folk & Country Nathaniel Braddock, Jim Becker, Teddy Rankin-Parker 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b

SWEATER BEATS / WINGTIP

Wire

SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS

ò MIKE HIPPLE

11.15 SLOW MAGIC REACT PRESENTS

11.16 BLEEP BLOOP

UM.. / SUMTHIN’ SUMTHIN’

11.22 OCEANS ATE ALASKA

DAYSEEKER / AFTERLIFE / TANZEN SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS

11.29 EKALI

MEDASIN / JUDGE

12.17 THE SPILL CANVAS WILD / SUPER WHATEVR

12.31 MURDER BY DEATH www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

58 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

Luke Bryan, Brett Eldredge 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre Blues, Gospel, and R&B Nora Jean Bruso 9 PM, Kingston Mines Keyshia Cole, Case, Soul For Real, Total & RL 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b Anthony Gomes 9:30 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Vance Kelly & the Backstreet Blues Band 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Monophonics, the Right Now, Heavy Sounds 9 PM, FitzGerald’s Morry Sochat & the Special 20s 10:30 PM, California Clipper JW Williams Blues Band, Laretha Weathersby 9 PM, Blue Chicago Jazz Robert Irving III Quintet 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Henry Johnson Quartet 9 PM, Winter’s Jazz Club Lowdown Brass Band with MC Billa Camp 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club

Willie Pickens Quintet 8 PM, Green Mill Experimental Justin Demus, Megiapa, Blvck Spvde Part of Afro Futurist Weekend 2. 9 PM, Elastic b Lovid 8 PM, Graham Foundation Fb Miami Dolphins, Ttotals, Black Sandwich 4 PM, Brica-Brac Records F b Sojourner Zenobia, Charmion 7:30 PM, Comfort Station F b International Betsayda Machado y la Parranda El Clavo, Luciana Antonio Quartet Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 3 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park F b Irie Trinity 6 PM, Wild Hare La Tribu de Abrante Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 11 AM, Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center F b Mariachi Flor de Toloache, Los Hijos de la Montana Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 9 PM, Thalia Hall F

J SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 59

1800 W. DIVISION

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Lera Lynn Ronstadt Brothers Fifth House Ensemble with Jason Vieaux

FOR TICKETS, VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 8:30PM

Bideew Bou Bess

In Szold Hall

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 8PM

Nathaniel Braddock Jim Becker Teddy Rankin-Parker In Szold Hall

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 7PM

Tift Merritt

with special guest Weatherman • In Szold Hall

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 7PM

Inside/Out with Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre In Szold Hall FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 8PM

Trace Bundy

In Szold Hall

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 11AM & 1:30PM

Okee Dokee Brothers Kids concert!

Est.1954 Celebrating over 61 years of service to Chicago!

(773) 486-9862 Come enjoy one of Chicago’s ﬁnest beer gardens! SEPTEMBER 14.........................FLABBY HOFFMAN SHOW THE RAGOONS SEPTEMBER 15.........................SKIPPIN’ ROCKS DJ SKID LICIOUS SEPTEMBER 16.........................GO TIME! LETTERBOMB SEPTEMBER 17.........................TONY DOSORIO TRIO AT 9PM SEPTEMBER 18.........................HENRY SMITH QUINTET SEPTEMBER 20.........................JAMIE WAGNER AND FRIEND WITH $11 SUPPER SEPTEMBER 21.........................MIKE FELTEN AT 9PM NUCLEAR JAZZ QUARTET AT 7:30PM SEPTEMBER 22.........................BAD FORUM SEPTEMBER 23.........................DAN WHITAKER AND THE SHINEBENDERS THE COUNTRY DOCTORS SEPTEMBER 24.........................WHOLESOME RADIO DJ NIGHT ANDREW D. HUBER AT 9PM

EVERY TUESDAY (EXCEPT 2ND) AT 8PM OPEN MIC HOSTED BY JIMIJON AMERICA

MUSIC continued from 59

Mdou Moctar, Ode Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 10 PM, Martyrs’ F Classical Distant Worlds Philharmonic Arnie Roth, conductor. 3 PM, Symphony Center Music of the Baroque Elijah. 7:30 PM, Harris Theater b Fairs & Festivals Englewood Jazz Festival: Wallace Roney, Live the Spirit Residency Big Band, Dee Alexander, Ernest Dawkins Jam Session Band, Young Masters Noon, Hamilton Park Cultural Center b Riot Fest: Queens of the Stone Age, Wu-Tang Clan, Mike D (DJ set), At the Drive-In, Danzig, Gogol Bordello, Taking Back Sunday, and others See our festival guide on page 43. Noon, Douglas Park b

SUNDAY17 Vicente Amigo See also Monday. 8 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, $55-$65. b For several decades, Vicente Amigo has reigned as one of flamenco’s premier guitarists, a dazzling technician and an explosive performer carrying the torch of the great Paco de Lucía to push the Spanish tradition in new directions. Not all those directions have led to success—the 2013 album Tierra was a rather mushy collision of flamenco and Celtic music—but through each phase of his career Amigo, who turned 50 this year, has stuck to the fundamentals of his art. On his magnificent recent record Memoria de los Sentidos (Sony), Amigo plays deep within the flamenco tradition, collaborating with superb vocalists such as Potito, Miguel Poveda, Arcángel, and Rafael de Utrera—the last of whom will join the band for these rare local dates. Amigo

is a fiery stage presence, and when he performs he seems to reach inside himself to access something beyond virtuosity, walking the line between lyrical beauty and rhythmic volatility. His ensemble includes Paquito Gonzalez on cajón, Añil Fernandez on second guitar, Ewen Vernal on bass, and dancer Antonio Molina “El Choro.” —PETER MARGASAK

Oh Sees Ganser opens. 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $26, $24 in advance. 17+ It’s hard to believe John Dwyer has been leading different incarnations of his band Oh Sees (the name has undergone numerous tweaks) for two decades now, churning out top-notch psychrock that’s giddy, sinister, and hooky by turns but always ferocious. For the group’s latest album, Orc (Castle Face), Dwyer adopts a nasal, whining vocal style that pushes the band’s glam flourishes toward the creepy, his tight wail piercing the fuzzed-out din like a laser beam. Once again fronting a twin-drum lineup, he enhances his needling guitar leads, acidic power chords, and highpitched arpeggios with carefully deployed synthesizers, which provide pointillistic splatters on “Nite Expo” and warm, arcing lines on the sweetly melodic “Cooling Tower” (where the only singing is a series of wordless ah-ah-ahs). On the other side of the spectrum is the pure mountainman fury of “Animated Violence,” where Dwyer uncorks his most unhinged caterwauls over meaty riffs, rumbling bass swells, and skyward-bound licks given hyperactive propulsion by the drummers. The band also experiments with extended violin drones on the proggy “Keys to the Castle,” while the descending guitar figures on “Paranoise” alternate with chicken-scratch funk, buzzing synths, and analog squelches over a lean, Krautrock-worthy

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 7PM

Frances Luke Accord In Szold Hall

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 7:30PM

Loudon Wainwright III

Discussion and Q&A for his new book Liner Notes

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 1 8PM

Garifuna Collective

In Szold Hall

ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL 4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL

9/29 Global Dance Party: Rio Bamba 10/6 Global Dance Party: Milonga Cumparsita with DJ Charrua

WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE

9/20 IndoSoul by Karthick Iyer 9/27 Musical Tribute to Victor Jara

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG 60 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

Oh Sees ò JOHN DWYER

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groove. Only an extended twin-drummer feature on the closing track, “Raw Optics,” fails to deliver the goods—but it’s a maneuver that’d clearly work better live. Dwyer has already announced the next album, due in November; recorded under the name OCS, Memory of a Cut Oﬀ Head will head in a more baroque orchestral-pop direction. For tonight’s show, expect the usual high-energy fuzz. —PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Cameron Avery, Madeline Kenney 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Cafe Racer, Head, Wet Piss, Ttotals 9 PM, the Owl F Ego Mechanics, Fuzzbucket, Doves of Mercury 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Fairview, Watsons 6:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn Flight Brothers, Ausar, Kia Harper, Other Eric, Kovu, Tae Hunna 7 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F A Giant Dog, Platinum Boys, Lifestyles 9 PM, Empty Bottle Gogol Bordello, Lucky Chops 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Hot Water Music, Airstream Futures 11 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Matchbox Twenty, Counting Crows 6:45 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre Taking Back Sunday, Sleep on It 11 PM, Bottom Lounge, sold out, 17+ That 1 Guy, Jaik Willis 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Vagabon, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, Morimoto 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Dance Michael Seraﬁni, Garrett David, Karya 10 PM, Smart Bar Folk & Country Terr Family Band 2 PM, Empty Bottle Blues, Gospel, and R&B Dark Matter String Band, Mykele Deville Part of Afro Futurist Weekend 2. 4 PM, Elastic b Corey Dennison Band with Carl Weathersby 8 PM, SPACE b Jazz Fat Babies 8 PM, Honky Tonk BBQ Robert Irving III Quintet 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Jason Roebke Quartet 9 PM, Hungry Brain Doug Rosenberg Quintet 9 PM, Whistler F International Gizzae 6 PM, Wild Hare La Tribu de Abrante, Mdou Moctar, Betsayda Machado ya la Parranda El Clavo Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 2 PM, Humboldt Park Boathouse Fb Los Tigres del Norte, Natalia Jimenez 6 PM, Ravinia Festival b Yao Ye Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 2 PM, Chicago Cultural Center, Claudia Cassidy Theater F b Classical Music of the Baroque 7:30 PM, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Skokie Fairs & Festivals Riot Fest: Jawbreaker, Paramore, Prophets of Rage, M.I.A., TV on the Radio, Dinosaur Jr., Pennywise, and others See our festival guide on page 43. Noon, Douglas Park b

MUSIC

MONDAY18 Vicente Amigo See Sunday. 8 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, $55-$65. b Naomi Punk Dim and C.H.E.W. open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10. 21+ This damaged postpunk trio from Olympia, Washington, spend an awful lot of time lurching through their new double album, Yellow (Captured Tracks), a repetitive exercise in crude deconstruction clearly inspired by their key influence, Wire. But where Wire operate with deadly precision and purpose, Naomi Punk seem more baffled than baffling, and it’s anyone’s guess why they decided to express in 75 minutes what easily could’ve been dispatched in 20. The trio’s unmoored explorations of minimal postpunk tunefulness include some wonderful moments, and their songs work especially well when tantalizing melodies recede or collapse just when a payoff seems on the horizon—but after 30 minutes, not to mention 45, that method begins to feel like a gimmick. I suppose the duration is an intentional gambit—perhaps an attempt to make deliberately “difficult” music—but audiences have an easy out if they get bored. They can stop listening. —PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Todd Carey 8 PM, Schubas Coast Modern, Salt Cathedral 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Cold Beat, Well Tempered, Low Swans 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Deep State, Fantastic Plastics, Minor Wits, Fast Decay 8 PM, Burlington Gosh!, Reaches, Daymaker, RXM Reality 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Love Theme, Bernardino Femminelli, Miguel Baptista Benedict 9 PM, Empty Bottle F Wilde, Revolt Coda, Tall Green Pine 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Folk & Country Chicago Barn Dance Company Barn dance featuring Common Taters. 7 PM, Irish American Heritage Center b Jazz Bowmanville 9:30 PM, Whistler F Extraordinary Popular Delusions 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen F Anton Hatwich’s 333, Stevenson Valentor’s Here & Now 9 PM, Elastic b Experimental Ballake Sissoko & Nicole Mitchell 7 PM, Experimental Sound Studio b In-Stores Josh Harlow 7:30 PM, Myopic Books F b

TUESDAY19 Rock, Pop, Etc Asgeir, Tusks 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Bat House, Pleasantries, Mormon Toasterhead, Yetta 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Fauvely, Youth & Canvas, Bash Bang 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F

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MUSIC continued from 61

FITZGERALDS // BERWYN

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Most Established Crab House in Chicago. Known for excellent seafood and shellfish inspired by global flavors. Steaks, pasta dishes and cocktails are also available.

“Absolutely delicious food...”

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62 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

Garden, Cafe Racer 7:30 PM, 1st Ward b Aldous Harding, Sports Boyfriend 9 PM, Empty Bottle Human Heat, Norwegian Arms, Yomi, Katryn Macko 8:30 PM, Subterranean Kasabian, Slaves 8:30 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Alison Moyet 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Nine Worlds Ensemble, Unknown New 8:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn Public Service Broadcasting, TALsounds 8 PM, Schubas Suzzy Roche & Lucy Wainwright Roche 8 PM, City Winery b Charles Walker Band, Mike Zabrin’s Funktastic, Mike Michel 8 PM, Martyrs’ X Eye Blind 8 PM, SPACE b Young Man in a Hurry, the Machine Is Neither 9 PM, Hideout Folk & Country Bros. Landreth, Milkmoney, Jessica Mindrum 8 PM, FitzGerald’s Michael Miles 6:30 PM, Hideout Jazz Fat Babies 9 PM, Green Mill Lucas Gillan’s Many Blessings 9:30 PM, Whistler F Erwin Helfer 7:30 PM, Hungry Brain F Oz Noy & Ozone Squeeze, Kick the Cat, TS3 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Greg Ward 9 PM, Hungry Brain F Experimental Bending Spirit, Dominic Coppola, Luminous All Kudler 9 PM, Elastic b International Tropics 6 PM, Wild Hare

WEDNESDAY20 Matthew Stevens 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $10 in advance. 18+ Toronto-born Matthew Stevens represents a new breed of jazz guitarist. He’s an improviser with a deep investment in harmonic exploration, but his music dispenses with most of the hallmarks of jazz, at least stylistically. He’s made his name working with two artists who’ve forsaken jazz orthodoxy in favor of pop-leaning hybrids—trumpeter Christian Scott and paradigm-shifting bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding—and Stevens’s own music follows suit. Preverbal (Ropeadope) is a slick, grooveheavy trio album that embraces the rhythmic prerogatives of pop and funk. Over dense, tricky parts laid down by bassist Vicente Archer (a frequent sideman for Robert Glasper) and drummer Eric Doob—plus layers of looped electronic beats, samples, and synthesizer textures—the guitarist creates shimmering lines and chords that twitch, reverberate, and ooze. Rather than unleashing extended single-note runs, Stevens conceives of improvisational gambits for the trio as a whole, progressing from one statement to the next as a unified band. There are moments of repose, such as when the final section of “Cocoon” suddenly pulls back to a whisper, allowing Stevens to trace lines that ﬂoat meditatively. Similarly, the closing track, “Our Reunion,” opens with airy guest vocals from Spalding before an imperturbable hard-rock groove kicks in. —PETER MARGASAK

Matthew Stevens ò SHORE FIRE MEDIA

Rock, Pop, Etc Catfish & the Dogstars, Funk Vendetta 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F D.D. Dumbo 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Dogs at Large, Sam Crossland & the Side Effects, Bernie & the Wolf, Cass Cwik 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Father John Misty, Weyes Blood 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre Heavy Dreams, Softette, Predictions, Sarah Squirm 9 PM, Hideout Kubkai Khan, No Zodiac, Left Behind, I Am 7:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, Lightnin Malcolm 8 PM, SPACE b Rad Payoff, Depot Dogs, Mammals 9 PM, East Room Dan Rico, Coaster, Old Joy 9 PM, Empty Bottle Jessica Risker, Cordoba, Ano Ba 9 PM, Schubas F Sacred Reich, Aftermath, Byzantine, Predator 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Slaves, Secrets, Out Came the Wolves, Picturesque, Deadships 6 PM, Wire, Berwyn Stiff Little Fingers, Death by Unga Bunga 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Tops, Faith Healer 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Underhill Family Orchestra, Soda Gardocki, Elijah Berlow 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Folk & Country Mandolin Orange, Rachel Baiman 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Tift Merritt, Weatherman 7 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Tillers, Al Scorch 8 PM, FitzGerald’s Wild Earp & the Free-For-Alls 9:30 PM, California Clipper Blues, Gospel, and R&B Sonder 9 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Avery Sunshine 8 PM, City Winery, sold out b International IndoSoul by Karthick Iyer 8:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music F b Trio da Kali, Hong Sung Hyun’s Chobeolbi Part of World Music Festival Chicago. 6 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center F b Classical Sung Chang 12:15 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center Fb v

FOOD & DRINK

THE KENNISON | $$$ R 1800 N. Lincoln 312-981-7070 thekennison.com

Beets ò KRISTAN LIEB

RESTAURANT REVIEW

At the Kennison, chef Bill Walker picks up where Perennial Virant left off Like its predecessor, the new restaurant from the Boka group makes an art of seasonal cooking. By MIKE SULA

e had a lovely summer, didn’t we? The world was spiraling down a planet-size shit funnel of humanity’s own making, but at least it was warm, breezy, and sunny in Chicago. During the last sweet breaths of the season I ate at the Kennison, the new restaurant in the Hotel Lincoln, and I took every opportunity to order the fantastic

corn we were blessed with this year. It was the culinary analogue to Nero’s ﬁddle. I ate a heavenly bowl of cool corn soup the texture of a milk shake and as refreshing, surrounding a tiny island of cilantro- and chile-kissed shrimp ceviche. I crunched on golden kernels, tossed with mussels and chorizo, that popped with sugar and vitality. Corn played the leading role in succotash, standing

out among beans, peppers, and tomatoes alongside thick slices of rosy pork loin. In late August, the Kennison was tossing out gold like a drunken leprechaun. It’s reassuring that this restaurant, whose tall windows look across North Clark Street to the grounds of the Green City Market, is taking up the mantle of seasonality that Perennial Virant shouldered for so many years.

That, of course, was the long-running Boka Restaurant Group favorite that used to occupy this space. The Kennison (in addition to the hotel’s rooftop restaurant, the J. Parker) is a partnership between BRG and the fledgling 90/94 Restaurant Group. It’s named for David Kennison, who claimed (falsely) that he was the last surviving participant in the Boston Tea Party as well as a veteran of the Revolutionary War. There’s a monument to him in Lincoln Park that says he died in 1852, so at least we know he wasn’t a Confederate. The chef here has a more wholesome biography. Bill Walker is a veteran of solid bets like Green Zebra, Old Town Social, Salero, Next, and Wood, but at the Kennison he’s taken on the age-old challenge of creating compelling food that must meet the very broad needs of hotel travelers—who may or may not care very much about compelling food. Let’s see how he does. I zeroed in on a salad of purple beets, carved into perfect spheres propping up shards of rye toast and a creamy deviled egg bedazzled with salmon roe. The dish seemed to signal summer’s end. How about a tuna tartare that unleashes the pleasant burn of aji chile, surrounded by dabs of margarita gelee, a swish of avocado mousse, and masa crackers? Or ribbons of pappardelle tangled in a shredded rabbit sauce made gently sweet by peaches and lavender honey? Walker isn’t trying to coddle anyone with this beautiful, artfully plated food. But then who looks at a list of appetizers and doesn’t order meatballs? Here they’ll get springy pork orbs in peppery arrabbiata sauce, powered by peak-season tomatoes and showered with Parmigiano snow. Syrupy raspberry dressing is plated to the side of a pile of sharp arugula and nutty farro; the salad comes mined with blueberries already bursting with natural sweetness. Travelers who visit Chicago and only want to eat steak could look to the short rib, a dense slab that almost assumes the form of a fillet thanks to the magic of sous vide. Parents who want to inflict vegetables on their children won’t regret the leftover broccolini the little monsters leave behind; it’s dressed with feta cheese, and conceals an understory J of baba ghanoush.

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 63

FOOD & DRINK

YOUR DOLLARS ARE

HARD AT WORK

Blackberry brown-butter cake ò KRISTAN LIEB

continued from 63

Even a small donation can make a big difference

HurricaneHarveyAid.org

64 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

This is the third hotel restaurant I’ve reviewed in a row, and like any of them, the Kennison’s got a few duds. In a dish of squid ink tagliolini and charred octopus both elements perform admirably on their own, but a sauce made from the cephalopods’ braising liquid and sherry vinegar takes up too much attention. Too-soft pastrami-spiced smoked carrots, served on a bed of overassertive napa cabbage kraut with dabs of beet and caraway puree, is the one dish capable giving even more intrepid eaters pause. The dessert menu, by pastry chef Maree Rogers, late of Momotaro and Grace, will put anyone back at ease. It’s a study in cake and ice cream, featuring, for instance, a rectangle of dense brown-butter cake ﬁnished with fat blackberries, blackberry sherbet, and dabs of lime gelee. A mascarpone cheesecake with a similar geometry has its richness cut by a gently tannic apricot-black tea sorbet. Meanwhile a wickedly seductive chocolate cake layered with caramel cremeux is sprinkled with house-made Cracker Jack (corn again), with a corner dipped in a stygian hot fudge sauce; a quenelle of roasted peanut ice cream begins to melt in admiration. Like Perennial Virant, the Kennison, with its warm, inviting brown-leather booths, remains one of the loveliest dining rooms in town, a place that manages to make a ground-level view of a park interrupted by a

busy street something worth gazing upon. The verdant patio, on the corner of Clark and Lincoln, is its own refuge. This is a multipurpose setting, worth settling in for brunch or just bending the elbow. To that end, the Smoke and Mirrors is a jolly good belt, deceptively dainty in a Nick and Nora glass, with ten-year-old scotch and a tobacco tincture. The mix of bourbon, Campari, and sweet vermouth in the Buffalo Nickel deepens in mystery as a big, melting coffee rock slowly dilutes its sweetness. If you’re not driving the minivan back to Indianapolis, you’ll want to order a follow-up pour of whatever brown liquor you favor, just to make use of the remaining cube. The 50-something-bottle wine list has a little northern California thrown in, but is dominated by France, with options available in the $50 range like a Vieille Julienne “Clavin” cotes du rhone. The two dozen wines by the glass are a bit more diverse, with showings from lands afar like New Zealand, the Finger Lakes, and Italy. It’s likely that by the time you read this, the corn will be running out at the Kennison, along with much of the other wonderful produce Walker put on the menu this summer. But hey, apples are here. Squash is coming, grapes and root vegetables are on their way. I’m looking forward to seeing what he can do with all of that. v

v @MikeSula

Hundreds of bar suggestions are available at chicagoreader.com/ barguide. Bottoms up!

king crab house

○ Watch a video of Gary Matthews working with Tums—and get the recipe— at chicagoreader.com/food.

open now OYSTER BAR SPECIALS Wings .35 ea • Oysters .65 ea Shrimp .90 ea • Mussels 5.95 Spicy Shrimp 9.95

COCKTAIL CHALLENGE

Heartburn coming and going

Bar Specials available at bar with two alcoholic drinks minimum per person

By JULIA THIEL

Rum & Tum Ramos ò CHRIS BUDDY

t’s kind of a jerk thing to do, I think, to give someone over-the-counter medicine. It was difficult to incorporate into a cocktail,” says GARY MATTHEWS. The DRUMBAR bartender is referring to Sarah Syman of Otto Mezzo, who challenged him to create a cocktail with TUMS—the antacids traditionally used to relieve heartburn. Matthews picked up a pack of Tums Tropical Fruit and started evaluating the flavors. “The green tasted vaguely like lime, and the white just tasted like chalk dust, but kind of sweet. I don’t know what flavor that is,” he says. “The orange and yellow ones were the right type of fruitiness for me. I assume they’re orange and pineapple.” After grinding the Tums in a spice grinder, Matthews combined the powder with simple syrup, then fine-strained the mixture. “You get that chalkiness for sure, but it’s actually pretty fruity and kind of tasty,” he says. For his cocktail, Matthews settled on a variation on the Ramos Gin Fizz, traditionally made with gin, heavy cream, egg white, citrus, and orange flower water. Instead of using gin, he fat-washed rum with the oil from some chorizo he’d cooked down, hoping to infuse the spirit with spicy, garlicky notes. “I wanted

Find hundreds of Readerrecommended restaurants, exclusive video features, and sign up for weekly news at chicagoreader.com/ food.

to make something that could potentially give someone heartburn and at the same time cure their heartburn,” he says. For extra heat he topped the drink, which he dubbed the Rum & Tum Ramos, with hot sauce.

DAILY SPECIALS

Mon:King King Crab Crab Legs Mon: Legs$26.95 $26.95 Tues: Snow Crab Legs $22.95 Tues: Snow Crab Legs $22.95 Wed: Crab & Slab $22.95 Wed: Crab & Slab $22.95 Thurs: Fried Jumbo Shrimp $19.95 Thurs: Fried Jumbo Shrimp $19.95

All You can Eat Fri, Sat, Sun • 11am - 3pm

All You can Eat Fri, Sat, Sun •11am - 3pm Snow Crab Legs: $38.95 per person

Tempura Shrimp: $26.95 per person

Tempura Shrimp: $26.95 per person 4pm to close (Tempura Shrimp only)

AllNot above not valid anyother other specials, valid any other specials, All above notwith valid with with any specials, discounts discounts or promotions! discountsor or promotions! promotion!

1816 N. Halsted St. Chicago, IL 60614 312-280-8990 Mon, Tues, Wed and Thur 3:30PM-11PM Fri and Sat 11:30AM-12AM Sun 11:30AM-10PM

RUM & TUM RAMOS

2 OZ CHORIZO FAT-WASHED RON ZACAPA RUM .75 OZ LIME JUICE .75 OZ TUMS SIMPLE SYRUP ONE EGG WHITE 1 OZ HEAVY CREAM SODA WATER CHOLULA HOT SAUCE Add rum, lime juice, simple syrup, and egg white to a shaker and dry shake. Add heavy cream and ice, shake again, then strain into a collins glass with soda water. Garnish with a few drops of Cholula hot sauce.

WHO’S NEXT:

Matthews has challenged BRANDON PHILLIPS of THE DUCK INN to create a cocktail with geﬁlte ﬁsh. v

BARRA

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v @juliathiel SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 65

JOBS

SALES & MARKETING FUNDRAISING

-L A S T MINUTE SUMMER CASH! Looking for a few old pros. Start today! Start ASAP, Call 312-256-5035 ask for Cash.

food & drink EXPERIENCED BARTENDERS AND and Servers for King Crab

House, 1816 N Halsted. Apply in person Monday through Saturday after 3pm, ask for Mitra.

General (Hoffman Estates, IL) Tate & Lyle Americas LLC seeks SAP Developer ABAP w/ Bach or for equiv deg in Engin, CS, Bus or Logistics & 5 yrs progr exp in job offered or in SAP develop tech incl exp w/ 2+ full life-cycle implemen incl post Go-Live sup & success delivery of SAP proj; SAP NetWeaver Architec (ECC 5.0 / ECC 6.0); SAP Hana; SAP/EDI ALE-Idocs; New Enhancemnt Framewrk in ECC 6.0; CRM (LORD API), SRM, BI/BW (BI Accelerator), HANA & SAPUI5; wrkng w/ remote/off-shore teams; & perform review/optimization tools (incl database/OS level optimization as it relates to SAP). Domes & intl trvl reqd up to 50% of time. Apply to L. Donley: 2200 E. Eldorado, Decatur, IL 62521

VISTEX, INC. SEEKS P r o grammer Analyst (VPA17) Master’s +1yr/Bachelor’s +5yrs exp/ equiv. Vistex, SAP, SAP SD, JAVA, J2EE, Oracle, SAP SD OTC, Pricing Rebates. Mail resumes to: HR, 2300 Barrington Road, 7th Floor, Hoffman Estates, IL 60169. Travel to unanticipated work sites throughout the U.S. Foreign equiv. accepted.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Aeris Communications, Inc. in Chicago, IL seeks Sftwr Eng to dev benchmrkg automtd tests to ensure Connectvty of svc portion of pltfrm perf. BS in CS plus 12 mons exp req’d. Mail resume w/ ad copy to Aeris Communications, Inc. 435 N. LaSalle St., Suite 300, Chicago, IL 60654 Attn: C. Kearns #DGK101. QA ANALYSTS ORACLE AMERICA, INC. has openings for QA Analysts positions in Deerfield, IL. Job duties include: Design and execute load, performance, and stress test plans. Apply by e-mailing resume to brande n.stuck@oracle.com, referencing 385.21151. Oracle supports workforce diversity.

PARKER HANNIFIN CORPORATION seeks a Division Lean Manager in Des Plaines, IL to lead a multi-site division in implementation of the Parker Lean System (PLS). BS&5 req’d. For complete reqs and to apply, visit: www. parker.com/careers Job ID 7230

Opportunities at NUTS ON CLARK POPCORN stores at

JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. has an opening for an

APPLICATIONS DEVELOPER LEAD position in Chicago, Illinois.

Drive innovation across the firm’s corporate technology applications, increasing efficiencies through process automation, and Agile application development, with an emphasis on user experience and shorter development cycles. Please fax your resume to (312) 732-7830with following job ID clearly indicated: [170079310]. JPMorgan Chase & Co. supports workforce diversity.

the most fun bakery in town! Neighborhood Bakery is looking for an energetic, service-oriented Baker. Some Simple Cake Decorating Required Flexible, Some Weekend Hours, No Overnight Hours. Approx. 20 hours a week - Wage based on Experience Be within a Reasonable Distance to Evanston, IL Pastry School Students, Recent Graduates, & Experienced Home Bakers all considered. Todd@AstaireGroup.com

LEAD DATABASE ENGINEER

Aeris Communications, Inc. in Chicago, IL seeks Lead Database Engineer to drive the dsgn, dev and deploy of dba solutions for custom sw sys & prod enhancmnts to Connectivity Pltfrm. Bach or equiv in CE or EE plus 5 yrs related wk exp req. Mail resume w/ ad copy to Aeris Communications, Inc., 435 N. LaSalle St., Suite 300, Chicago, IL 60654 Attn: Caroline Kearns #DS101.

66 CHICAGO READER | SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188

1 BR UNDER $700 STUDIO APARTMENT AVAILABLE NOW IN A QUIET VINTAGE

BUILDING. Decorated, new appliances, renovated kitchen and newly renovated bathroom with walk-in sliding shower door and ceramic tiles, hardwood floors, (3) closets, ceiling fan and air conditioning window unit, heat included, laundry room, intercom system, private parking, close to transportation. $740.00, credit check $40 located at 4728 N. Magnolia in Uptown Area. Call after 3 pm 773/456-1820 ask for Bill.

SUMMERTIME SAVINGS! NEWLY Remod. 1 BR Apts $650 w/

gas incl. 2-5BR start at $650 & up. Sec 8 Welc. Rental Assistance Prog. for Qualified Applicants offer up to $ 400/month for 1 yr. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty

7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-

bly Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030 SUMMER SPECIAL: Studios starting at $499 incls utilities, 1BR $550, 2BR $599, 2BR $699, With approved credit. No Security Deposit for Sec 8 Tenants. South Shore & Southside. 760-880-0707 or 773-287-9999

REAL ESTATE

76TH & PHILLIPS - Studio $575$600; 1BR/1BA $675-$700; 2BR/ 1BA $775-$850. 79th & Woodlawn 1BR/1BA $675-$700; 2BR/1BA $750-$850. Remodeled, Appls avail. FREE Heat 312-286-5678

RENTALS

STUDIO $500-$599 Chicago, Beverly/Cal Park/Blue Island Studio $600 & up, 1BR $685 & up, 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg. 708-388-0170

SOUTH SHORE 6724 S. Chappel Ave. Studio, 1 and 2BRs. Heat incl, nr park and great trans. $525-$875. 773-288-4444

STUDIO $600-$699 REHABBED APARTMENTS 1 Month Free 1BR on South Shore Drive From $650 w/Parking Incld. Call 773-374-7777

CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms

PART-TIME BAKER NEEDED at

CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

O’Hare Airport & other locations. Get paid while training. Apply in person at CORPORATE OFFICE, 3830 N. CLARK STREET, CHICAGO. 9 AM TO 11 AM Mon thru Sat. Must bring ID’ s to apply.

Intellectual Property Associate

Attorney, Chicago, IL: JD & undergraduate degree in elec eng, comp eng or computer sci. Must have 2 yrs exp in the position offered or two yrs as Sr IP Counsel. Prior exp must include drafting and negotiating IP/ technology agreements, complex patent license, settlement agreements, & other IP related contracts; advising on global patent enforcement. Must be licensed to practice law in IL Mail resumes to Brinks Gilson & Lione, NBC Tower, Suite 3600, 455 N. Cityfront Plaza Drive, Chicago, IL 60611, Attn: Deborah Johnson, Chief Human Resources Officer

LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888

AREA/63RD MIDWAY KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All

modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)

7520 S. COLES - 1 BR $520, 2 BR $645, Includes appliances & AC, Near transp., No utilities included (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957 232 E 121ST Pl. RENT SPECIAL:

Pay 1st month rent only - No Security dep req’d. Nice lrg 1BR $575; 2BR $699 & 1 3BR $850, balcony. Sec 8 Welc 773-995-6950

Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone, cable ready, fridge, private facilities, laundry avail. Switchboard. Start at $ 160/wk Call 773-493-3500

CHICAGO, NEWLY DECORATED 1BR Apt, $635/mo. Studio Apt, $595/ mo. Heated, appliances. 715 W. Garfield. Call 1773-881-4182

STUDIO $700-$899

CHICAGO, 1115 W. 76th St. 1BR Apartment. Newly decorated, heated, appliances incl. $645/mo + security. Call 1-773-881-4182

LARGE STUDIO APARTMENT

near Warren Park. 1904 W. Pratt. Hardwood floors. Heat included. Cats OK. Laundry in building. $725/ month. Available 10/1. 773-761-4318.

ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT near the lake. 1337 W. Estes. Hardwood floors. Heat included. Cats OK. Laundry in building. $950/month. Available 11/1. 773-761-4318.

STUDIO OTHER Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200

SUMMER SPECIAL $500 Toward Rent Beautiful Studios 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR Sect. 8 Welc. Westside Loc, Must qualify. 773-287-4500 www.wjmngmt.com

NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios starting at $580. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat/ hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773619-0204 7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2

BR $735, Includes Free heat & appliances & cooking gas. (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt

CHICAGO SOUTHSIDE , 1 Bedroom, 819-21 West 75th St, nice & clean, Backyard. No pets. $550/month. 773-445-4949. Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212 NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $130/wk & up. 773-275-4442 BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

CHICAGO 70TH & King Dr, 1BR, 1st flr, clean, quiet, well maintained bldg, Lndry, Heat incl. Sec. 8 Ok Starting at $720/mo 773-510-9290 6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200

FREE HEAT!

SOUTH Shore

No Move-in Fee! 1, 2, 3 & 4 BRs, laundry rm. Sec 8 OK. Niki 773.647.0573 www.livenovo.com

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1 BR $700-$799 8001 S COLFAX: 1BR $650 New remodel, hdwd floors cable. Off street parking. Section 8 welcome. 708-308-1509 or 773-493-3500.

HYDE PARK- 53rd St Nr Maryland. Cozy 1BR $700 hdwd floors, Sec 8 ok. Heated, w/ Laundry facilities. 773-859-0169

LARGE STUDIO APARTMENT .

ALSIP: Beautiful , Large 1BR, 1BA overlooks the park. $750/ mo., Appliances, laundry, parking & storage. Call 708-268-3762

ROGERS PARK, 7400N & 1900W. Newly Decor 1BR, free heat. No pets, no smoking or drugs. $990 + dep. Sec 8 welc. 847-477-2790

SOUTH SHORE, 75th & Saginaw Ave., 1 & 2 br apartment for rent, carpet, heat, & appl incl, $700- $900, 312-403-8025 5556 W. GLADYS. 2BR. Heat incl. $900/mo. 1BR. Heat incl. $7 15/mo. Move-in fee required. 773-251-6652

2032 E. 72ND PL. 2-E.

2BR, 1BA Condo, 2nd flr, heat, appls and parking incl. $1100/month + security. Call 312-497-2819

1 BR $900-$1099 LINCOLN SQUARE (5000N.2200W.) Spacious, quiet 1 bedroom + den, 2nd floor/2-flat, newly decorated, new dishwasher, CAC, no pets. Security deposit/ credit check. $1015+utilities. 773-561-9266 lv msg. ONE BEDROOM NEAR Warren

Park and Metra. 6800 N. Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $900925/month. Available 11/1. 773-7614318.

WEST RIDGE, 6200N/ 2200W. Spacious updated one

bedroom garden apartment. Near transportation, shopping, parks. Heat, appliances, electricity, blinds included. 773-274-8792. $900.

6824 N. Wayne. Hardwood floors. Heat included. Pets OK. Laundry in building. Available 10/1. $710/month 773-761-4318.

1 BR OTHER SINGLE ROOM OCCUPANCY (SRO) We are pleased to announce that Mark Twain and The Covent Hotel are now accepting rental pre-applications. With rents starting as low as $450. 00 per month, make our SRO’s your new home! ALL requests for preapplications can be completed on site. If you would like to receive a pre-application via email or fax please reach out to: Covent Hotel: (773) 327-6192 Pre-applications will be accepted until 7:00pm, 7 Days a Week. Mark Twain: (312) 337-4000 Pre-applications will be accepted 24 Hours, 7 Days a Week. ---------------------------------------------To complete a preapplication visit the sites below. Mark Twain: 111 W. Division, Chicago, IL 60610 Covent: 2653 N. Clark, Chicago, IL 60614 ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL

WOODLAWN 66TH/Ellis, 4rms, 1BR & 6rms, 3BR/2BA, Hdwd flrs, heated. $700-$1000. No Sec Dep. Section 8 OK. 773-859-0169

LARGE ONE BEDROOM near the Red Line. 6828 N. Wayne. Hardwood floors. Pets ok. Heat included. Laundry in building. $900/month. Available 10/1. 773-761-4318.

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

ADULT SERVICES

WAITLIST OPEN Anathoth Gardens/PACE APTS.

1 & 2 Bedroom Apts Available Senior buildings, rent based on 30% Of monthly income. A/C, laundry room, Cable ready, intercom entry system. Applications Are being accepted between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Monday thru Friday at Anathoth Gardens 34 N. Keeler Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60624 Please call 773-826-0214 For more Information

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. Hot Summer Is Here Cool Off In The Pool OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $795.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. SUMMER IS HERE!! Most units Include.. HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $475.00 1Bdr From $550.00 2Bdr From $745.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** MOST BEAUT. APTS! 6748 Crandon, 2BR, $875. 7727 Colfax, 2BR, $875. 6220 Eberhart, 2 & 3BR, $850-$1150. 7527 Essex, 2BR, $950 773-9478572 / 312-613-4424 CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/ C, laundry, near transportation, $680-$1020/mo. Call 773-2334939 ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

ADULT SERVICES

WE ARE HERE TO HELP! NOT JUDGE!

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SUNNY & LARGE 2 & 3BR, hd wd/ceramic flrs, appls, heat incld, Sect 8 OK. $850 plus 70th & Sangamon. 773-4566900 CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beautiful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok.

$500 gift certificate for Sec 8 tenants. 773-287-9999 or Westside Locations 773-287-4500

1 OR 2BR apt in newer building, completely rehabbed, heat included, 59th & California. Section 8 welcome. Call 773-517-9622 SUBURBS, RENT TO OW N! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com

Jefferson Park -5 rooms- 2 Bedrooms 1 Ba in Triplex. 2nd Floor $1075. Near Milwaukee Foster and Central and Jefferson Park CTA and METRA and Kennedy and Edens Expressway.Quiet building on tree lined street. Bright Rooms. Three season enclosed rear porch., New kitchen with stainless look appliances and granite. Updated bath. Sanded oak and maple floors. Free shared laundry facilities. Tenant heated, Street parking. No dogs, Cats OK.. Top credit, employment and rental references and security deposit required. $1075/ mo. Available September 1. 773989-4490

APTS & HOMES AVAIL.

70th & California, 2 & 4BR, modern kitchen & bath. $575-$1200/mo. Section 8 OK. 847-909-1538

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT NO MOVE IN FEE 1, 2, 3 BEDROOM APTS (773) 874-1122

welcome. Call 312.806.1080.

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200

CHARMING 2 BR 1 BA VIN-

GREAT 4 ROOMS, 1 BEDROOM North Park, new paint, new kitchen, newer windows, laundry facilities, heated, $850/mo. 773-878-6419

SOUTH SHORE AREA

6700 S. Constance Studios & 1 Bedrooms Available Call Mike, 773-7443235

NEAR BEVERLY Huge 2BR on 1st floor. Sect 8

CHATHAM, 8119 S. VERNON, 2-3BR, 3rd floor Apt, $900/mo. $1400 move in. Coin-op W/D, Free Heat! Call 773-443-5472

TAGE APT ON LINCOLN PARK. $2,375/mo. Large, light filled rooms. Pass-through kitchendishwasher, pantry, modern appliances. Great storage. Lovely details and hardwood floors throughout. Nicely maintained. Cats okay. Call 773-929-7855 or 219-771-2534.

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

2 BR $1100-$1299

GENERAL

6437 S. NORMAL - 3 Bedrooms

2 full baths, hw floors, stove/fridge, Heat, fireplace, Din rm. sec8 welcome $875/Mo +sec 708-653-0119 SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 7721 S Peoria, 3BR apt, appls incl. $1050/mo. 708-288-4510

included. Call Terry, 773-486-1838. M-F 9-5:30pm. Saturday,9-1:30pm. RIVERDALE 3/4BR, 1.5BA Townhome, hdwd flrs, off street parking, near Metra & PACE, starts at $1100/mo + sec. 708-539-0522

2 BR UNDER $900

ADULT SERVICES

BRONZEVILLE SEC 8 WELCOME! 4950 S. Prairie. 1BR. $680 and up. remod, hdwd flrs, appl inc, laundry on site. Zoran 773.406.4841

WICKER

PARK

-948

BUCKTOWN: 1922 N Wilmot,

AUSTIN - 533 N. LAWLER, Newly decorated, 2BR, $875/ mo, heat & cooking gas incl. 2 month’s rent required. Call 773-671-3826

4Rms, 2BR, 1 Blk from "Blue Line L". Modern kitchen & bath. Hardwood floors. $1100 + security. Avail. immediately. No Dogs. Call (773)612-3112

4 1/2 RMS, 2 bdrms, appliances, coin laundry, OH, near Holy cross hospital, $820 month + 1 1/2 months Sec Dep.O’Brien Family Realty. 773-581-7883 Agent owned

W. PULLMAN HOUSES for Rent

FREE HEAT 94-3739 S. BISHOP.

2BR, 5rm, 2nd floor, appls, parking, storage & closet space, near shops/ trans. $900 + sec. 708-335-0786

CHICAGO 7600 S ESSEX 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/ apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! Call 773-287-9999 Westside Locations 773-287-4500 CHICAGO SW 1516 W. 58th St.

Updated 2BR, ceramic, intercom, encl. porch/yard, quiet cul-de-sac, close to trans., $700, 312-719-3733

1512 E. 77TH ST. Spacious 2BR, hdwd flrs, appls, garage, tenant pays utils, quiet blk. $815 + sec.

9755 S. CRANDON. 3BR T.H, new appls, hdwd flrs, cent air. Tenant pays utils. $1000/mo.

- 4 & 2BRs. Newly decorated. W/D, stove & fridge incl., central heat. $1100/mo & up. Call 847-732-6383

BRICK 4BRS/1.5BA 62nd & Winchester. $1300/mo & 8955 S. May. $1550/mo. Move-in Fee, Sec 8 Ok. 773-720-9787 or 773-483-2594

CHICAGO SOUTH - YOU’VE tried the rest, we are the best. Apartments & Homes for rent, city & suburb. No credit checks. 773-221-7490, 773-221-7493

MORGAN PARK BEAUTY-HWD

101ST/MAY, 1 & 2br. 77th/Lowe. 1 & 2br. 69th/Dante 3br. 71st/ Bennett. 2br. 77th/Essex. 3br. New renov. Sec 8 ok. 708-503-1366

fls,fin bsmnt,enclsd bckprch,6’prv fnc,o/s prk,near hwy, schls,metra. Shawn 7739161861. 7043 S. MICHIGAN. Deluxe 3BR Apt in 2 flat, near L, heat & appls incl, sec 8 ok, NoPets. $1300/mo. Call Marie 773-343-9111

90th & Dobson, Beautiful, Quiet Southeast Location 3BR home, hdwd flrs, fin. bsmnt. $1350. Section 8 Ok 773-779-2986 4341 S GREENWOOD 2n $1500, 4BR, 1BA, heat and water incl, no sec dep. Call Pam 312 208 1771

773-418-1132.

CHICAGO - 6747 S. PAXTON ,

2 BEDROOM 1 bath in four unit building. Added room office/small bedroom. Appliances incl. Owner pays heat. Sec 8 ok 773-368-1264

DAMEN AVE. Unfurnished apartment for rent. 2BR $1000/mo, stove & refrigerator. Neat & clean. Newly painted. Call 847-962-4818 or Email: nsrjh6@yahoo.com

2flat perfect layout. 1ST & 2ND flrs avail. UNITS SETUP TO PASS SECTION 8. Call 708-269-7669

2 car gar, fully rehab w/ gorgeous finishes & hdwd flrs. Beautiful bkyd. Sec 8 ok. $1150-$1350. 510-735-7171

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

newly renovated, 2BR, 2BA, HWFs thru out, $985/mo, appls, heat & prkg space incl., 773-285-3206

2BR GARDEN APT near 82nd & King Dr., appliances incl, laundry facility, $850/mo + sec. Available last week of November. 312-315-2988

3 & 4 BRs for rent in a quiet area.

ALSIP, 3 BR/1.5 BA, 2 story TH. $1150/mo., w/o appls. 1st month & sec dep due at signing. Call Verdell 219-8888600 for info.

CHATHAM, 720 E. 81st St. Newly remodeled 2BR, 1BA, hardwood floors, appliances & heat included. Call 847-533-5463.

parking,laundry, apliance, hardwood floors 773-260-2631

CALUMET CITY 3-4BR, 1.5 BA,

MARKHAM HOME FOR RENT 4-5BR. Section 8 preferred. Call 708-296-6222

ette $135 & up wk. Free WiFi. 1810 W. Jackson 312-226-4678

SANGAMON/118TH REHABED 2BED 1st fl. sec.8welc!

floor 6BR, 2BA. Hdwd floors, Sec 8 ok., 4 or 3BR voucher ok. Call 847312-5643

4010 S. King Dr. 3BR, heat incl, $1025. 7906 S. Justine. 2BR $800 & Restaurant for rent. 708-421-7630 or 773-899-9529

ROSEMOOR, 103rd/King Dr, Spacious 2BR. Huge living rm, dining rm. Hdwd floors. Big closets. Parking. No pets. 708-3688708

ROYALTON HOTEL, Kitchen-

CHICAGO 10801 S. Hoxie , 2nd

70th/Normal, 3BR. $850. 847-977-3552

CHICAGO, QUIET, LARGE 3BR Apt, living room, dining room, near 102nd & State. $900/ mo. By appt only. 773-510-4389, 11am-7pm

LAWNDALE AREA - 6 rooms, 3BR, 1BA, $790/mo. Utilities not

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar

SOUTHSIDE 68th/Hermitage, 3BR. $850. 2BR. $750.

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

224-223-7787

Gorgeous 8 room, 3 bedroom, 2 bath renovated apartment in attractive 3 unit building. Apartment features two sunrooms, large living room, dining room, new appliances, and A/C. Rent $2400

FOR SALE

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799

COACH HOUSE RENTAL - Per-

fect for Airline Employees - Single Professional or Parent 2 BD RM 1 Bath, Chicago Edgebrook/Indian Woods Area $1,600/mo, Opt. 21/2 garage $150.00 Must have Excellent Credit and Past References No Pets. No Smokers Call Don (847)-875-7750 (dwwalsh@gmail.com).

3 BR OR MORE $2500 AND OVER

MATTESON - 3BR. Heat, water & gas incl, hdwd flrs, dining room, quiet bldg, no pets. $1600/mo + $1000 sec dep. Sect 8 ok. 708-789-0436 3BR, 4100N: Sunny New Kit, SS appl, deck, close to beach/ Cubs park, Ldr y/storage, $1995/heated 773-7434141 urbanequities.com

ROSELAND -

256 W. 112th Pl. 5 bedrooms, 2 bath, appliances, fenced yard. $1300/mo. 708-715-6734

RM, 3 Bath, Chicago Edgebrook/Indian Woods community, $2,600/mo, Opt. 21/2 garage $150.00 Must have Excellent Credit and Past References No Pets. Call Don (847)-875-7750 (dwwalshlv@gmail.com). OLYMPIA FIELDS Newly remodeled 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house, full basement. Beautiful area. $2500/mo. 708-935-7557.

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

CHICAGO,11526 S. HARVARD. Newly remodeled, 5BR, 2BA, $1600/mo. Tenants pay utilities. Call 773-793-8339, ask for Joe.

ADULT SERVICES

units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue. 773-685-6868. South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

roommates SOUTH SHORE, Senior Discount. Male preferred. Furnished rooms, shared kitchen & bath, $545/mo. & up. Utilities included. 773-710-5431 PULLMAN AREA 111th St., East of King Dr. Near shops & 1/4 blk to metra. Newly remod rooms. $500-$575/mo. 773-468-1432

MARKETPLACE

GOODS

TOO MUCH STUFF , Purging in the Trump Era. Multi-Family Yard Sale. Children’s and vintage clothes, toys, books, collectibles, kitchen, furniture, theatre detritus, FBI subpoenas, Russian Kompromat. HUGE! Saturday September 16th, 10am-5pm. 4926 N. Winchester fuflans@gmail.com.

INDUSTRIAL

COMPLETELY REMODELLED UNIT in the Renaissance condominium complex. Balcony is perfect for cookouts. Overlooking beautiful lawn. Quiet neighbourhood, plenty of restaurants and shopping nearby. Super close to Pace bus (across the street) that will take you to the CTA Blue, Green, or Red Line.

REDUCED TO $269,900. 3BR

HEMP

LEGAL

Cannabidiol (CBD) Dietary Supplements! Capsules, tinctures, vape, gum, and creams available. Full 90 day money back guarantee. Check us out at www.hempfoundry.com. HUGE COMMUNITY YARD Sale. 20 Vendors. Sunday September 17th, 2017. 9a.m.-3p.m. Imperial Towers 4250 N. Marine Dr. South tower driveway. LOOKING TO OWN Siamese and Persian cat. Mix, male, not fixed. Donate or small fee or stud my cat. 773-383-1087

SERVICES ELECTRICIAN, 15YRS EXPERI-

ENCE looking for work. Please call Jerry at 773 8074054.

RIVERDALE 13923 MICHIGAN.

condo with spacious LR/DR area, closets, MBR + full bath, large BR’s. Spectacular views of Lake Michigan plus 2 garage spaces. Full amenity building near 4800 S Lakeshore Dr. Call Sid Maner Realty Co. 773-7836474

CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent. Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. Call 708-752-3812 for

BEACH PROPERTY - BAJA MEXICO, Rosarito, just south of San Diego is our warm relaxed Pacific beach community. RE/ MAX Realty, Jamie Suarez, 619748-8322, bajainvestment.com or suarezjamie10@gmail.com

MENT: Advocate Illinois Masonic (Lake View). Includes intensive outpatient, DUI, harm reduction, relapse prevention, Smart Recovery, individual counseling. Most commercial, Medicare, Medicaid plans accepted. 773-296-3220.

10234 S. CRANDON, s m a l l home, 3BR, 1BA, kit & util room, totally ren a/c, all appls incl, nice bkyrd. CHA welcome. 773-317-4357

NEW HOME ON Lake Mary 3000SF 3 BR, 2.5 BATH, 425+LF on water 4.2 acres, Detached 3 Car Garage 614.402.3149 for info or viewing

CHICAGO S: Newly renovated, Large 3-5BR. In unit laundry, hardwood flrs, very clean, No Deposit! Available Now! 708-655-1397

70 E 102ND St.,-Open House Sat 11-1. 3BR/3BA brick bungalow, granite ctrs, SS appls, fin. bsmt., mortgage pymt $1050, no money down. Text Linda 708-513-7057.

I AM SEEKING to communicate with people who served as medics during the Democratic Convention riots of August 1968. If that was you, and if you are willing to answer a few questions, please email me at mark.h.falstein@gmail.com. Thank you.

ADULT SERVICES

Newly Decorated 3BR, 1BA, range, fridge, Sec 8 OK. Call Gordon 708-868-0873

Westside locations 773-287-4500

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499

SELF-STORAGE CENTERS. T W O locations to serve you. All

CLASSICS WANTED ANY CLASSIC CARS IN ANY CONDITION. ’20S, ’30S, ’40S, ’50S, ’60S & ’70S. HOTRODS & EXOTICS! TOP DOLLAR PAID! COLLECTOR. CALL JAMES, 630-201-8122

HOUSE RENTAL LARGE 3 BD

LARGE 3 BEDROOM apartment near Wrigley Field. 3820 N. Fremont. Two bathrooms. Hardwood Floors. Cats OK. $2175/month. Parking available at additional cost. Available 10/1. 773-761-4318.

82ND AND WABASH 2BR, heated, decorated, formal dining room, pantry, quiet building. $1125. Available. 312-946-0130

855 W. MARGATE Terrace –

non-residential

HEALTH & WELLNESS

SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREAT-

NOTICES

2 BR $1300-$1499 SUNNY 2 BEDROOM, North Center/Roscoe Village. Available 10/1. Includes heat, hardwood floors eat-in kitchen, walk-in pantry, Laundry in building. Blocks from Addison Brown Line, Trader Joes, Marianos restaurants. $1480. 773-755-8662

Check Check Req. 646-202-3294

CHICAGO Southside Brand new 3BR-4BR apts. Exc. neighborhood, near transp/schools, Sec 8 Welc., For details call 708-774-2473

60 MINUTES FREE TRIAL

2 BR $1500 AND OVER

2 BR $900-$1099 GLENWOOD, Updated lrg 2BR Condo, HF HS, Balcony, C/A, appls, heat/water incl. 2 pkng, laundry. $975/mo. 708.268.3762

LAKEVIEW/ SOUTHPORT CORRIDOR duplex-up. Great

street! 2 bed, 2 bath, large master bath with 2 person jacuzzi. Laundry. 4 outdoor spaces including roof deck! Garage parking available. Oct 1st. $2200. 773-316-7990.

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SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 | CHICAGO READER 67

By Cecil Adams Q : Just wondering which country has

the loosest free-speech laws. I imagine there has to be one with even fewer limits than the U.S., right? —VELOCITY, VIA THE STRAIGHT DOPE MESSAGE BOARD

A : The notion of American exceptionalism being on thin ice nowadays, congrats on locating one element of the ol’ national identity that remains sui generis: the U.S. constitution is generally regarded as providing the most robust speech protections around. In the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the United States’ conception of free speech comes across as rather extreme. Other countries have figured out ways to regulate speech for what they deem to be the overall social good, though obviously this can be a contentious concept. France, for instance, has outlawed burqas—uncovered faces help everybody “live together,” it argued before the European Court of Human Rights, which agreed. And as legal scholar Frederick Schauer (a

former First Amendment professor at Harvard) observes, there’s “a strong international consensus that the principles of freedom of expression are either overridden or irrelevant when what is being expressed is racial, ethnic, or religious prejudice.” Germany and Israel, for instance, have banned the Nazi party as well as other groups that promote racial superiority; Germany, France, and Canada have criminalized Holocaust denial; and a long list of countries make it a crime to incite racial, religious, or ethnic hatred or hostility. Note that incitement to hatred or hostility is the key concept here. In the U.S., it’s the incitement to harm or violence that marks the bounds of the First Amendment. You’re probably aware of the famous shouting-ﬁrein-a-crowded-theater standard, a nonbinding example set forth by Oliver Wendell Holmes in a 1919 Supreme Court opinion holding that citizens’ speech could be restricted only if it posed a “clear and present danger.” The court raised the standard a half century later with a requirement of “imminent lawless action” before speech could be criminalized. Generally, U.S. courts have tried to identify where speech might tip over into violence

and set its limits there. And folks here seem to like it that way: per a 2015 Pew study, 77 percent of Americans “support the right of others to make statements that are offensive to their own religious beliefs,” and 67 percent were OK with statements “offensive to minority groups”—higher numbers than seen in any other nation surveyed. But what of freedom of speech’s close First Amendment cousin, freedom of the press? Here’s where we don’t do so hot. The watchdog group Reporters sans Frontières ranks countries in its annual World Free Press Index, and its most recent report placed the U.S. at number 43 of 180 countries and moving downward. The report cited the arrests of journalists at protests, the Obama administration’s prosecutions of leakers, and of course the gang more recently installed in Washington, not known for their love of constitutional norms and especially unaffectionate toward the fourth estate. Who’s got the world’s freest press? Norway, lauded by RSF for a rarity of violence and political pressure directed at journalists, and for its strong laws limiting consolidation of media ownership. Nordic countries hold the first four spots on the 2017 list.

SLUG SIGNORINO

STRAIGHT DOPE

Which may square with a theory Schauer offers for America’s free-speech exceptionalism: our love of personal liberty outweighs all. European social democracies, as exemplified in Scandinavia, strike a different balance between communal value and individual rights, so it makes sense they’d outshine the U.S. when it comes to protecting institutions seen as broadly beneﬁting society as a whole. What we lack in strong institutions, by contrast, we make up for in unaffiliated racist cranks exercising their right to publicly say more or less whatever they want. I guess that’s the good news. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.

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68 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

Is my husband having sex with other women?

Dan Savage advises a separated woman, a frustrated man, and more

Q : My husband and I are currently separated on a trial basis. He took all our condoms when he moved out, and I want to ask him if he plans on having sex with other women. I think he may be interested in doing so, in part since he is trying to “ﬁnd himself.” If either of us were to have extramarital sex without the consent of the other, I would consider that cheating. We’ve also been having sex with each other throughout our separation. But my husband refuses to discuss this aspect of our separation. I would be OK with him having casual sex but not a romantic sexual relationship. —WONDERING IF FIDELITY ENFORCEABLE

A : Taking the condoms +

refusing to discuss the sexual terms of your separation = your husband is almost certainly fucking other women. He probably ﬁgures it’ll be easier to get your forgiveness after the fact than to get your permission in advance—and if you don’t get back together, WIFE, he won’t even have to ask for forgiveness. If your husband refuses to have a dialogue about the sexual aspect of your separation, then you’ll have to make him listen to a monologue. Tell him you assume he’s having sex with other people and, if he’s not, he’ll have to persuade you otherwise. If he doesn’t, tell him you now feel free to have sex with other people too. And if you aren’t comfortable fucking your husband while he’s fucking other women—and he almost certainly is fucking other women—let him know that and cut him off.

Q : I’m a 32-year-old straight

male. Back in April, I met this girl. She seemed interested, but before we went out,

she told me that she is a demisexual. (I had to google it.) After a few dates, she had me over to her place, we watched a movie and started making out. But when I started to put my hand between her legs, she calmly said, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” No problem, I told her, I wasn’t trying to rush her. Fastforward a couple months. We’re still going on dates, we hug and kiss, we hold hands, we cuddle on the couch and watch movies—but still no sex. Is demisexuality real? Should I keep pursuing her? —IS SHE INTERESTED TOTALLY OR NOT?

A : Demisexuals are

real people who “do not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional bond,” according to the deﬁnition at Asexuality.org. We used to call people who needed to feel a strong emotional bond before wanting to fuck someone people who, you know, needed to feel a strong emotional bond before wanting to fuck someone, but never mind— you’ve shown respect for this woman’s sexual orientation, ISITON. Now it’s her turn to show some respect for you. You’re seeking a romantic relationship that includes sex, —which is not unreasonable— and you’ve demonstrated a willingness to make an emotional investment before a relationship becomes sexual. If this relationship isn’t on track to go that way, tell her you’re open to being friends—truly intimate friends—but you’ll have to direct your romantic attentions (and more of your time) elsewhere.

Q : My teenage daughter just came out to us as gay. We told her we love

her and support her. As a heterosexual, cisgender mother, how do I make sure she gets good advice about sex? Do you know of any good, sex-positive advice books for lesbian teens? —MY INSPIRING DAUGHTER DESERVES LESBIAN EDUCATION

A : “I wish every parent felt

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this way about their child’s sexual development,” said Peggy Orenstein, author of Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape. “All young people need open, honest discussions about sexual ethics, including talking about pleasure, respect, decision making, and reciprocity.” One big takeaway from Orenstein’s research should come as a comfort to you, MIDDLE: Bi, lesbian, and queer girls have more egalitarian and, not coincidentally, more satisfying sexual encounters. “The orgasm gap we see among heterosexuals (75 percent of men report they come regularly in sexual encounters versus 29 percent of women) disappears in same-sex encounters,” Orenstein said. “Young women with same-sex partners climax at the same rate as heterosexual men.” As for good, sex-positive books for teens of all identities and orientations, “I’m a big fan of Heather Corinna’s S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-toKnow Sexuality Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties,” said Orenstein. “She also produces Scarleteen.com website, which is fabulous.” v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. v @fakedansavage

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 69

b Swet Shop Boys 10/9, 9 PM, Metro, canceled

UPCOMING

Lil Uzi Vert ò SPIKE JORDAN

NEW

Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore 10/27, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/14, noon b Jessica Aszodi 12/10, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Night Beats 2/10, 8 AM, the Vic, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM, 18+ Blitzen Trapper 11/12, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Junior Brown 10/21, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 9/15, 11 AM Dear Hunter, Family Crest 12/8, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM, 17+ Iris Dement 12/8, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM b Dessa 11/15, 6 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Dinner 10/10, 8:30 PM, Subterranean Dispatch 12/9, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM, 18+ Districts 12/10, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM Bob Dylan & His Band, Mavis Staples 10/27, 7:30 PM, Wintrust Arena, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM Tommy Emmanuel, Rodney Crowell 2/10, 8 PM and 2/11, 7 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM b English Beat 11/17-18, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Ever Present Orchestra 11/13, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Eleanor Friedberger 11/18, 9 PM, Hideout Hard Girls 11/4, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM Hippo Campus 2/16, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 9/15, noon b

Miki Howard 11/21, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/14, noon b Iron Chic, Oﬀ With Their Heads 12/1, 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Nicolas Jaar 10/10, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Joyce Manor, Wavves, Culture Abuse 11/15, 5:30 PM, Concord Music Hall b L.A. Salami 3/30, 9 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM Lil Uzi Vert, Playboi Carti, DJ Drama 10/20, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM b Matisyahu, Common Kings 12/9, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall Modern English 11/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Ryan Montbleau Band, DuPont Brothers 11/9, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/14, noon b Moonchild 11/8, 7 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Bob Mould, Helen Money 12/29 and 12/30, 8 PM; 12/31, 10 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM b Nick Mulvey 11/11, 7 PM, Schubas b Oceans Ate Alaska 11/22, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge b Lee “Scratch” Perry & Subatomic Sound System 10/27, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Pert Near Sandstone, Miles Over Mountains 12/1, 8 PM, Schubas Petit Biscuit 12/12, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Thu 9/14, 10 AM Posies 1/31, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/14, noon b Joe Pug 12/6, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/14, noon b Red Red Meat 11/22, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM

70 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

Marc Roberge 12/5, 7 and 9:30 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/14, noon b Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band 11/17, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Sat 9/16, 10 AM Shadow Age 11/3, 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon The Struts 10/30, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Temptations 1/14, 8 PM, the Venue at Horseshoe Casino, Hammond, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM 10,000 Maniacs 2/9, 7:30 and 10 PM; 2/10, 5 and 7:30 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/14, noon b Traitors, Sabella 11/12, 6 PM, Wire, Berwyn Trans-Siberian Orchestra 12/28, 3 and 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM Nik Turner’s Hawkwind 10/23, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Twin Peaks 12/30, 8 PM; 12/31, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM Paul Van Dyk 11/25, 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ George Winston 12/13, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 9/15, 10 AM b Wintertime 11/8, 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b

UPDATED Gabrielle Aplin 9/22, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, canceled Tom Jones 5/12-13, 8 PM, House of Blues, rescheduled from 9/14-15 No Warning, Down to Nothing, Backtrack, Twitching Tongues 9/21, 7 PM, Subterranean, moved from Bottom Lounge, 17+

Agnostic Front, Spare Change 9/30, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Animal Collective, Black Dice 9/24, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Band of Heathens 10/20, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Beach Fossils, Snail Mail 10/17, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Boris, Helms Alee 10/23, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Cannibal Corpse, Power Trip, Gatecreeper 11/24, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Cayetana 9/26, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Cold Specks 11/28, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Descendents, Get Up Kids 10/7, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Mike Doughty 11/18, 8 PM, City Winery b Drag the River 10/25, 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Elder, King Buﬀalo 10/17, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ EMA 11/18, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Feedtime 9/26, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Frankie Cosmos 9/30, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Liam Gallagher 11/21, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Mike Gordon 10/6, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Halsey, Partynextdoor, Charli XCX 11/19, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont High Waisted 10/24, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Chris Hillman, Herb Pedersen, and John Jorgensen 10/6, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Insane Clown Posse 10/29, 6:30 PM, Portage Theater b Japandroids, Cloud Nothings 11/2, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Judge 11/5, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Stephen Kellogg, Emily Hearn 10/6, 6:45 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Kesha 10/18, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom b L.A. Witch 11/12, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Lecrae 12/6, 7 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Lighthouse & the Whaler 11/15, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Lightning Bolt 9/22, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Marilyn Manson 10/10, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Metz 9/25, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Migos, Lil Yachty 11/30, 9 PM, Subterranean, 18+ Mystery Skulls 11/2, 7:30 PM, Subterranean b Michael Nau 11/3, 10 PM, Hideout

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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

Angel Olsen 12/9, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Omni 11/5, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Parquet Courts, Meat Wave 11/15, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Quicksand 9/27, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Ritual Howls 11/19, 9 PM, Empty Bottle A. Savage, Jack Cooper 11/2, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Silversun Pickups 11/8, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre b Sza 12/20, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Torche 9/29, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Twilight Hours 10/15, 7 PM, Schubas UFO, Saxon 10/8, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ War on Drugs 10/19, 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 18+ White Reaper 11/14, 7 PM, Metro b Zola Jesus, John Wiese 10/8, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

SOLD OUT Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile 10/26, 7:30 PM, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel; 10/27, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall; and 10/28, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Between the Buried & Me, Contortionist 9/30-10/1, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Cold Waves VI with Front 242, KMFDM, Stabbing Westward, Cold Cave, Ohgr, and more 9/29-10/1, 6:30 PM, Metro, 18+ Greta Van Fleet 11/30, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Gryﬃn, Autograf 10/13, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Manchester Orchestra 9/24, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Mura Masa, Tennyson 11/16, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ The National 12/12-13, 7:30 PM, Civic Opera House b Rich Chigga 11/11, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Avery Sunshine 9/20-21, 8 PM, City Winery b T-Pain 10/15, 8:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Avey Tare 10/6, 10 PM, Hideout Grace Vanderwaal 11/15, 7 PM, Park West b Whitney, Ne-Hi 11/2, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Wonder Years, Laura Stevenson 9/25, 5:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Young Thug 11/1, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene EVER SINCE local singer-songwriter Jessica Marks dropped her debut EP, Forget Me, in March 2016, Gossip Wolf has been in thrall—her fragile, ghostly melodies and hypnotic vocals are pretty unforgettable. Though she has yet to release more music, on Saturday, September 16, she’ll perform at the Hideout and premiere a video for standout track “Fuck the Clock,” shot at an allegedly haunted mansion in Massillon, Ohio, by filmmaker Emily Esperanza (a former knight of departed Humboldt Park DIY space Young Camelot). That night Esperanza and Justin Flocco will screen other short ﬁlms shot in the same spooky abode, and Drea the Vibe Dealer and Christopher Church will also perform. Last week Chicago microlabel Patient Sounds dropped the ninth volume in its reliably excellent PSSV series, which compiles music from “friends, family, and strangers from across the globe”—this volume’s 40 tracks include previously unreleased jams from TALsounds and LA drone guru Lee Noble. Downloads are “name your price,” and proceeds go to support the eﬀorts of the Houston SPCA post-Hurricane Harvey. Gossip Wolf has a soft spot for Chicago hip-hop duo the Palmer Squares and their rubbery rapping. These seriously playful MCs have been in the game for a minute: they say their June release, a collaboration with Indiana producer Nate Kiz called NaPalm, came out on the fifth anniversary of their studio debut, the EP Spooky Language. The Palmer Squares are about to hit the road for a month, but before they go they’ll play the Logan Bar & Grill on Friday, September 15. The free show includes a raffle to benefit Chance the Rapper’s Arts & Literature Fund, which helps CPS schools with languishing arts programs—the prizes come from Chance’s nonprofit, SocialWorks. It kicks off at 9 PM, and wandering troubadour Netherfriends opens—he calls Austin home now, but he’s been in town the past few weeks. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

SPECIAL GUESTS:

SATURDAY OCTOBER 7 RIVIERA THEATRE

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 22

SPECIAL GUEST:

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 23

SAMMY BRUE OCTOBER 10

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 8

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM! FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 THE CHURCH – Friday, Oct. 6 • BRIDGET EVERETT – Oct. 19 • RON POPE – Saturday, Oct. 21 • SHAWN COLVIN – Saturday, Oct. 28 • JOHNNY CLEGG –Oct. 29 • LUNA – Nov. 2 THE MOTET / DOPAPOD – Friday, Nov. 10 • GRACE VANDERWAAL – Nov. 15 - Sold Out! • RUGGEDLY JEWISH-BOB GARFIELD – Dec. 9 • TODD RUNDGREN – Dec. 16 & 17

OH WONDER – Friday, Sept. 15-Sold Out! • BOYCE AVENUE –Saturday, Sept. 23 • THE GROWLERS –Friday, Oct. 6 • THE FAB FAUX –Saturday, Oct. 7 THE KOOKS –Oct. 11 • HOODIE ALLEN –Oct. 12 • DARK STAR ORCHESTRA –Friday, Oct. 13 • CAMERON ESPOSITO & RHEA BUTCHER – Saturday, Oct. 14 DANIEL JOHNSON –Oct. 18 (Oct. 20-Sold Out!) • WHITNEY CUMMINGS –Oct. 19 • GAVIN DEGRAW –Oct. 22 • HAMILTON LEITHAUSER –Friday, Oct. 27 VIOLENT FEMMES –Saturday, Oct. 28 • ANIMALS AS LEADERS/PERIPHERY –Nov. 1 • JAPANDROIDS –Nov. 2 SLOWDIVE –Nov. 5 • ELBOW – Nov. 8 • JOSH RITTER & THE ROYAL CITY BAND – Nov. 9 • JOHNNYSWIM – Friday, Nov. 10 TURNPIKE TROUBADOURS – Saturday, Nov. 11 • JOHN MCLAUGHLIN/JIMMY HERRING –Nov. 17-18 • SQUEEZE – Saturday, Nov. 25 ILIZA SHLESINGER – Friday, Dec. 1 • DAMIEN ESCOBAR – Saturday, Dec 2 • RHETT & LINK Saturday, Dec. 9 • HIPPO CAMPUS –Feb. 16

BUY TICKETS AT SEPTEMBER 14, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 71

ADAM AND THE ANTS • ADAM CAROLLA • ADELE • AMOS LEE • AMY SCHUMER ANI DIFRANCO • B.B. KING • BARRY MANILOW • BEN FOLDS • BETTE MIDLER BILLY CRYSTAL • BJÖRK • BLONDIE • BOB DYLAN • BOOMTOWN RATS • BRIAN WILSON CARLY SIMON • CHEAP TRICK • CHEECH & CHONG • CHICAGO • CHARLIE PUTH COLD WAR KIDS • CONCRETE BLONDE • CULTURE CLUB • CYNDI LAUPER • DAMIEN RICE DAVID BYRNE • DAVID GRAY • DEVO • DIANA KRALL • DIRE STRAITS • DJ SHADOW DURAN DURAN • ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN • ELVIS COSTELLO • EURYTHMICS • FOALS FRANK ZAPPA • GENESIS • GEORGE CARLIN • GLENN FREY • GOO GOO DOLLS GRACE JONES • GRACE POTTER & THE NOCTURNALS • GRAHAM PARKER GREENSKY BLUEGRASS • GREGG ALLMAN • GROUPLOVE • HALL & OATES HANNIBAL BURESS • HUEY LEWIS & THE NEWS • IGGY POP • IMELDA MAY INGRID MICHAELSON • INXS • ISAAC HAYES • JAMES BROWN • JAY LENO • JEFF BECK JOE COCKER • JOE JACKSON • JOHN MAYALL • KENNY G • KING CRIMSON • KRAFTWERK LEONARD COHEN • LIAM GALLAGHER • LIVE • LIVING COLOUR • LOU REED • LOVERBOY MAVIS STAPLES • MEAT LOAF • MELISSA ETHERIDGE • MICHAEL KIWANUKA MIDNIGHT OIL • MIKE & THE MECHANICS • MUDDY WATERS • NICK CAVE NATHANIEL RATELIFF & THE NIGHT SWEATS • NEKO CASE • OF MONSTERS AND MEN OMD • MAYER HAWTHORNE • PATTI SMITH • PEE-WEE HERMAN • PETE YORN PETER WOLF • PHOENIX • PRETTY LIGHTS • PRINCE • RAY LAMONTAGNE RAMONES • REGINA SPEKTOR • R.E.M • RINGO STARR & HIS ALL STARR BAND ROBERT PALMER • ROBIN WILLIAMS • RODNEY DANGERFIELD • ROY ORBISON • RUN DMC RYAN ADAMS & THE LAX • SAM KINISON • SARA BAREILLES • SARAH MCLACHLAN SHERYL CROW • SIA • SIGUR ROS • STEPHEN KELLOGG • STEVE WINWOOD STRAIGHT NO CHASER • STRAY CATS • TALKING HEADS • TEDDY PENDERGRASS TEGAN AND SARA • 10,000 MANIACS • THE B-52’S • THE JAM • THE GO-GO’S • THE KOOKS THE 1975 • THE PIANO GUYS • THE POLICE • THE PRETENDERS • THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS THE STROKES • TEMPER TRAP • THE TEMPTATIONS • THIRD EYE BLIND TINA TURNER • TODD RUNDGREN • TOM WAITS • TONY BENNETT • TORI AMOS TROMBONE SHORTY & ORLEANS AVENUE • 2CELLOS • TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB U2 • UMPHREY'S MCGEE • VAN MORRISON • VIOLENT FEMMES • WARREN ZEVON WHITNEY HOUSTON • WIDESPREAD PANIC • ZIGGY MARLEY • AND MANY MORE