Print Issue of September 27, 2018 (Volume 47, Number 51) by Chicago Reader

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | S E P T E M B E R 2 7, 2 0 1 8

IT’S G HERBO’S TURN TO GIVE BACK

CHICAGO’S FAVORITE STREET RAPPER HAS JOINED A PROJECT TO TURN PART OF A SHUTTERED SOUTH-SIDE SCHOOL INTO A MEDIA LAB AND MUSIC INCUBATOR. 25

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C H I C A G O R E A D E R | S E P T E M B E R 2 7, 2 0 1 8 | V O L U M E 4 7, N U M B E R 5 1

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ACTING DEPUTY EDITOR KATE SCHMIDT CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JAMIE RAMSAY CULTURE EDITOR AIMEE LEVITT MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITOR JAMIE LUDWIG SENIOR WRITERS DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTORS LUCA CIMARUSTI, ISA GIALLORENZO, SHERRY FLANDERS, ANDREA GRONVALL, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, IRENE HSIAO, DAN JAKES, MONICA KENDRICK, MAX MALLER, BILL MEYER, SCOTT MORROW, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, JAMES PORTER, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, IZZY YELLEN, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS EMMANUEL CAMARILLO, MARISSA DE LA CERDA, JULIA HALE, BRITA HUNEGS, MARYKATE O’MEARA ---------------------------------------------------------------ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER BEST DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA

FEATURES

THIS WEEK IN THIS ISSUE

CITY LIFE

4 Street View Stylin’ with the influencers at the Wndr Museum 6 Joravsky | Politics Has the myth of the bad teacher finally been laid to rest? 7 Criminal Justice Psychologist Laurence Miller, called by the defense in the Jason Van Dyke trial, says police officers can suffer from memory distortions that explain contradictions in their testimony.

FOOD & DRINK

11 Restaurant Review Mark Steuer’s Funkenhausen ain’t your opa’s Bavarian beer hall.

ARTS & CULTURE

TRANSPORTATION

Wanted: 500 to 600 stolen Divvies FOIA’d e-mails reveal an epidemic of bike thefts after the short-sighted decision to remove a small but crucial piece of security hardware. BY JOHN GREENFIELD 8

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13 Visual Art The Prison and Neighborhood Arts Project exhibit “The Long Term” examines longterm sentencing from the perspective of prisoners in Stateville. 16 Visual Art Justin Brice Guariglia’s Expo Chicago installation We Are the Asteroid II shows the signs of climate change—literally. 17 Theater In Trap Door Theatre’s Naked, a woman gets stripped to her psychic skin. 18 Theater Los Colochos’ Mendoza is Macbeth en México. 18 Dance Dorothée Munyaneza’s Unwanted revisits the 1994 Rwandan genocide. 18 Theater Phoebe in Winter, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, and six more new stage shows, reviewed by our critics 20 Movies Jean-Luc Godard’s rare The Rise and Fall of a Small Film Company screens in a new restoration at the Siskel Center. 21 Movies I Am Not a Witch signals the arrival of a ﬁerce new talent, Zambian director Rungano Nyoni. 22 Movies The Irish American Movie Hooley screens the 2017 hit Carboard Gangsters and more from the Emerald Isle. 23 Movies Blaze, Colette, and six more new releases, reviewed by our critics

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

30 Shows of note Lala Lala, O’My’s, the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, and more of the week’s best

CLASSIFIEDS

35 Jobs 35 Apartments & Spaces 36 Marketplace

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

It’s G Herbo’s time to give back ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY THOUGHTPOET. FOR MORE OF HIS WORK, GO TO THOUGHTPOETSOPINION.COM.

Chicago’s favorite street rapper has joined a project to turn part of a shuttered south-side school into a media lab and music incubator. BY THE TRIIBE 25

37 Savage Love Hey, seniors like love and sex too! 38 Early Warnings Cowboy Junkies, Haley Fohr & Corey Fogel, Interpol, and more shows to look for in the weeks to come 38 Gossip Wolf Experimental musician Brett Naucke loses an album to hard-drive theft, 80s thrashers Life Sentence reissue their debut LP, and more.

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 3

CITY LIFE

Street View

Art, fashion, science, play

é ISA GIALLORENZO

Deride it as an Instagram trap if you must, but the Wndr Museum excels at connecting with its audience.

Chelsea Frazier, writer-scholar, and Lauren Ash, founder and executive director of Black Girl in Om, a wellness organization geared toward women of color

Rosie Clayton, creative director of @rclayton and @walltraveled

THIS SUMMER CHICAGO has seen a new, Instagram-friendly kind of gallery/“museum” blow into town, what might be called the “pop popup”—a traveling cluster of interactive installations designed to be easily enjoyed (some would sneeringly say consumed) by any kind of audience, including art-world outsiders and children. First 29 Rooms, promoted by the media company Refinery 29, made an appearance, followed by Happy Place, in its second stop after an ini-

which included Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s “inﬁnity mirror” room—a smart choice for legitimizing an exhibit that could otherwise be dismissed as callowly commercial (admission is $32). Truth is, traditional museums themselves started this trend. Wired magazine has cited “Wonder,” a series of installations made by nine contemporary artists that was mounted at the Smithsonian in 2015, as the catalyst of the “selﬁe with art in the background” phenomenon. Even so, it

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tial season in LA. Now there’s a third, more ambitious pop-up: the “wndr museum,” as it terms itself, which somehow lost its vowels and capital letters on its journey to a large warehouse in the West Loop. At a preview last month the Wndr Museum opened its doors to a select group heavy on the “social media inﬂuencers” for an evening ﬁlled with futuristic drinks and hors d’oeuvres, free manicures, and a handful of interactive installations,

can be hard to defend such spectacles without coming off as a dupe—Happy Place, for example, was founded by Jared Paul, who manages artists like New Kids on the Block and produces the Glee Live! tour; 29 Rooms “partnered” with brands like Samsung, Clinique, and Netflix so effectively that you could consider its donation of a portion of its proceeds to nonproﬁt partners such as Planned Parenthood a similarly cynical case of window dressing.

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CITY LIFE

PROTECT YOUR BRAIN:

Once Marijuana Hijacks a Brain, it may not be reversible Marijuana is not safe. No genetic test to predict who will be harmed the most. Please consider these risk factors before using this powerful, hallucinogenic drug: BIPOLAR DISORDER: Marijuana use raises the risk 2.6 times. Cougle JR et al. (2015). Quality of life and risk of psychiatric disorders among regular users of alcohol, nicotine and cannabis: An analysis of the National Epidemiological Survey on Tobacco and Related Conditions (Psychiatr Res, NESARC). J 66-67, 135-141 VIOLENCE: The 15% or so of marijuana users who experience psychotic symptoms from marijuana or go into permanent psychosis (schizophrenia) are 9x more likely to become violent than schizophrenics who never used drugs. Fazel S, Långström N, Hjern A, Grann M, Lichtenstein P. Schizophrenia, substance abuse, and violent crime. JAMA. 2009 May 20; 301(19): 2016-23 A disgruntled worker smoked marijuana before he started a fire at an air traffic control station in Aurora, 2014, shutting down air traffic in Chicago for nearly a week. https:// chicago. cbslocal.com/2014/09/30/brian-howard-was-high-before-setting-radarcenterfire-sources-say/ DEPRESSION and ANXIETY: Marijuana raises the risk 1.8 times: Fairman, B.J. & Anthony, J.C. (2012) Are early-onset cannabis smokers at an increased risk of depression spells? Journal of Affective Disorders, 138(1-2), 54-62 MAKES OPIATE PROBLEM WORSE: Olfson, M., Wall, M. M., Liu, S., & Blanco, C. (2018). Cannabis Use and Risk of Prescription Opioid Use Disorder in the United States. American Journal of Psychiatry, 175(1), 47-53. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2017.17040413 Campbell, G, Hall, WD et al, Effect of cannabis use in people with chronic non-cancer pain prescribed opioids: findings from a 4-year prospective cohort study. The Lancet Public Health: htps://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(18)30110-5/fulltext

é ISA GIALLORENZO

PSYCHOSIS: Daily use of 12-18% THC marijuana use raises the risk 5 times DiForti M, et al. Proportion of patients in South London with ﬁrst-episode psychosis attributable to use of high potency cannabis: a case-control study/ Lancet Psychiatry. 2015: 2(3): 233-8. Cannabis use is not secondary to pre-existing psychosis. Arsenault L, Cannon M, Poulton R, Murray R, Caspi A, Mofﬁtt TE, 2002 Cannabis use in adolescence and risk for adult psychosis: longitudinal prospective study. British Medical Journal, 2002 Nov 23: 325 (7373): 1212-3 SCHIZOPHRENIA: Marijuana was the drug most likely to convert to permanent psychotic disorder, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, nearly 1/2 half the time: Niemi-Pynttari JA, et al. (2013). Substance-induced psychoses converting into schizophrenia: a register-based study of 18,478 Finnish inpatient cases. J Clin Psychiatry, 74(1), e94-9. Starzer, MSK, Nordentoft M, Hjorthoj C (2018) Rates and predictors of Conversion to Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder Following Substance-Induced Psychosis. Am j Psychiatry, 175(4), 343-350

Elizabeth De La Piedra, photographer

That said, museums often promote art that is inaccessible to a large portion of the population, while these pop-ups excel at connecting with their audiences, something I’d argue is art’s main purpose (or at least one of them). As for the selfies and social-media saturation, well, I’ll just quickly point to a 2016 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that found that taking photos makes people appreciate what they’re doing (and viewing and experienc-

ing) more, not less. As Mark Twain said, “Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” Now let me share the most stylish outfits I saw during my visit to the Wndr Museum, which after a considerable delay opened to the public last Friday, September 21, and runs through October 22 at 1130 W. Monroe. Find tickets and more info at wndrmuseum.com. —ISA GIALLORENZO

CBD: a derivative of marijuana, is promoted as a miracle cure, but needs to be treated with skepticism. Much that is sold as CBD is not pure. Its interactions with other drugs are not well publicized. https://www.drugs.com/npp/marijuana.html CRASHES: The driver responsible for the death of Amando Chavez, a father of four, in Schaumburg August 15 was allegedly under the inﬂuence of marijuana. https://www. dailyherald.com/news/20180817/prosecutor-speeding-driver-in-fatal-schaumburg-crashspent-day-smoking-weed

Protect Your Brain SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 5

Listen to The Ben Joravsky Show on WCPT, 820 AM, Monday through Friday from 2 to 5 PM.

CITY LIFE Karen Lewis, then president of the Chicago Teachers Union, speaking at CTU rally outside the Thompson Center in April 2016 é ONE ILLINOIS/TED COX

POLITICS

They’re educators, not goats

Here’s hoping that the myth of the bad teacher has ﬁnally been laid to rest.

By BEN JORAVSKY

f I’m reading the cards right, 2018 will go down in history as the year the myth of the bad teacher finally, mercifully, and hopefully was consigned to the dustbin of history. I say hopefully, because some myths die hard, especially when the powers that be—and that would be you, Governor Rauner—have much to gain by promoting them. But let’s focus on the good news. Mayor Rahm, seeking to eradicate his reputation as Mayor 1 Percent, recently told WBEZ he regrets snatching away a teacher pay raise in his ﬁrst year in office, back when he clearly ﬁgured the key to his political advancement was to pound the teachers’ union into submission. Last week Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle launched her mayoral campaign to replace Rahm by emphasizing how proud she is of the time she spent, years ago, as CPS history teacher. And none of the major mayoral candidates are talking about expanding charter schools— as Rahm did when he ran in 2011. In fact, Paul

6 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

Vallas, candidate for mayor, brags about how there were fewer charter schools when he was running the Chicago Public Schools. Meanwhile, teachers in red states—taking a page from former Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis—are in the streets, demanding higher raises and better working conditions. As Time magazine ran a cover that shows Hope Brown, a high school teacher in Kentucky, with the pull quote “I have a master’s degree, 16 years of experience, work two extra jobs and donate blood plasma to pay the bills. I’m a teacher in America.” That’s a huge improvement over the last time Time dedicated a cover to teachers in America. That was in 2014, when it ran the infamous “rotten apples” cover that proclaimed “It’s nearly impossible to ﬁre a bad teacher.” So, yes, things are looking up when Time treats teachers like flesh-and-blood human beings with real needs, like paying rent. As opposed to bad apples. I will never understand the lure of this myth, which was largely propagated by billionaires like the Walmart clan—and Betsy DeVos, and

Bruce Rauner, for that matter—as well as various high-tech chieftains. According to its advocates—who call themselves “school reformers”—the reason low-income children in, say, Englewood, don’t score as high as rich kids in, oh, Winnetka, has nothing to do with the beneﬁts that money buys. Such as counselors, therapists, after school programs, before-school programs, arts enrichment, tutors if you struggle, and so on and so forth. It doesn’t even matter if low-income kids have to deal with the stress of living in highcrime areas that wealthy kids need not worry about. No, it’s all about the teachers. If the public school teachers are good, the kids will succeed. If they’re bad, they won’t. It’s as simple as that. Half the time the reformers and their political allies made it up as they went along. As did former senator Mark Kirk when he erroneously insisted that “nine out of the top ten high schools in Chicago are charter schools.” Or when Emanuel, then a mayoral candidate, claimed that “when you take out North Side

[and] Walter Payton, the seven best-performing high schools are all charters.” Or when the Tribune editorialized that local charter schools outscored their neighborhood counterparts even though they didn’t. Once you’ve turned teachers into scapegoats, everything falls into place. You don’t have to lower class size or offer more programs and counselors to help kids deal with the trauma of crime. You certainly don’t have to pay your teachers more. On the contrary, to hear the reformers, you’d think the best way to get the best and brightest teachers to teach low-income kids is to pay them less for longer hours and make it easier to fire them. You know, it would be interesting to see Rauner apply this reasoning to recruiting young talent to his own industry, venture capitalism. Let’s be real. Many of the leaders of the socalled school reform movement didn’t really give a hoot about bridging the gap between Englewood and Winnetka. No, their cause was all about politics, or, specifically, busting the teachers’ union. The less power the teachers’ union had, the less money and support it could give Democrats, meaning more political power for Republicans like Rauner. In the case of Democratic politicians like Barack Obama and Rahm, who foolishly jumped into bed with the “reformers”—well, they made a cynical decision to try and win over suburban swing voters by bashing their Democratic base. Sort of like Bill Clinton’s attempt to win over white voters by bashing rapper Sister Souljah back in 1992. In any event, the reform movement, with its scapegoat of bad teachers aided and abetted by too-powerful unions, led to a proliferation of nonunion charters that pay their teachers less even as they proclaimed that the mission of teaching was second to none. And now we have the embarrassing spectacle of teachers like Hope Brown in Kentucky working three jobs to make ends meet. I have an idea. Let’s flip things around. Pay teachers like we pay venture capitalists and make venture capitalists have to sell blood to pay the rent. That might be what it takes to get Bruce Rauner to finally endorse a union. v

m @BennyJshow

CITY LIFE

Chicago police oﬃcer Jason Van Dyke listens to testimony during the second day of his trial for the shooting death of Laquan McDonald é ANTONIO PEREZ/CHICAGO TRIBUNE

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Witness for the defense

Psychologist Laurence Miller says police officers suffer from memory distortions under acute stress that may explain why their accounts differ from those of others. By EMMANUEL CAMARILLO

n October 2012, U.S. Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz shot and killed unarmed Mexican teenager José Antonio Elena Rodríguez through a border fence while responding to an incident in Nogales, Arizona. According to an autopsy, Rodriguez was struck ten times in the back with gunshot wounds to the head and arteries. A grand jury indicted Swartz for second-degree murder. During the trial, Swartz testified that he fired on Rodriguez in self-defense after he heard rocks hitting the fence and “was scared to be hit by a rock, [scared] for my partner.” He also stated that an officer had already been struck by a rock and that a police dog had also been injured, though testimony by other officers on the scene contradicted those statements. Surveillance video of the shooting shows Swartz approach the fence with his gun drawn, fire through the fence three times, then

move along the fence a few feet and shoot ten more times. After stepping back to reload, he ﬁres another three times. Swartz told the jury he couldn’t remember doing any of that. He said he did recall sensing a second rock thrower in the area, though, and he also remembered throwing up after the shooting. Prosecutors questioned why Swartz would remember details like throwing up and injuries to other officers yet fail to recall shooting at a subject. The defense called Laurence Miller, a Florida-based clinical psychologist in private practice, to help account for the discrepancy. “What you actually see, what you actually hear, a lot of it depends on what you are paying attention to in that particular moment,” Miller told the jury. In the case of a shooting situation, he explained, the brain focuses wholly on survival and can tune out everything else such that

“some part of the scene is recalled especially vividly, while others are fuzzy or distorted.” As for Swartz’s claim to have sensed a second rock thrower in the area, Miller testified that under intense stress, the brain may “magnify perceived threats of circumstances” to such an extent that the nonlethal can appear lethal in the moment. In April, Swartz was acquitted of the second-degree murder charge. (Prosecutors now seek to try him on charges of voluntary and involuntary manslaughter.) A juror later elaborated on the verdict, saying that no matter how strong its evidence, the prosecution couldn’t prove that Swartz didn’t feel in danger of losing his life. Now Miller has been called as an expert witness by the defense in the murder trial of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, whose guilt would seem to be unassailable based on the infamous dashcam video that shows him firing 16 shots at 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who first appears to be moving away from the cops, then quickly falls to the ground as the shots continue. Miller will testify that Van Dyke feared for his life when he shot Laquan McDonald, and that this mortal terror helps explain the discrepancies between his and other police reports and the videotape of the shooting. Specifically, he claims that Van Dyke’s account could be the product of a brain under immense neuropsychological stress rather than a deliberate, self-serving attempt to obscure the facts of the case. During open court in June, Cook County judge Vincent Gaughan cleared Miller’s testimony after weeks of back-and-forth between prosecutors and Van Dyke’s defense team about the admissability and even the relevance of his testimony. “The jury does not need Dr. Miller to tell them what thoughts were going through the defendant’s mind before and during the shooting, because only the defendant can know that information,” prosecutors maintained. Miller specializes in working with law enforcement. He’s written extensively about officer-involved shootings and the use of deadly force, with a focus on what happens neurologically in such incidents. In a 2011 article published in the International Journal of Emergency Mental Health, Miller contends that approximately a third of officer-shooting cases involve a distortion of memory “to the extent that an officer’s account of what happened differs markedly from the reports of other observers on the

scene.” According to Miller, even signiﬁcant differences between video or eyewitness testimony and police accounts of shootings shouldn’t automatically be taken to show that an officer was “lying or consciously distorting his or her report,” because memory distortion is a side effect of the brain’s hyperfocus on immediate danger. In critical shooting situations, Miller says, “the brain naturally tries to tone the hyperarousal.” In effect, the parts of the brain that help with memory storage are shut down, so the brain can respond to perceived threats rapidly. Under these circumstances, officers’ recollections of their actions during a shooting may be wildly off-base or missing entirely. The jury’s still out on Miller’s claims. According to Jordan Grafman, a neurology and cognition professor at Northwestern University, there is some data that suggests persistent stress can affect a person’s memory, but much more testing is needed before any further conclusions can be drawn. Lab experiments on rats have shown that “under conditions of persistent stress, there is neuronal loss in the hippocampus,” Grafman said. “It may affect it enough that it then affects what we would call episodic memory, conscious retrieval of what just happened.” But rats are rats, and employing similar experiments on human subjects is obviously problematic. “I can’t go to Northwestern University and say I want to stress people out for years” in order to conduct a controlled experiment, Grafman said. “So, if you’re asking me do we have very certain data about that, we do with animals,” he continued, “but [nothing] comparable to humans.” Grafman also noted that many of the memory-distortion studies Miller refers to rely on subjects’ self-evaluations or interviews after the fact—not exactly clean data. Moreover, he said, there are other factors that can contribute to distortion of memory that need to be acknowledged. “There is always going to be individual responses depending on everything from genetics [to your ability] to handle stress, your psychology, your resilience,” he said. “Unless you have a signiﬁcant amount of detail on the individual before the incident it’s going to be hard to be precise. “This application of neuroscience and cognitive science is starting to tippy-toe into the court room,” Grafman added, “but the research is not quite there yet.” v

m @cmbkfn SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE TRANSPORTATION

Wanted: 500 to 600 stolen Divvies FOIA’d e-mails reveal an epidemic of thefts after the bike-share company removed a crucial piece of security hardware from Chicago’s docking stations.

é MORON EEL

By JOHN GREENFIELD

or want of a nail, the kingdom was lost,” goes the old proverb. So too, it turns out that an ongoing citywide epidemic of Divvy bike thefts is the result of a short-sighted decision to remove a small but critical piece of security hardware from Chicago’s docking stations. On July 12, after multiple reports of stolen cycles on social media (and five days of me pushing for answers from the bike-share network and the Chicago Department of Transportation, which oversees the program), Divvy ﬁnally sent me a statement acknowledging that it had experienced “a recent series of thefts from stations.” I was assured that it was “retroﬁtting all [its] docks with stronger,

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more tamper-proof lock mechanisms.” But as more people have learned how to remove the blue bikes from their docks illegally, the theft problem seems to have only gotten worse. (In case you’re wondering, yes, I know the technique and, no, I’m not going to publicize it. If you care about the long-term survival of this useful and affordable transportation network, you shouldn’t either.) In late August the crime blog CWB Chicago reported that, while there were only seven adult arrests for possession of stolen Divvies during the ﬁrst half of 2018, there was a massive spike in arrests this summer, with 120 cases between July 1 and August 16 alone. Last week when I asked CDOT and Divvy for

an update on the theft problem, Divvy general manager Michael Critzon e-mailed me the exact same statement I was sent more than two months ago, suggesting that the situation is under control. But CDOT e-mails I obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request tell a very different story. The messages indicate that hundreds of cycles have gone missing—a problem that’s unique among docked bike-share systems in major U.S. cities—due to the missing security component. One transportation official characterized the wave of thefts and “crimes committed on stolen Divvy bikes” as potentially catastrophic, calling it “an increasingly serious crisis.”

This summer local news outlets have been quick to point when robberies, assaults, and shootings have been reportedly committed by people riding the blue bikes. The e-mails show that city officials are worried that the relative ease of stealing Divvies is facilitating crime. For example, on July 27, after a man on a Divvy snatched a woman’s purse in the South Loop, an assistant to Fourth Ward alderman Sophia King wrote CDOT to ask what’s being done to combat thefts. “Individuals have found a way to [steal] the Divvy bikes from their stalls,” the staffer wrote. “Due to this we are seeing them used for crimes and [abandoned bikes] are ﬁlling up our community since there is no incentive to return them to the station.”

And the e-mails show that in late August 27th Ward alderman Walter Burnett called CDOT after a man sexually assaulted a woman in his west-side ward and fled on a Divvy. Unlike the dockless bike-share cycles that are currently being piloted on the far south side, Divvies don’t have onboard GPS, and Burnett asked whether Divvy could be required to add this feature to make it easier to track down stolen bikes. In a subsequent e-mail exchange, transportation chief Rebekah Scheinfeld asked assistant commissioner Sean Wiedel, who oversees the Divvy program, and CDOT consultant Amanda Woodall, who works on bike-share policy issues, why GPS hasn’t been installed on Divvies. Woodall responded that while real-time tracking of each bike’s location would help locate cycles after they’ve gone missing, “we wouldn’t have the capacity to launch investigations on each bike and prevent crimes from being committed with them. The way to solve this problem is to prevent thefts in the first place.” But an August 30 exchange between Wiedel and staff from Montreal-based PBSC Urban Solutions, which provides the bikes and stations for Divvy, shows that the dock security upgrades weren’t happening fast enough. “Chicago has experienced a major increase in bike thefts this year that has led to a lot of bad press and other cascading issues including crimes committed on stolen Divvy bikes,” assistant commissioner Weidel wrote. “Quite frankly, this problem makes the city of Chicago, the Divvy system, PBSC and Motivate [the parent company of Divvy] all look bad.” He said Divvy employees had been “working hard” to install an additional security hardware component inside the docks. But, he complained, “working on a solution is a cost and drain on Divvy staff resources, and the sheer number of missing bikes make it very difficult to effectively run our system.” Wiedel added that in addition to the hardware fix, the Divvy team told CDOT that PBSC had developed a “firmware”—software that provides the low-level control of a device’s hardware—solution for the docks. He asked the company to commit to adding the firmware to all Divvy stations, and insisted that CDOT would not pay for the parts and labor needed to address “this increasingly serious crisis.” Luc Sabbatini, the CEO of PBSC, fired back that the Divvy program had been mismanaged.

é MORON EEL

CITY LIFE

“As of August 26th we only have seven bikes missing for a long period within all our systems around the world, when the number is over 500 in Chicago alone!” —Luc Sabbatini, PBSC Urban Solutions

“The Chicago situation is unique to Chicago,” he wrote. “We do not have issues with missing bikes anywhere else, including Brazil, which could be the toughest market in the world. As of August 26th we only have seven bikes missing for a long period within all our systems around the world, when the number is over 500 in Chicago alone!” If that figure is accurate (CDOT and Divvy declined to estimate the number of missing bikes), it would represent more than 8 percent of Divvy’s fleet of about 6,000 bikes. Since each cycle costs the city $1,200, that’s $600,000 worth of taxpayer-funded hardware. However, per Chicago’s contract with Divvy, the city is only responsible for the replacement cost of up to 1 percent of the total number bikes purchased. That’s 60 cycles, or $72,000. Sabbatini maintained that the Chicago theft wave “has nothing to do with firmware, software, or PBSC equipment.” Rather, he argued, the failure of docks was due to a lack of station maintenance, combined with the Divvy team’s previous decision to remove the security component from the docks that is now being reinstalled. “As soon as we have noticed the situation, we had someone from our team verify and audit the locking mechanisms in Chicago,” Sabbatini wrote. “Our recommendation was crystal clear at the time and has been con-

stant since then: reinstall the [component] on all stations. From our understanding the current pace is only one station per day, which is not sufficient.” Indeed, Divvy currently has 570 stations, and is installing 36 more this fall, so at that rate it would take the better part of two years to complete this crucial work. Sabbatini agreed to install the firmware on all stations, but maintained that it would be useless for stations that still lack the crucial security hardware. “We are in constant communication with Divvy to help, but our message has always been the same: fix the [component] and follow our documentation and recommendations on proper maintenance.” So why the heck did the Divvy team remove that security hardware component in the first place? “I think it was done to make it easier to dock the bikes,” said a person familiar with the bike-share industry who requested anonymity. “In the early days of Divvy, you had to really slam the bikes in, so the bikes often weren’t docked properly. Removing the [component] made docking easier, but it also made it easier to steal bikes.” Former Chicago and Washington, D.C., transportation chief Gabe Klein, who launched both cities’ PBSC hardware-based bike-share systems, told me he didn’t recall the security components being removed from Divvy docks while he was at CDOT. However, when I described the method people are using to steal bikes in Chicago, he recognized it as the same technique used in a spate of thefts from D.C.’s Capital Bikeshare system when it debuted in 2010. The CaBi docks previously lacked the components, but quickly installing them in all stations solved the theft problem, Klein said. Last week sources at CDOT and Divvy told me PBSC has added the firmware to all Divvy stations, and that the pace of reinstalling the dock components has accelerated and should be completed by the end of this year. They said PBSC and Divvy have agreed that the city won’t be on the hook for the related costs. Hopefully the reinstallation work will wrap up before the theft epidemic gets much worse. But it’s clear the decision to remove the crucial dock security hardware component was a major blunder. v

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

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 9

Costly Joint-Pain Injections Replaced By New $2 Pill

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New pill boosts the same lubricating joint !luid as expensive and painful injections - without using a needle. Users report dramatic relief from swelling, pain and stiffness without side effects and expense. One example is a landmark Injections are usually a last resort because of the pain and expense. study out of Europe. In the study However, Synovia should be taken the active ingredient in Synovia was compared to a popular NSAID at the !irst sign of discomfort.” pain reliever. The goal was to see if New Discovery it could reduce pain and swelling The needle injection procedure around the knee. The results were has been given to hundreds of incredible! thousands of patients over the After just 30 days, more than last several years. 8 out of 10 people who took Doctors use the shots to boost a Synovia’s active ingredient had critical element of the joint called NO swelling. However, only 2 out synovial !luid. This lubricating of 10 people who took the NSAID !luid is found between the experienced reduced swelling. cartilage and bones of every joint. The study also looked at cases According to the !irm’s head of of severe swelling. Amazingly, R&D, Mike McNeill, “Researchers zero cases of severe swelling were have been working for years detected in the group taking the to !ind a way to boost this !luid active ingredient found in Synovia. noninvasively. The problem This means it was 100% effective was the molecule used in the for the cases of severe swelling! injections was too large to absorb In contrast, 9 out of 10 people into the bloodstream.” taking the NSAID still had severe Top scientists conquered this swelling. McNeill points out, “The obstacle by !inding a smaller form impressive thing about this study of the same molecule. This new is the active ingredient wasn’t glucose form is easily absorbed by tested against a fake pill. It was up against one of the most popular your stomach and intestines! Now those who suffer from NSAIDs people use every day. It’s joint pain can get relief without easy to see why people in pain painful injections. At less than are excited to get relief without an $2 per day, early users like Steve injection.” The New Way It Delivers Young are impressed. He says, “I’ve tried more pills than I can Relief count, without any luck. Synovia Getting relief without injections is different. My knees and hands has big advantages. The most haven’t felt this good in years!” obvious is avoiding being stuck Impressive Clinical by a large needle every week for 5 weeks. Results Another downside of injections Leading clinics use injection therapy because it works. Recent is the doctor can “miss”. The clinical trials show the pill form needle needs to be inserted into a precise spot in the joint to work. also delivers major relief. Otherwise, you risk the treatment being ineffective. However, boosting your lubricating joint !luid by taking a pill delivers relief to all your joints, not just one. There’s an additional reason the active ingredient in Synovia works so well – it nourishes the cartilage. McNeill says, “This is vital because cartilage does not have %$#!"$' :. 481("/39"0& )48".( &#($"' ;20.6"3*% 3/9"6+ "0&(+-"+09% HEALTHY: Synovia’s active UNHEALTHY: No lubricating blood vessels. The !luid in the /3(9"43&+ 9. ,3"0)84 1.0+#.0# 481("/39+ 7."09% 30- 0.8("%$ /3(9"43&+ lubricate joints and !luid or 4+3cartilage leads to painful ingredients joint serves two very important 1.0+ (811"0&' rubbing. %. "9 /30 (+#&(.5! nourish cartilage bone-on-bone pain-relief roles: lubrication and

Health News Syndicate HNS A popular needle injection for people with joint pain is now available in an inexpensive nonprescription pill. The breakthrough came when researchers discovered a way to deliver the injected “relief molecule” through the digestive system. Top US clinics have used these needle injections for years because they deliver powerful relief. Unfortunately, the shots are painful and expensive. They also only work on the joint being treated. The new pill, called Synovia, delivers the same “relief molecule” as the injections. However, it has some impressive advantages. First, it’s inexpensive and nonprescription. Also, relief is delivered to every joint in the body because it enters the bloodstream through the digestive system. This gives it the ability to reduce a much wider variety of pain. Users report greater !lexibility and less stiffness in their knees. Hands and shoulders move painfree for the !irst time in years. Even neck and lower back pain improve dramatically. All this without spending over $600 on needle injections and taking trips to the doctor every week. The medical community is very excited about this new breakthrough. Dr. Jacob Moss says, “Synovia is a great option for those suffering from joint pain.

NO MORE NEEDLES: A popular needle injection pain-killer for joint pain is being replaced. The key molecule in these injections can now be delivered by taking a new low-cost pill called Synovia.

giving the cartilage the nutrients want to remove any risk for those who might think Synovia sounds it needs.” too good to be true.” Approved By Leading Simply take the pill exactly Doctors as directed. You must enjoy fast The new delivery system for acting relief. Otherwise, return this molecule has caught the the product as directed and you’ll attention of leading medical receive 100% of your money back doctors. plus an extra 10%. “Needle injections for joint How To Get Synovia pain have been around for years marks the of!icial release because they work. Being able of Today Synovia in Illinois. As such, to get the same relief molecule the company is offering a special through a pill is amazing. discounted supply to everyone Injections may be a last resort, who calls within the next 48 but I’d recommend Synovia at the hours. !irst sign of pain,” said Dr. Marie A Regional Order Hotline has been set up for local readers to Laguna. Dr. Moss adds, “The research call. This is the only way to try behind the active ingredient in Synovia with their “110% money Synovia is very exciting. This back” guarantee. Starting at 6:00 am today the product is a great choice for those who haven’t had success with order hotline will be open for 48 hours. All you have to do is call other joint pain treatments.” TOLL FREE 1-888-975-6659 110% Money Back and provide the operator with the Guarantee special discount approval code: Amazing feedback from users SYN18. The company will do the of Synovia has generated a wave rest. of con!idence at the company. Current supplies of Synovia So much so that they now offer are limited, and callers that don’t Synovia with a 110% money back get through to the order hotline guarantee. within the next 48 hours may The company’s president, have to pay more and wait until Michael Kenneth says, “We’ve more inventory is produced. This seen how well it works. Now we could take as long as 6 weeks.

THESE STATEMENTS HAVE NOT BEEN EVALUATED BY THE FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION. THIS PRODUCT IS NOT INTENDED TO DIAGNOSE, TREAT, CURE OR PREVENT ANY DISEASE. ALL DOCTORS MENTIONED ARE REMUNERATED FOR THEIR SERVICE. ALL CLINICAL STUDIES WERE INDEPENDENTLY CONDUCTED AND WERE NOT SPONSORED BY MAKERS OF SYNOVIA.

10 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

FOOD & DRINK

FUNKENHAUSEN | $$$ R 1709 W. Chicago 312-929-4727 funkenhausen.com

Oysters Hockafeller é ALISHA SOMMER

Funkenhausen isn’t your opa’s Bavarian beer hall

Chef Mark Steuer (the Bedford, Carriage House, et al) gets personal but not too serious at his new West Town brasserie. By MIKE SULA

ark Steuer’s new German restaurant isn’t named for his teenage all-accordion Krautrock cover band—though I wouldn’t be surprised if he could pull something like that off. It is, however, a long-awaited return to the main stage by a chef who’s veered all over the culinary map since his ﬁrst days in Chicago, handling the savory side of things at Hot Chocolate, and then moving on to the Gage. Since leaving behind the nominally “midwestern” Bedford and then the South Carolina low-country wingding at Carriage House, he hasn’t been idle. He manned the parilla as John Manion’s chef de cuisine at the Argentine El Che, and created an underappreciated fried mortadella sandwich (among other things) at the late Orbit Room. He was even behind the tomato soup and grilled cheese and other upgraded bar foods at Albany Park’s Surge Coffee Bar & Billiards, something the short and to-the-point menu at this spiffed-up pool hall that replaced the late, great Marie’s Golden Cue inexplicably fails to mention. It’s worth following Steuer wherever he wants to go, and here he’s gone to Germany, sort of, opening what was originally billed as a Bavarian beer hall. That’s a digestible shorthand for what’s happening in a long, open dining room and bar stretching away from Chicago Avenue toward a white-tiled open kitchen. And yet, in this spiffy brasserie, it’s difficult to imagine beer-drenched revelers stuffed into lederhosen like sausages and bellowing “Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit” with their frothing steins held aloft.

Steuer came up cooking in South Carolina’s low country, but his ancestral home is Germany, and it’s the food of Deustchland and something of the former that he’s very loosely playing with here, an approach underscored by goofily titled dishes like “Sürfentürfen,” “the (Weiss) Wurst,” and “Oysters Hockafeller.” The last is a play on the classic that incorporates crispy cr umbled ham hock and pickled Fresno chiles to produce a luscious swirl of porky, buttery, smoky, sweet-and-hot sensations that almost made me forget how often I’ve complained that this is no way to treat an oyster. What’s clear is that Steuer is doing what he wants. That also holds true of the bread service: two hot garlic pretzel knots, each the size of a toddler’s fist, accompanied by pinch bowls of a soft pimento cheese and a mayo-andvinegar-based A labama-style white barbecue sauce. The latter, even when accidentally applied to a smoked half chicken smothered in summer squash, crowder peas, and tomatoes in a silky but powerfully rich and tangy Alsatian Riesling sauce, demonstrates that an uptight attitude about southern and/or German food closes one off to the possibility of embracing gemütlichkeit, or any pleasure at all. OK, one common cliche attached to both of those cuisines prevails: it’s a meaty menu, with steak tartare, nearly emulsified with truff le vinaigrette, tightly wrapped in cold cabbage and showered with grated Gouda and pickled mustard seeds that pop brightly, lightening the load (the dish has since been 86’d). Chunks of crispy grilled pork J

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 11

FOOD & DRINK

Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants—and add your own review—at chicagoreader.com/food.

Left: schnitzel; below: pretzel knots é ALISHA SOMMER

continued from 11 belly and jiggly, sweet seared scallops form the aforementioned surf and turf, their hot, rich swagger checked by pureed sauerkraut and sweet, glistening Klug Farms plums. And these are just midsize plates. Feasting-size trenchers include a grilled rib eye awash in a sauerbraten-styled jus, sliced and fanned around mashed potatoes with a riff on Arby’s “horsey sauce,” and a hot, crispy schnitzel, dabbed with sauce gribiche, that stretches across the plate under a salad of arugula and cherry tomatoes. By the time you read this, that bright seasonal foil to the fried madness will likely have been swapped in favor of something more seasonal, as will a few of the other veg-centric dishes, which make up a third of the menu. You’ll have missed out on the sweet, cool chunks of melon and tomato tossed with hot cubes of browned Brun-uusto cheese and ribbons of salty speck. Whips of bitter broccolini showered in shaved cheddar, crushed hazelnuts, golden raisins, and creamy buttermilk dressing are loaded with an underlying heat, while braised leek coins are mounted with smoked trout and roe. There will always be some form of the soft, tubular spaetzle— an ever-changing “blue plate spaetzle,” according to Steuer—but in mid-September they came dressed with basil and tossed with radish, Parmesan, roasted corn, zucchini ribbons, cherry tomatoes, and candied walnuts. There is one dish that’s neither a dominant protein nor a lighter counterpoint to the carnality but has the potential to be a year-round classic Steuer will never be able to take off his menu: soft, house-made ricotta dumplings with cauliflower, meaty oyster mushrooms, crumbled kielbasa, and gooseberries in a

12 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

glossy sauce made from the ricotta whey and reduced chicken stock, topped off with a charred rosemary vinaigrette. More than anything, it prompts a pursuit of athletic indulgence without the leaden heaviness normally associated with northern-European food. Even three desserts seems injudicious after such intensity, but both the pastry-formal Black Forest cake and the bombolini-like doughnuts, filled with custard and rolled in cinnamon sugar, present challenges worth rising to. The beer-hall aspect of Funkenhausen is realized with nine German imports in various varieties (kolsch, pilsner, gose, dopplebock, etc) and a focused but fascinating collection of the underserved wines of Austria and the French-German border in particular, put together by GM (and former Carriage House sous chef) Joseph Carnahan. Like that historically shifting borderland, the food at Funkenhausen is somewhat rooted in the Old World, but mostly it’s just Steuer, who’s more than earned the right to ignore borders on both sides of the Atlantic. v

@MikeSula

R READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

ARTS & CULTURE

Work by B.R. Shaw (left) and Eric Anderson é COURTESY PRISON AND NEIGHBORHOOD ARTS PROJECT

VISUAL ART

Locked away

“THE LONG TERM”

“The Long Term” uses art to connect Stateville prisoners to the outside world.

Through 11/16: Wed-Fri noon6 PM, Washington Park Arts Incubator, 301 E. Garfield, 773702-9724, p-nap.org. F

By MARISSA DE LA CERDA

hen people think of prisoners, they often think of people who committed horrible crimes and deserve to rot away in jail. They’re less likely to think about the emotional, familial, and social consequences of long-term sentences, some as lengthy as 70 or 80 years. The Prison and Neighborhood Arts Project (PNAP) seeks to connect prisoners at Stateville Correctional Center, near Joliet, to the outside world by offering humanities courses in which inmates work with artists and scholars to create projects that educate the public on topics that normally stay behind prison walls. In this case, the topic is long-term sentencing.

“The Long Term,” the latest exhibition created by PNAP, utilizes different media to raise awareness about long-term sentencing policies and the effects they have on inmates. “This has been a two-year project where we think about long-term sentencing,” says Sarah Ross, codirector of arts and exhibitions for PNAP. “We encouraged the teachers to come up with assignments in their classes surrounding the impact of long-term sentencing, focusing not only on the sentencing policy itself but the effects it has on the inmates.” The exhibition includes a 13-minute handdrawn animation made by artists who are serving long-term sentences. In the video, the artists combine personal narratives and re-

search to describe the severity and impact of long-term sentencing, for example, the loss of connection to family members and friends and the struggle of raising kids from inside prison walls. The video also takes notice of the hardships that inmates face after being released, such as struggling to reconnect with family after years away. Other pieces in the exhibition include video interviews with inmates about the effects of long-term sentencing and another with a mother about raising a son who’s serving a life sentence. The interviews offer more insight into how inmates are affected by these sentences, whether it be positive, like the bonds formed in prison, or negative, like the

structural inequities faced after prison when struggling to ﬁnd housing or employment. Damon Locks, a visual artist and codirector of art and exhibitions for PNAP, says that though long-term sentencing policies are discussed in the media, the effects on the inmates and their families need to be addressed too. “A lot of people don’t think about how long-term sentencing creates a long-term struggle for freedom and a long-term loss in communities.” The exhibit opened at the Washington Park Arts Incubator on Friday, September 21, and inspired a discussion among visitors about the reality of long-term sentencing and the importance of education to keep the inmates feeling connected to the community. “One of the drivers behind this is trying to build knowledge about things that usually stay behind a wall,” says Ross. “Our project is trying to use art as a way to ask questions and build knowledge about things that keep us so segregated.” v

m @marndel7 SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 13

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Detroit transplant Grant Forshee (General Manager), and Hyde Park local Tiffani Everett (Manager), are in charge of keeping the Jolly Pumpkin Brewery & Pizzeria in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood welcoming and running smoothly. It’s the first Chicago location for the Dexter, Michigan-based brewery, known for its award-winning sour beers aged in oak barrels that have inspired a passionate following, and it’s landed on the Chicago Tribune’s list of best new city breweries and brewpubs. Founder and chief brewmaster Ron Jeffries always hoped to open his own brewery when he started studying brewing science in the early 1990s, and in 2004 he launched Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. The company is known for its unique sour beer, achieved through “…traditional Belgian brewing methods of open fermentation, oak aging and bottle conditioning, Label designs by Adam Forman allowing the influence of wild yeast and – Legacy, Series, and Collaborations. The gorgeous bacteria to work (its) way into (the) beers.” beer bottle labels you can’t help but want to have as a t-shirt or a poster are all designed by Michigan artist Before opening the Hyde Park location in October Adam Forman. Legacy beers include La Roja, Oro de 2017, Jolly Pumpkin had four Michigan brewpubs – in Ann Arbor, Detroit, Royal Oak, and Traverse City – and Calabaza, Luciernaga, Bam Biere, Calabaza Blanca, Madrugada Obscura, Noel de Calabaza, Bam Noire, a sixth location recently opened in Grand Rapids. The Biere de Mars, Fuego del Otono, and La Parcela. company wanted to expand into the Chicago market, Series beers include the Bam Seasonal, Baudelaire, and the Hyde Park neighborhood, at the southern end Hop Portal, Improvisations, La Roja Variant, Letters, of the city, was a manageable 3.5 hours away. Limited Run, and Rare Beer Club. There have been 15+ collaborations with breweries such as the Anchorage The brewpub has 30+ beers on tap, and the Chicago Brewing Company, Big Island Brewhaus, Gigantic Tribune noted that the list “…includes beers crossing Brewing Company, Holy Mountain Brewing Company, a range of styles: dark and light, boozier and less Jester King Brewing Company, and many more. boozy, a saison, a pumpkin ale, a rye ale and even an intensely dry-hopped beer that Jolly Pumpkin calls For new customers, Grant typically recommends the a ‘sour IPA’.” They also offer IPAs from its subsidiary Bam Biere, a signature farmhouse ale with just a bit of brewery, North Peak Brewing Company, in addition tartness. He’s attuned to what customers want, having to Nomad cider, Bonafide wine, and spirits from the served as a Jolly Pumpkin bartender for three years, company’s distillery in Traverse City. before being promoted to general manager. He says, “…it’s good to know that we have a lot of different and The brewery offers three different families of beer

diverse products (and) we’re really looking to make Jolly Pumpkin a kind of destination for something to do on a night out.” There’s a daily Happy Hour every MondayFriday, with $2 off draft beer, wine, and house cocktails from 4-6 p.m. Trivia Tuesday, hosted by Geeks who Drink, has also been a big draw every Tuesday night from 8-10 p.m. For lunchtime visits, Jolly Pumpkin offers $9 weekday lunch specials every Monday-Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Bears fans can watch games all season long on Jolly Pumpkin’s nine televisions, with game-time food and drink specials. The fast-casual pub menu features starters, salads, sandwiches, and pizzas – Tiffani mentions her favorites are the red chicken nachos and truffle mushroom pizza – which just happen to be some of the most popular items on the menu. Both love working at the Jolly Pumpkin Hyde Park location – Grant, a former Detroit resident, appreciates the energy of the neighborhood, and Tiffani adds, “I feel like Hyde Park gives you that small town feeling, but you’re still part of the bigger city as well.” 5215 S. Harper Court 773-643-8008 jollypumpkin.com

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 15

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WE ARE THE ASTEROID II

ARTS & CULTURE

Through 12/2: Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand, 800-595-7437, navypier.org. F

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Guariglia and his sign at Navy Pier é IMAGE COURTESY THE ARTIST/MARUANI MERCIER GALLERY

6.! 80 -<.1&=5 7)-% ;7041*. !8 &7)817)8 %-483178

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THE

MEXICAN 1967

celebrating

VISUAL ART

YEARS Thanks to Ya’ll

just steps from the Dempster “L” stop

Tue - Sat 10 - 6 847-475-8665

801 Dempster Evanston

EARLY WARNINGS

NEVER MISS A SHOW AGAIN

CHICAGOREADER.COM/EARLY 16 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

Signs of climate change

Justin Brice Guariglia hopes his Expo Chicago installation We Are the Asteroid II will raise eco-awareness. By MARISSA DE LA CERDA

nevitable signs of climate change have appeared at Navy Pier. Literally. Justin Brice Guariglia’s art installation We Are the Asteroid II, a collaboration with Expo Chicago and the Union of Concerned Scientists, uses a sandblasted solar-powered LED traffic message board to communicate the urgency of the climate crisis. Instead of traffic or construction warnings, the signs display statements such as “WE ARE THE ASTEROID” and “GLOBAL WARMING AT WORK.” The idea to put these messages on a highway message board came to the artist when he saw a highway sign flashing warnings to drivers. He asked the author and philosopher Timothy Morton to write a series of aphorisms about the planet’s ecological crisis. Just as those signs remind motorists to slow down and take caution, the aphorisms in We Are the Asteroid II are intended to make people think

about climate change and what steps they can take to better the environment. “All my work is about bridging the ontological gap between what we think is happening and what is actually happening,” Guariglia says. “If you’re not an ecologist or scientist, you’re not going to understand what’s really going on with the planet because we’re so disconnected from it.” Five of the six messages serve as a way to connect people to the problems climate change has created without boring them with data. Using simple phrases, the installation communicates the facts, specifically what changes have occurred in the environment, such as higher carbon dioxide levels, the melting of the arctic ice, and the drastic rise in temperature that mimics the dangerously hot and dry weather of the Triassic period, which ended with the mass extinction of half the spe-

cies on earth. Guariglia hopes to generate discussion between different generations. He also hopes the public-art piece will encourage more people to work toward a more sustainable environment. That’s why the ﬁnal aphorism to ﬂash is “DON’T ECO-SHOP, ECO-VOTE.” “We’re recycling and buying more organic items, but we haven’t accepted that we’re in an ecological crisis,” he says. “So my work is to get people to think more ecologically and, hopefully, get them to take action.” With elections coming up, Guariglia wants the public to be more conscious of voting people into power who are thinking ecologically. When politicians deny the reality of climate change, he says, they set up bigger problems for the future of the planet. But the focus of the piece isn’t on the politicians, it’s on the public. “The whole point of We Are the Asteroid II is that we are in the midst of a great mass extinction and we don’t realize that,” he says. “We’re going down a highway with all these warnings, heading into a tunnel and there is a light at the end for us, but big changes have to take place.” v

m @marndel7

NAKED R Through 10/27: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland, 773-384-0494,

ARTS & CULTURE

trapdoortheatre.com, $20-$25, two for one on Thu. Naked é CHRIS POPIO

THEATER

A woman gets stripped to her psychic skin in Naked

Trap Door Theatre’s revival of the Pirandello play is farcical, soapy, and profound. By TONY ADLER

hanks to set designer Nick Schwartz, a good portion of the audience has to watch the Trap Door Theatre revival of Luigi Pirandello’s Naked unfold through casement windows placed right in their line of sight, over the downstage lip of the performing area. Since each window is composed of eight small panes, any given moment of the play may be broken up into 16 separate squares. What an awful way to spend 90 minutes, you might suppose before the thing begins. Like trying to watch somebody else’s TV from a spot on their front lawn. But it turns out to be a rather brilliant gesture, because Pirandello’s canny 1922 tragi-

comedy deals with the multiple narratives, the separate little panes of perception, through which various people view a former governess named Ersilia Drei who tried and failed to commit suicide. The known facts at the beginning of the 90 minutes are these: Ersilia worked in the household of Grotti, the Italian consul stationed in Smyrna (present-day Izmir, Turkey), tending to his small child until said child fell from a terrace and died. From there she drifted off to Rome, where she obtained some vials of poison and downed one of them in a park. The dose wasn’t enough to kill her but sure seemed like it would at the time. Certain she was on her deathbed, Ersilia confessed to a newspa-

per reporter, Cantavalle, that she’d been jilted by Laspiga, a young naval officer who’d promised to marry her. It being a slow news day, Cantavalle wrote up her tale of a broken heart, naming the people involved. The article went viral in a first-quarter-of-the-20th-century sense, turning Ersilia into a minor, if reluctant, celebrity. An object of interest, anyway. Her story reached Ludovico Nota, an aging novelist, who got in touch with her, offering to put her up at his apartment until she got on her feet again—and, by the way, until he could get a handle on how to turn her into his next book. When we ﬁrst meet Ersilia, she’s just arrived at Nota’s apartment, delighted to the point of shame at her sudden turn of fortune. Soon

enough, though, her snug hideaway turns into Grand Central Station. Not only does Nota (Bob Wilson) start brainstorming Ersilia the fiction, but others show up to impose their own narratives on her. Feeling tortured, Laspiga the naval officer (Ambrose Cappuccio) insists on doing the noble thing and marrying her. (Part of her reply to him—“You’d condemn me to be the very person I tried to kill”—is one of the more compelling notions in the play.) Cantavalle the reporter (Keith Surney) returns for more. And Grotti the consul (Darren Hill) appears, to dredge up some memories Ersilia would much rather forget. Even Nota’s landlady, Mrs. Onoria, gets in her licks, going from high dudgeon when she thinks Nota’s moved a common slut into his apartment to simpering graciousness when she learns that the slut is none other than the noteworthy woman from the newspaper story. In the course of these interactions, Ersilia is alternately stripped of her privacy—that which she hopes to hold secret to maintain a livable illusion—and wrapped up in the agendas of the people around her. A near cousin of Pirandello’s more famous Six Characters in Search of an Author, but without the metatheatrical flourishes, Naked offers a witty, farcical, occasionally soapy, yet ultimately profound investigation into how much we depend on our stories for identity. In fact, how much we need a decent story to keep us alive. There are obvious 21st-century parallels to be drawn from the piece. It can be read as a feminist document, for instance, in that four of the people attempting to make Ersilia over in their image are men, while two women who start out doing it end up rallying around her. And the analogy to questions of selfhood on the Internet (just think about the phrase “identity theft”) is a no-brainer. It’s precisely because the parallels are obvious, though, that director Kay Martinovich was wise to play the material straight and in period. The resonances are richer that way, and the potential for solemn self-righteousness much reduced. It also helps that Martinovich has such a fierce Ersilia in Tiffany Bedwell, able to get both as fucked-up and as sympathetic as she needs to be. Meanwhile, Manuela Rentea is a hoot as Mrs. Onoria. Having seen Rentea distinguish herself in a small role before, I’d say she has a talent for quirky physical comedy that helps us understand a character as much as it entertains. v

m @taadler SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 17

UNWANTED

10/3-10/7: Wed-Thu and Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, 312-397-4010, mcachicago.org, $30, $10 students.

ARTS & CULTURE

MENDOZA

10/3-10/7: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $25.

THEATER

DANCE

Children of the Rwandan genocide

With Unwanted, Dorothée Munyaneza creates a spectacle of grief and resilience.

By IRENE HSIAO

orothée Munyaneza’s Unwanted begins with a woman telling the audience how cruel she is to her son. She mocks him. She beats him. She hates him. She never wanted him. He reminds her of the violence done to her. She can’t remember his father. It happened too many times. Another woman envisions her suckling infant as a hyena ravaging her body. Munyaneza gnashes her teeth together rhythmically, a hollow, dangerous sound. She tells their stories and embodies the violence done to them—she is the women; she is the children. The effect is more chilling than a mere litany of horrors. No one weeps for les enfants mauvais souvenirs (“children of bad memories”). They are what remains: survivors, souvenirs, unwanted gifts like the diseases spread during the mass rapes of the Rwandan genocide. Born in Kigali, Munyaneza left Rwanda at the age of 12 in 1994, when her mother, who worked for an NGO in London, was able to secure them safe passage to England. During the 100 days of the Rwandan genocide, which lasted from April 7 to July 15 of that year, the Hutu-led government massacred an estimated 800,000 people, most of them from the Tutsi ethnic minority, after the assassination of the president. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established by the UN Security Council that November, condemned the rapes as a weapon of war. Nearly all the girls and women who survived the genocide were assaulted—to say nothing of the dead.

The children resulting from the rapes number in the thousands. Many of the women were subsequently rejected by their families, who considered them damaged. Developed from interviews with survivors conducted during her ﬁrst visit back to her homeland, Unwanted, which premiered in July 2017 at the Festival d’Avignon, is Munyaneza’s second piece (after Samedi Détente in 2014) to address the violence in Rwanda. “Sometimes people think—‘It is happening over there, so it does not concern me.’ It concerns all of humanity. Men and women,” she told the website Culturebot last year. “In former Yugoslavia, Chad, Syria now, a lot of women, even in America there needs not even be a war for a woman to be violated.” While Munyaneza delivers pointed monologues that vary between detached, documentary-like presentations and frenzied outbursts of despair and rage that erupt into motion and action, Portland-based vocalist and clarinetist Like a Villain (Holland Andrews), the other body onstage, emerges and recedes in densely woven layers of nonnarrative sound that contrast with and heighten the stories told. With additional music by French electronic composer Alain Mahé and a set designed by South African visual artist Bruce Clarke, Unwanted is an intense spectacle of grief with a message of resilience. v

m @IreneCHsiao

18 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

é COURTESY THE ARTIST

é CHRISTOPHE RAYNAUD DE LAGE

R Curiouser and curiouser

THEATER

Macbeth en México

Mendoza is a visceral, blood-soaked tale of ambition and corruption. “OFTENTIMES,” SAYS HENRY GODINEZ, the Goodman’s resident artistic associate, “corporal work in Latin American theater tends to be stylized and graceful and elegant and metaphorical.” Not so the blood-soaked production of Mendoza he witnessed two years ago in Mexico City: “I was blown away by it. . . . This is just outright friggin’ visceral as all heck,” he says. “Elizabeth Doud, who has worked with [cultural incubator] Fundarte in Miami, she and I were at the same performance. And so the both of us were like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing. We’ve got to get it to the States.’” A reimagining of Macbeth written by Antonio Zúñiga and Juan Carrillo and copresented by the Goodman and the Mexico City-based company Los Colochos, Mendoza uses corridos (Mexican narrative folk ballads) in an intimate cantina setting to tell a timeless story of corrupt ambition against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, with evocative elements of the 2014 Ayotzinapa massacre in which 43 Mexican students were kidnapped and presumed killed. Los Colochos has already toured its flagship production throughout Mexico, Latin America, and Europe; the Goodman’s staging, a limited ﬁve-performance run, will mark the show’s ﬁrst U.S. production. It’s part of the second annual Chicago International Latino Theater Festival. “I always think that’s a good cautionary tale for us as a country here,” says Godinez, “because we’re not immune from that sort of obsession with power. I think it’s a great opportunity for our audiences to see it through a lens that is very real for our closest neighbor to the south. “And it’s just really thrilling,” he continues, “really frickin’ exciting-as-hell theater.” —DAN JAKES

Alice proves what we already guessed: Evanston is Wonderland.

First curated by Upended Productions artistic director Noelle Krim in 2004 during her time with the Neo-Futurists, this magical ambulatory experience is back. Audience members, in groups of 15, are Alice, following a harried white rabbit (a boisterous Caitlin Savage on my tour) throughout Wonderland— otherwise known as Evanston’s Main-Dempster Mile neighborhood. Be forewarned, there’s quite a bit of walking and stair-climbing involved in this 90-minute production, but your rabbit guide uses a buddy system to ensure nobody gets left behind. A variety of local theater companies, artists, and musicians stage chapters from Alice in Wonderland in a variety of settings, ranging from a train station to a dreamy plant shop. With impressive attention to detail, Upended enlisted the folk group the Bills to add whimsical street ambience as Alice hustles from place to place. One of the funniest vignettes along the way comes courtesy of Josh Zagoren as Chad the Bird, a disgruntled puppet educating Alice on the many species on the planet besides humans and why we’re really not that great. He shares some amusing complaints speciﬁc to the brewery-basement setting about developing beer for animals with a high alcohol tolerance, like bats. Waiting in tiny chairs at a huge table for a tea party to begin, the audience later lifts the tablecloth to discover that all the imaginative action is happening underneath, carried out with pathos by tea-serving members of the ShowParty performance collective. By bringing together such a diverse group of performers and embracing their individuality, Alice continues to deliver “curiouser and curiouser” delights. —MARISSA OBERLANDER ALICE Through 10/21: Sat-Sun

at 15-minute intervals between 1-2 PM, August LaCapra State Farm, 829 Chicago Ave., Evanston, 224-999-2942, upendedproductions.com, $25, $17 students.

Campier and campier

The Artificial Jungle pays tribute to Charles Ludlam, the patron saint of queer comedy. One reigning camp queen remembers and pays homage to another in Hell in a Handbag’s production of The Artificial Jungle, the final play written by Charles Ludlam, the patron saint of queer comedy, before his early death in 1987. A la Double Indemnity, a hunky drifter (David Lipschutz) colludes with a stir-crazy pet-shop clerk (Sydney Genco, in fabulous female drag) to commit insurance fraud, murder her simpleton husband (Ed Jones), and escape the control of the family business’s high-haired matriarch (David Cerda, naturally). Given today’s LGBTQ humor standards, it’s wild to imagine that this sketchlike show has such subversive roots; other than some prominently showcased bosom and a few mildly raunchy PG-rated visual gags, director Shade Murray’s production is a borderline family-friendly affair full of throwback gentle comedy. Mostly it’s a fun excuse for puppet designers Mark Blashford and Lanky Yankee Puppet Co. to go

ARTS & CULTURE

Not for Sale é ANTHONY AICARDI

buck wild with lo-fi effects, filling the shop’s tanks and terrariums with expressive—sometimes hostile—critters puppeteered by Corey Strode. A cast of familiar Hell in a Handbag faces delivers the usual—but still satisfying— physical comedy, door slams, and rake-effect bits. I suspect that, as with improv, there’s an inverse relationship between how funny gay camp reads and the size of the venue it occupies. Compared to the company’s bar digs at Mary’s Attic, Stage 773, though it regularly hosts comedy, feels a little formal. But by and large, the jokes land, and The Artificial Jungle serves as an amusing if not all-out-hilarious testament to Ludlam’s enduring influence. —DAN JAKES THE ARTIFICIAL

JUNGLE Through 10/28: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-327-5252, handbagproductions.org, $32-$39, $25 students and seniors.

Coming to America

Camazotz, the Mesoamerican bat god, arrives in Chicago alone and undocumented. In his potent new play for Colectivo el Pozo, Chicago playwright Raúl Dorantes shows a knack for extracting a kind of ironic mythic resonance from thorny cultural narratives about immigration, creating a destabilizing, impish, mystifying 70 minutes. In this magical, menacing world, the gods of nearly every immigrant group die on their journey to America. The lone exception is the ancient Mesoamerican bat god Camazotz—a blood-feeding, cave-dwelling creature who plays a particularly frightening role in the Kiche creation saga Popol Vuh—who’s arrived in Chicago undocumented. Flitting among the shadows of night and showing extraordinary skill as a restaurant dishwasher, he keeps appearing when street violence erupts, licking bloody wounds in what may be moments of opportune feeding or magnanimous healing. An allegedly renowned journalist has assembled an “expert panel” (a criminologist, an archaeologist, and a chef) to help the audience understand the creature’s unaccountable appearance in Chicago, although it quickly becomes clear everyone projects onto Camazotz whatever they most need to see. It’s a heady mix, and like the title character, the play seems to shapeshift at the drop of a hat, as the panelists rarely pursue linear thoughts, regularly falling in and out of reveries, swoons, flashbacks, and emotional outbursts. While the swirling structure makes it difficult for momentum to develop, a problem exacerbated by performers who too often seem adrift in a sea of unmoored metaphors, the overall effect is intoxicating. The god’s ultimate manifestation is a crafty, satisfying disappointment. —JUSTIN HAYFORD CAMAZOTZ Through 10/7:

Fri-Sat 8 PM; also Sun 9/30, 3 PM, and 10/7, 6 PM, the Mood Entertainment Center, 3417 N. Harlem, 773-844-4188, brownpapertickets.com, $20.

R Body and Soul

Alexis J. Roston fully inhabits Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.

Portraying Billie Holiday, arguably the most iconic jazz vocalist of the last century, is well-traveled territory, posing a potential trap for dusty cliches. Yet Alexis J. Roston paints a vibrant portrait of the legendary tragic chanteuse in Congo Square Theatre’s revival of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. Director Shanèsia Davis perfectly cultivates the mood of a smoky jazz joint to tell the story of a fallen star who once graced the stage of Carnegie Hall, now an ex-jailbird reduced to playing dives. Roston’s boisterous portrayal of a woman unashamed of her rough edges is hilarious as she improvises and jokes with the audience. An expert jazz vocalist, she riffs effortlessly on the scaffolding of Billie’s versions, striking the delicate balance between imitation and personalization; her renditions of “What a Little Moonlight Can Do” and “Them There Eyes” are a treat for those familiar with Holiday’s, and a rendition of “Pigfoot,” written by Bessie Smith, one of Holiday’s early influences, is shout-out-loud amazing. As on all the songs, she’s accompanied by the production’s incredible music director, Dedrick Blanchard. Writer Lanie Robertson doesn’t shy away from the messy details, including racism, addiction, and abuse. Difficult songs like “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do” and “Strange Fruit” reveal the bravery and vulnerability of a woman fighting to keep her identity as others try to pry it away, revealing why her story continues to resonate. —SHERI FLANDERS LADY DAY AT EMERSON’S BAR

AND GRILL Through 10/7: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3

and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, ETA Creative Arts, 7558 S. Chicago, 773-296-1108, congosquaretheatre.org, $35, $25 seniors, $15 students.

R Growing pains

Humboldt Park is changing, but it’s Not for Sale.

Sara Carranza directs the world premiere of Guadalís Del Carmen’s play about gentriﬁcation in Humboldt Park. On the stretch of Division Street between the distinctive steel Puerto Rican ﬂags, a store owner struggles to pay his property taxes, a local alderman must balance the needs of longtime residents and newcomers, a real estate agent tries to present himself as lifting up the place where he grew up rather than just being another opportunist as many suspect, a young white couple moves in and tries to remake the block to suit themselves without considering what’s already there, and young activists try to push back with strident slogans but few substantive ideas to keep the neighborhood theirs.

Things come to a head as the annual Puerto Rican Festival approaches. What some call noise, others call a celebration. Is there any way for these people to live together, and will the neighborhood retain any of its ethnic character if they manage to agree? This is a story that plays out in cities all over America, and Del Carmen doesn’t necessarily provide any new insights or oﬀer many solutions. But by presenting each of the forces in the conﬂict with humor and empathy, she allows the audience to see where everyone is coming from rather than hammering home a single dogmatic point of view above all others. It takes a near-fatal heart attack and string of vandalism for former enemies to become allies. I don’t know if I entirely bought the hopeful coda, but I appreciate Del Carmen’s optimism nonetheless. —DMITRY SAMAROV NOT FOR

SALE Through 10/20: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM,

UrbanTheater Company, 2620 W. Division, 312-7678821, urbantheaterchicago.org, $20, $25 reserved seating, $15 students and seniors.

R An unlikely triumph

Facility Theatre’s Phoebe in Winter packs a year’s worth of playgoing into 100 minutes. To call Facility Theatre’s mesmerizing staging of New York up-and-comer Jen Silverman’s demanding Phoebe in Winter an unlikely success is an understatement. First off, the playwright behind the formulaic, audiencefriendly The Roommate, seen at Steppenwolf this summer, would seem a dubious candidate to create this confounding, unsettling, multivalent fable of global, familial, and psychological warfare, more European theatrical experimentalism than American regional theater fare. And second, the cripplingly underresourced Facility, holed up in an amenity-free church school basement, wouldn’t appear well positioned to tackle a script of this magnitude. But then, Chicago’s storefront theater history is littered with unlikely successes, although few have been as resounding as this. In Silverman’s disjointed, indefinable world, soldier brothers return home to father at war’s end only to be taken hostage by an unflappable woman who insists they replace the family she lost in battle—giving the manse’s beleaguered maid a unique opportunity to launch domestic guerrilla incursions and leading, unaccountably, to the simultaneous creation and destruction of a new social order. Everything’s up for grabs: Some people die and stay dead, while others sit down to dinner with eternally bleeding head wounds. Director Dado, no stranger to esoteric theatrical worlds, fashions a tantalizing realm both measured and explosive, lush and dissolute, artificial and authentic, and her invincible cast somehow give emotional and psychological coherence to a planet spinning off several axes at once. In the process, they all but destroy the theater. It’s a year’s worth of playgoing packed into 100 minutes. —JUSTIN HAYFORD

ed and choreographed on Broadway by Bob Fosse, is a hard character to get right. Play her too soft and she seems like a dope and pushover (she seems to have spent her life falling for lazy louts, like the guy at the start of the musical who takes her purse and pushes her into the lagoon in Central Park). Play her too hard and she becomes unlikable. Anne Horak’s Charity is very likable, but that’s a problem too. From the first moment she dances onto the stage, she seems utterly charming and worthy of love; Horak doesn’t give her enough room to change over the course of the play. And the play is all about change. Specifically, it is about Charity’s journey from childish innocence (and cripplingly low self-esteem) to a firmer sense of her own strength and self-worth. Horack doesn’t take us on that journey. Nor does anyone else in this nice but lackluster production. Alex Goodrich, for example, doesn’t move us as the man who finally shows Charity real love; instead he overplays his comic hand, ruining the subtle comedy in Neil Simon’s book by telegraphing punch lines or otherwise working way too hard to show everyone he’s being funny. Alex Sanchez’s choreography gracefully translates Fosse’s iconic dance moves to the Marriott’s in-theround theater space. But his direction is less graceful. Simon’s fine book is given short shrift, and neither the terrific choreography nor the songs by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields can carry the show alone. —JACK HELBIG

SWEET CHARITY Through 10/28: Wed 1 and 7:30

PM, Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM, Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Dr., Lincolnshire, 847-634-0200, marriotttheatre.com, $52-$57.

It’s not easy being green

It’s not easy watching There’s a Coqui in My Shoe!, either.

You don’t need to spend a little time with this Sweet Charity.

Frog plays don’t come along every week. Puerto Rico’s dearest native amphibian, the coqui, finally gets a taste of the theatrical acknowledgment it so richly deserves in this 90-minute celebration of the island nation’s heritage. Carlito (Manny Colon) is no ordinary coqui, though. Oh, no. Catch him doing fun things like eating cereal, dancing the cha-cha, and discussing rain-forest conservation at a level of abstraction inaccessible to children. His friends? They’re the kookiest bunch of flatly anthropomorphized tree dwellers in El Yunque. They simply crack me up with their two entire songs and a reprise about how wonderful it feels to eat a piragua, the Puerto Rican snow cone. But it’s when Carlito gets lost inside an enormous shoe and then magically grows to the same size as the boy whose shoe it is that things really get exciting for fans of theater that feels like some weird interlude at a fund-raiser. Colon was the only cast member who appeared to consistently have his lines and cues down on opening night. On top of that, the principals’ mikes kept being all staticky. I heard about zero child laughter in the audience for the duration of the show except for when Jeffery Wilson was onstage, and pretty much all he did was this random chubby lifeguard bit. Kudos to the Latin band off in a dank, unlit corner putting in great work. More music, with more lively choreography by Anais Zayas and less of the froggy business, please God. Roberto and Griselda Negrón direct. —MAX MALLER

Charity Hope Valentine, the sweet, psychologically wounded, eternally hopeful taxi dancer at the center of this 1966 Tony Award-winning musical, originally direct-

7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, the Miracle Center, 2311 N. Pulaski, 773-276-5933, themiraclecenter.com, $25. v

PHOEBE IN WINTER Through 10/21: Thu-Sat 8 PM,

Sun 4 PM, Holy Trinity Church School, 1135 N. Cleaver, 312-391-1385, facilitytheatre.org, $25, $15 students and industry.

Hey, big spender

THERE’S A COQUI IN MY SHOE! Through 10/13: Fri

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 19

THE RISE AND FALL OF A SMALL FILM COMPANY sss Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. In French with subtitles. 92 min. Fri 9/28-Thu 10/4. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11.

ARTS & CULTURE The Rise and Fall of a Small Film Company

MOVIES

Video killed the movie star

In The Rise and Fall of a Small Film Company, Jean-Luc Godard contemplates the evolution of the moving image. By BEN SACHS

his year Chicagoans have the rare opportunity to discover lost or suppressed works by a number of major ﬁlmmakers. In May the Gene Siskel Film Center presented the local premieres of Philippe Garrel’s L’Enfant Secret (1979) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s TV series Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day (1972-’73); in July the Music Box hosted an ultrarare screening of Jean Grémillon’s silent masterpiece The Lighthouse Keepers (1929); and next month the Chicago International Film Festival will screen The Other Side of the Wind, an Orson Welles feature that was begun in the early 1970s and completed only recently. This week the Film Center screens a restoration of Jean-Luc Godard’s The Rise and Fall of a Small Film Company, which was broadcast on French television in 1986 and has rarely been revived since. The feature comes from one of the most exciting periods of the groundbreaking Swiss director’s career, a phenomenal three-year stretch that also saw the release of Hail Mary, Détective, the featurette Soft and Hard (codirected by his life partner, Anne-Marie Miéville), King Lear, and Keep Your Right Up. Taken together, these ﬁlm and video works constitute a rich self-analysis on Godard’s part, with the director assessing what it means to create moving images at a ssss EXCELLENT

sss GOOD

time when TV and video threatened (and ultimately succeeded) to overtake cinema as the form of moving-image delivery that audiences engaged with the most. Rise and Fall reflects Godard’s deep ambivalence about this historic moment, presenting the business of television skeptically while reveling in the newfound creative possibilities of video. It’s also characteristic of his work from the late 70s and onward in that it’s at once deliberately opaque and astonishingly beautiful—fans of the director will find plenty to puzzle and swoon over. Much like Godard’s first international coproduction, Contempt (1964), was about the making of an international coproduction, the shot-on-video TV movie Rise and Fall considers the making of a shot-on-video TV movie. Gaspard (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is a film director who’s agreed to shoot an adaptation of a James Hadley Chase murder mystery for French television. He doesn’t realize that his producer, Jean (Jean-Pierre Mocky), is financing the project with stolen money, nor does he realize that he’s way behind schedule on the production. Gaspard gets consumed by casting the movie, looking at one potential actor after another. Eventually he becomes interested in casting Jean’s wife, Eurydice (Marie Valera), believing that she shares his concept of visual beauty, but by this time he’s exhausted the movie’s budget.

ss AVERAGE

20 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

s POOR

•

As usual with Godard’s post-70s movies, the plot of Rise and Fall is basically a loose framework for the director to work through his perennial concerns of cinema, video, history, love, beauty, and freedom. These themes are always interconnected for Godard, who sees the creation of moving images as a means of engaging with history and experiencing beauty, love, and freedom. He emphasizes this interconnectedness by layering sounds and images, with music, dialogue, and multiple, superimposed shots often competing for the viewer’s attention. Given this, the spectator of a late Godard piece must disentangle meaning from the morass of words, music, pictures, and movements—effectively working with the director to find significance amid the cultural pileup. The unifying message of Godard’s movies from 1985-’87 may be that this collaborative work couldn’t be more urgent. As he explains in the nakedly autobiographical Soft and Hard, Godard felt (and probably still feels) that cinema is a medium that allows filmmakers to project themselves onto viewers, whereas television—which increasingly determines how people see the world—is a medium that projects viewers onto advertisers. Even worse, television obscures the beauty of moving images, which the cinema magnifies and exalts. At the end of Soft and Hard (arguably the Rosetta stone of his late period), Godard tells Miéville that he wants to resist the power of television by fostering relationships between viewers and video images that are not too direct. With Rise and Fall, he shows how he might go about doing that. “When reading his part, the actor should challenge it thoroughly!,” reads Gaspard from an unidentified book in the movie’s opening scene, thereby introducing the theme of artistic resistance. If the director serves as a representation of Godard’s creative side, then the business-oriented Jean represents Godard’s obsession with commerce. Jean might believe in the power of cinematic art, but he recognizes pragmatically that art needs to get financed somehow. (Tellingly, one of the visual motifs of Rise and Fall is of Jean’s accountant working an adding machine.) For much of the movie, the producer is distraught and morose, frequently complaining about not getting enough money to create the projects he wants and about having to shoot on video rather than film. Jean is so downbeat, in fact, that Godard needs to show up two-thirds of

the way into Rise and Fall to cheer up his own alter ego. He sagaciously tells Jean that the cheapness of video may be a good thing, as one can make ten movies on video for the cost of shooting one movie on film. As a moviemaker, Godard demonstrates that there are plenty of other good things about shooting on video. Rise and Fall finds beauty in all aspects of analog video imagery, from the blur of paused shots to the ghostly look of one shot superimposed upon another. With imagination and gumption, Godard argues, one can even connect video images to the beauty of the classics. One of the most moving scenes of Rise and Fall depicts Gaspard and Eurydice looking through a book of Renaissance paintings and considering what the images have to tell them about creating characters today. (In typical Godardian fashion, however, Gaspard phrases this consideration in the form of riddles.) In the movie’s longest scene, Gaspard watches a lineup of auditioning actors as they recite, one after another, fragments of sentences he’s prepared for them. Each performer appears in front of the camera just long enough to make a vivid impression; the beauty of the faces hearkens back to classical portraiture. In Every Man for Himself (1979), generally regarded as the first film of Godard’s late period, a character named Paul Godard likens the relationship between film and video to that of Cain and Abel. This would seem to contradict the director’s later comments about the deleterious effects of video imagery on audiences, but in fact it dovetails into his grand argument. Within the director’s philosophy of moving images, moviemakers and spectators might have approached video as a wholly new medium, but instead they remained in thrall to memories of cinematic images, and as a result video images became pale imitations of cinematic ones. Rise and Fall suggests a more constructive approach to video, with Gaspard representing a half-mad prophet of the medium’s potential. Since video allows filmmakers to work quickly and cheaply, Godard asserts, it increases the possibility that they may discover classical beauty through their work. It’s certainly a possibility worth exploring. As Janis Joplin sang in “Me and Bobby McGee” (one of Rise and Fall’s creative reference points), freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. v

m @1bsachs

WORTHLESS

I AM NOT A WITCH ssss

Written and directed by Rungano Nyoni. In English and Nyanja with subtitles. 93 minutes. Fri 9/28-Thu 10/4. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11.

ARTS & CULTURE I Am Not a Witch

MOVIES

Weird sisterhood

I Am Not a Witch signals the auspicious arrival of a ﬁerce new talent, Zambian director Rungano Nyoni. By LEAH PICKETT

omen, on the whole, are used to being categorized, objectiﬁed, and underestimated. Many of us learn and internalize these conditions in girlhood, often by watching how the men and women in our lives treat other women whom they consider inferior. This painful and distinctly female perspective grounds writer-director Rungano Nyoni’s coruscating feature debut, a surrealist fable centered on a quiet Zambian girl (newcomer Maggie Mulubwa) whose gimlet-eyed gaze provokes villagers to brand her as a witch. The local authorities banish the girl to a “witch camp” of mostly middle-aged women. Besides being forced to work on farmland and present themselves before busloads of gawking tourists, each of the “witches” is tethered to a gigantic spool by a long white ribbon attached to a harness on her back. The device allows a few yards of movement before yanking its captive backward, which the girl discovers when she attempts to run away. The tether is a metaphor, of course, as are the two options presented to the girl and all other “witches” upon arrival at the camp: either agree to the

label, tether and all; or refuse, and transform into a goat. Understandably, the girl chooses the former. Born in Zambia and raised in Wales, Nyoni is an assertive filmmaker with a keen sense of who and what to judge. I Am Not a Witch is in part a social satire, though it’s neither the tribe’s superstition nor the film’s band of women resigned to their status as witches that Nyoni is lambasting. Rather, Nyoni reserves the bulk of her criticism for the film’s villain: a government official named Mr. Banda (Henry B.J. Phiri) who looks at the “little witch” and sees dollar signs. The distaste Nyoni also evinces for tourists who visit the camp and objectify the women with their iPhone cameras is inextricable from the film’s overarching criticism of the misogynistic charlatans who would promote such displays in the first place. While I Am Not a Witch examines a particular society’s judgment of unruly women and girls, it is the mercenary worldview and craven deeds of people like Mr. Banda that Nyoni puts on trial. The ways in which Nyoni conveys this criticism, however—as well as her empathy

and affection for the women at her story’s heart—are what elevate her ﬁlm to dizzying emotional heights. Narratively and tonally, I Am Not a Witch occasionally invites comparisons to the work of Michael Haneke and Yorgos Lanthimos. Visually and aurally, though, the film marks the arrival of a unique and scintillating auteur. With a well-matched director of photography in David Gallego (Embrace of the Serpent), Nyoni presents one dazzling set piece after another. Her preferences for long takes, bright colors, and dynamic wide shots that resemble paintings cement the film as high art for its imagery alone. When this is paired with crisp

sound design and a stirring excerpt from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as a recurring motif, the sensory effect is indelible. Highlights that replay in this critic’s mind reel include: a close-up of the girl as she holds a blue cone to her ear and listens to nearby schoolchildren play; a high-angle shot of a circle of women in red, chanting; and a slow zoom out on a sea of white ribbons rippling in the wind. The film’s protagonist, the girl whose gaze bespeaks a fortitude that her physical fragility belies, comes to the camp alone. She is nameless, with no family or friends to vouch for her. It is the women, the witches, who take her in. One tattoos the girl’s forehead with three tiny dashes, to match the tattoos of the others. Another gives her a name, Shula, which means “to be uprooted.” These women give new contours to Shula’s innate resilience, which also lends the film a hopeful streak to offset its bitter humor and scathing social commentary. When Mr. Banda and his wife, a former “witch,” become Shula’s guardians and trot her out to the media for financial gain, Shula holds on to her power— which the witches have instilled in her, and which her oppressors cannot take away. Though her agency is extremely limited, down to the amount of space she is literally allowed to take up in the world, Shula refuses to be categorized, objectified, or underestimated. A fierce and auspicious talent, Nyoni too defies categorization. I can’t wait to see what she does next. v

m @leahkpickett 164 North State Street

Between Lake & Randolph MOVIE HOTLINE: 312.846.2800

I AM NOT A WITCH

JEAN-LUC GODARD’S

THE RISE AND FALL OF A SMALL FILM COMPANY

Sept 28 - Oct 4

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Sept 28 - Oct 4

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“Beautiful and strange…it’s rare and exhilarating that a new ﬁlmmaker arrives on the scene so sure of herself and so willing to take bold, counter-intuitive chances.” — Variety

“Diverting and substantial … Léaud’s performance is a marvel, both manic and meticulously controlled.” — NY Times

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www.siskelﬁlmcenter.org SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 21

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ARTS & CULTURE Mother’s Day

$22 TICKETS ON SALE NOW

IRISH AMERICAN MOVIE HOOLEY

9/28-9/30, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11.

ALSO PERFORMING: Daryl Nitz, Johnny Rodgers, Ann McGregor, Joe Policastro and Phil Gratteau!

CARDBOARD GANGSTERS ss

Directed by Mark O’Connor. 92 min. Sat 9/29, 8 PM.

MOVIES

Only six months till Saint Paddy’s Day The Irish American Movie Hooley shows oﬀ a wide range of storytelling from the Emerald Isle and beyond.

COVADONGA s

Directed by Sean Hartofilis. 71 min. Fri 9/28, 8:15 PM.

MOTHER’S DAY sss

Directed by Fergus O’Brien. 90 min. Sun 9/30, 5 PM.

By ANDREA GRONVALL

ike Houlihan, founder of the Irish American Movie Hooley festival, is so dedicated to Irish-American filmmakers and culture that this year he screened 50 domestic and international submissions before he and Barbara Scharres, director of programming at the Gene Siskel Film Center, settled on the three films they felt were the most consonant with the Hooley’s mission of furthering the traditions of Irish storytelling. Among them is Ireland’s highest-grossing indigenous production of 2017, Cardboard Gangsters, a crime story in the vein of early Matthew Vaughn, Guy Ritchie, Quentin Tarantino, and Matthieu Kassovitz ﬁlms about small-time crooks in over their heads. One might call its Darndale setting on the northern fringes of Dublin the Celtic version of a Paris banlieue: the district is the poorest in the Irish capital, plagued by narcotics, violence, and a general lack of opportunities for its low-income housing residents. The ﬁlm’s protagonist is Jason (John Connors), a bruiser still living at home with his mom, who’s in hock to the local drug kingpin, Derra (Jimmy Smallhorne). Jason’s occasional gigs as a nightclub DJ don’t

22 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

go far toward lowering her debt, so he decides, with the help of his lowlife crew, to encroach on Derra’s territory, a ballsy but tragically ill-advised move. Because many criminals have poor impulse control, letting their addictions and testosterone override any vestiges of logic, it’s not surprising that as Jason stresses out he’s tempted by Derra’s sultry wife, Kim (Kierston Wareing of Fish Tank), while his own hothead sidekick, Dano (Fionn Walton), proves to be a weaseling, colossal bungler. As the gang war escalates, Jason turns as lethal as Derra—at which point any sympathy for our “hero” is severely taxed. But director Mark O’Connor shows considerable skill at orchestrating action sequences, and Connors is very expressive as a strongman who’s not strong enough to thrive. Covadonga is an oddity, part ghost story, part mystery, but mostly a showcase for IrishAmerican writer-director Sean Hartofilis’s acting and musical talents. He plays Martin, a widower whiling away time in his expensive lakefront home in rural upstate New York. When not swimming or singing plaintive songs (some traditional Irish ballads, others

the filmmaker’s original compositions), he’s given to odd behavior like cleaning house in his bathrobe while dancing, Fred Astaire-like, with his floor mop. A cop checking on a missing persons report (the director’s father, George Hartofilis, channeling Peter Falk’s Columbo) inadvertently sends the crumbling Martin into a tailspin, and apparitions of his dead wife increase—or are they products of Martin’s unsettled mind? That we never find out is the underdeveloped screenplay’s biggest flaw. The strongest of the festival’s trio of films is Mother’s Day, a moving BBC drama based on a real-life late 20th-century campaign to end “the troubles” in Northern Ireland. On March 20, 1993, the Irish Republican Army set off bombs in a shopping area of Warrington, a town near the west coast of England, catching weekend customers unawares and killing three-year-old Johnathan Ball and mortally wounding 12-year-old Timothy Parry. The next morning, on Mother’s Day, Dublin housewife and mom Susan McHugh (Vicky McClure) reads a newspaper account of the terrorist attack and is so disturbed that she will become motivated to lead a peace initiative. Eventually she and her husband, Arthur (David Wilmot), cross the Irish Sea to arrive on the Parrys’ doorstep, greatly surprising Tim’s mother, Wendy (Anna Maxwell Martin), and father, Colin (Daniel Mays), who nonetheless welcome them in. Thus begins an unlikely alliance that will lead the two couples on journeys to places they hadn’t imagined visiting—including Belfast, where the McHughs have some gut-wrenching encounters with the families of Ulster’s victims in the long-running internecine conflict. One mother, remarking that Susan knows the names of the Warrington children, suspects the Dubliner doesn’t know the name of the Belfast woman’s own murdered daughter. Chagrined, Susan admits she doesn’t, prompting the aggrieved parent to ask if one slain child is more important than another. It’s in the many keenly observed moments like this that director Fergus O’Brien exhibits both a sharp eye for entrenched behavior and a humanist belief in the inherent impulse toward goodness that can inspire change for the better. O’Brien began as a TV and film documentary maker in 2003, then turned to narrative films with last year’s TV movie Against the Law. Mays was just as stirring in that film as he is in Mother’s Day; here he’s well matched by McClure, Wilmot, and Martin, who renders every gesture of her reticent character telling beyond words. v

ARTS & CULTURE Pick of the Litter

MOVIES

R Blaze

Ethan Hawke’s considerable gifts as an actor— sensitivity, imagination, empathy—are all evident in this directorial eﬀort, an ambitious, nonchronological biopic of little-known country singer Blaze Foley. Set mostly in the 1980s, the ﬁlm centers on Foley’s volatile relationship with his wife, actress Sybil Rosen (who wrote the memoir on which this is based and collaborated with Hawke on the script), though it also devotes much attention to his creative process and life on the road, providing a vivid sense of what it’s like to be a struggling musician. Newcomer Ben Dickey is remarkable as Foley—he conveys the singer’s self-destructiveness but without letting that overwhelm his charisma and gentleness—and Alia Shawkat, playing Rosen, is just as good. As in his documentary Seymour: An Introduction (2014), Hawke argues movingly that creative success has nothing to do with fame and everything to do with how an artist grows as a person and impacts the people around him. —BEN SACHS R, 127 min. AMC Dine-In Theatres Block 37, Landmark’s Century Centre

Colette

With a screenplay by writer-director Wash Westmoreland (Still Alice), his late spouse Richard Glatzer, and Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida), this biopic focuses on the early career of the bisexual French author SidonieGabrielle Colette, who started as a ghostwriter for her husband Henry Gauthier-Villars (pen name Willy) in fin-de-siecle Paris. Mirroring the radical Modernists’ eclipse of the old guard, Colette (Keira Knightley) struggles to surpass Willy (Dominic West), 14 years her senior and a libertine who prefers the glittering salons of wealthy elites to the sweat and discipline that honest writing demands. Marketing was the real-life Willy’s forte: he knew what people wanted, especially when it overlapped his own sexual fetishes (here, fantasies about schoolgirls and lesbians), so he pushed his wife to tap her youthful experiences for the four wildly successful Claudine novels. The movie’s treatment of her same-sex affairs may be as tasteful as the set design, but the film is an absorbing introduction to a trailblazing artist. —ANDREA GRONVALL R, 111 min. Fri 9/28-Sun 9/30, 11:20 and 11:45 AM, 2:15, 4:25, 4:50, 7:25, 9:30, and 10 PM; Mon 10/1-Thu 10/4, 2:15, 4:25, 4:50, 7:25, 9:30, and 10 PM. Landmark’s Century Centre

The House With a Clock in Its Walls Joe Dante would have been the ideal choice to direct a ﬁlm version of John Bellairs’s 1973 young-adult gothic fantasy novel about an orphaned boy who goes to live with his warlock uncle in late-40s Michigan, but for some reason, the producers entrusted the project to misanthropic schlockmeister Eli Roth (Cabin Fever,

Hostel). Perhaps they felt Roth was a good match for screenwriter Eric Kripke’s ruinous adaptation, which gives every character a schmaltzy backstory (thereby destroying Bellairs’s sense of mystery) and throws in lots of unnecessary bathroom humor. Jack Black (playing the uncle) and Cate Blanchett (as his best friend and partner in magic) are usually welcome screen presences, but they seem embarrassed and undirected here, and the less said about the child actors, the better. Still, the production design and special eﬀects—which feel closer in spirit to Pee-Wee’s Playhouse than Bellairs—are enjoyable. —BEN SACHS PG, 104 min. Crown Village 18, New 400, 600 N. Michigan

R Rodents of Unusual Size

The title of this engaging and informative documentary refers to the nutria, a large, rat-like mammal native to Argentina that was brought to southern Louisiana in the early 20th century with the aim of being bred for the fur trade. After fur became unpopular in the late 1970s, the nutria population exploded, with the animals becoming an invasive species that ate up much of the Louisiana wetlands. The movie concerns recent efforts to control the population, with short (and often wryly funny) profiles of trappers, furriers, chefs, and even a good-natured eccentric who keeps a nutria as a pet. Directors Quinn Costello, Chris Metzler, and Jeff Springer emphasize their subjects’ creativity and camaraderie, resulting in an upbeat, flavorful community portrait. This also generates a certain ironic humor by suggesting that the nutria problem was actually good for Louisiana because it led to the creation of so many new jobs. —BEN SACHS 71 min. Fri 9/28, 6:30 and 8:30 PM; Sat 9/29, 2:30, 4:30, 6:30, and 8:30 PM; Sun 9/30, 2:30, 4:30, and 6:30 PM, Mon 10/1-Thu 10/4, 6:30 and 8:30 PM. Facets Cinematheque

The Sisters Brothers

A passion project for producer-star Chloë Sevigny, this docudrama recounts the months leading up to the infamous Borden family murders of 1892. The film proposes that Lizzie Borden (Sevigny) murdered her father and stepmother because they tried to separate her from a domestic servant to whom she’d become romantically attached. Kristen Stewart delivers another fine performance as the servant, suggesting a sharp intelligence beneath the character’s subservient exterior, though her work seems independent of Craig William Macneill’s uninspired, straight-ahead direction. (Sevigny, however, is merely adequate.) Macneill’s approach might be described as a so-so impression of art-house understatement, with lots of wide-screen compositions that make obvious use of negative space and a flat tone that might be mistaken for dramatic restraint. —BEN SACHS R, 105 min. Fri 9/28-Wed 10/3, 1:55 and 7 PM; Thu 10/4, 1:55 PM. Landmark’s Century Centre

French director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Dheepan) takes a surprising turn into Americana with this semicomic western set in 1850s Oregon. John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix play the title characters, a pair of outlaw siblings who share a tender relationship with each other despite their murderous contempt for nearly everyone else. The ﬁlm also considers the friendship between a gold prospector (Jake Gyllenhaal) and a young inventor (Riz Ahmed) who dreams of starting a utopian socialist community in Texas; the two narrative lines converge gradually and relaxedly, as Audiard and cowriter Thomas Bidegain (adapting a novel by Patrick DeWitt) draw out themes of ruthlessness, loyalty, and capitalist enterprise. Neither a nostalgic throwback to traditional westerns nor a revisionist antiwestern, this advances a positive view of camaraderie between individualist western types while subtly critiquing the unfettered capitalist system in which they operate. As in most of Audiard’s ﬁlms, however, the observations seem conceptual rather than genuinely felt. —BEN SACHS R, 120 min. Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21

Pick of the Litter

Smallfoot

Lizzie

Pick of the Litter follows a litter of five puppies—Patriot, Potomac, Primrose, Poppet, and Phil—through a rigorous 20-month program to become service dogs through the San Rafael, California, organization Guide Dogs for the Blind. Once you get beyond the adorability factor of the furry students (or don’t), it’s easy to engage in their process and root for each one as they train to be paired with a person living with vision loss. Ostensibly about the dogs, the documentary also delves into the humans working toward their success, including veterinarians, trainers, “puppy raisers” (volunteers who house and socialize the pups for several months before sending them back to school); two people on the waiting list for guide dogs also share their stories. Though it could benefit from more context and history of guide dogs and a little less walk footage, the film offers compelling insight into a process most know little about—and whether they make the cut or not, there’s a happy ending for every dog. —JAMIE LUDWIG 81 min. Fri 9/28, 1:20, 3:20, 5:30, 7:30, and 9:30 PM; Sat 9/29, 11:30 AM, 1:20, 3:20, 5:30, 7:30, and 9:30 PM; Sun 9/30 1:20, 3:20, 5:30, 7:30, and 9:30 PM; Mon 10/1-Thu 10/4, 3:20, 5:30, 7:30, and 9:30 PM. Music Box Theater

This delightful CGI animation weds Asian folklore and contemporary western culture in its story of an outcast abominable snowman, punished by his Himalayan tribe for claiming to have seen a human being, which they believe can’t exist. But the disgraced yeti (given voice by Channing Tatum) is thrilled when he ﬁnds even more living proof of Homo sapiens in the form of a short, ratings-driven TV personality (James Corden) who can’t believe his own luck that Bigfoot’s real. Although it’s not on a par with the best of Pixar-Disney, this Warner Bros. release recalls the golden age of Looney Tunes in its energy, inventiveness, and subversive humor. If the screen is at times manically overcrowded and the songs too heavily pubescent power pop, the jokes ﬁre on all burners, and the message of enlightened tolerance couldn’t be more timely. Directed by Karey Kirkpatrick and Jason Reisig with the voices of Common, Danny DeVito, LeBron James, and Zendaya. —ANDREA GRONVALL PG, 96 min. AMC Dine-In Theatres Block 37, ArcLight Chicago, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14 Theaters, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, New 400, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place 11 v

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24 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

G Herbo on the campus of Anthony Overton Elementary é THOUGHTPOET

LET’S SEE THE COPS MESS WITH

GTHISHERBO TIME CHICAGO’S FAVORITE STREET RAPPER HAS JOINED A PROJECT TO TURN PART OF A SHUTTERED SOUTH-SIDE SCHOOL INTO A MEDIA LAB AND MUSIC INCUBATOR. The BLOCK BEAT BY

Words BY TIFFANY WALDEN

erbert Wright III, better known as rapper G Herbo, didn’t ask to be born to the ghetto. No child ever does. Only someone looking in from the outside would try to glamorize that life—someone who doesn’t walk around wearing a target that won’t come off. Raised in the east-side hood known J

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 25

G Herbo and a young boy shoot around in the gym next to Overton Elementary. é THOUGHTPOET

continued from 25 as “Terror Town,” Wright remembers being about eight years old the first time he saw someone killed in front of him. His mother was there too, and they didn’t say a word to each other. Despite his age, no one ever stepped in to suggest counseling for him. “I never heard of anyone that gets therapy. Like, who gets therapy?” says Wright. “If you was white and you saw a murder when you was eight, you probably would have been in therapy for, like, four years.” Wright, now 22, has grown up to be Chicago’s street-rap messiah, speaking to the inequality and injustice faced by the black community with a prophetic fervor that can recall Tupac’s. But outside his music, he doesn’t have those hard edges: he’s warm, funny, and down-to-earth. Last month the Triibe met him at the shuttered Anthony Overton Elementary School in Bronzeville, where he sat on a folding chair in a hot classroom and reminisced about some of the happier days in his childhood. Wright says he was a “talkative bad boy,” and he still has a bit of the class clown in him. But he didn’t have many chances to just be a kid. The only place he could go where trouble wouldn’t ﬁnd him was the Rebecca K. Crown Youth Center in South Shore, not quite six miles from Overton. After school, he and his friends could get warm meals and sometimes free clothes at the center. He went on CYC ﬁeld trips to Six Flags Great America—a big deal for a kid from an east-side family without means, who would’ve had trouble making the 40-plusmile trip to Gurnee. In the summers he hooped in the center’s basketball league with his best friend, Fazon Robinson—who became the namesake of Wright’s debut mixtape, 2014’s Welcome to Fazoland, after he was shot and killed in 2010. “I won my first MVP trophy there playing basketball. I’ll never forget,” Wright says. “I was probably ten or 11 years old. That was the best feeling in the world. I’m playing on a team with Fazon—people that’s years older than me. I wasn’t even the best player on the team. I was just playing my heart out.” Wright wants to help other black youth in Chicago create good memories, like the ones he cherishes from Crown. That impulse is

26 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

what brought him to Overton in the ﬁrst place. It’s one of the 50 public schools closed by Rahm Emanuel in 2013, and Wright is working with Joseph “JB” Bowden and Mikkey Halsted—his mentors and managers at Machine Entertainment Group—as part of a project that will revitalize the two buildings on its four-and-a-half-acre campus. Bowden, 44, is partners with real estate heavyweight Ghian Foreman (also president of the Chicago Police Board) in the Washington Park Development Group, which bought Overton in 2014. Foreman is spearheading the redevelopment of the main school building, and for now he’s keeping mum about his plans. But the Machine folks are driving the work on the Anthony Overton Child Parent Center, a smaller structure on the far side of the school’s parking lot, and they’re willing to talk: by late spring or early summer 2019 they hope to have the Child Parent Center serving the community again, this time as a tech incubator and multimedia center. And Wright is more than just a ﬁgurehead attached to the project to win over black youth—he’s contributing a percentage of the money he makes at his shows, including those on the tour that will bring him to Joliet in November. Wright’s team envisions the single-story

building at 4935 S. Indiana as housing music When Wright was 13, cuts to the After studios, offices, audio and video editing suites, School Matters budget prompted Chicago and merchandising, booking, and manage- Youth Centers to shut down the basketball ment services for musicians—a sort of buffet program he was in at Crown. Nothing like the of things record labels usually provide, from proposed Overton incubator existed for him, which artists can buy what they need. It will and he had nowhere else to go. “I couldn’t go to also offer free programs for my grandma house and mother kids, apprenticing them to prohouse, because people were fessionals and training them in literally trying to kill me that a variety of skills: music proused to hang on their blocks,” G HERBO, duction, graphic design, audio he says. SOUTHSIDE, QUEEN KEY editing. The ultimate goal is to Wright took to the streets, Wed 11/21, 8 PM, steer them into jobs. and gangbanging became his the Forge, 22 W. Bowden hopes the businessnew pastime. “The stuff y’all Cass St., Joliet, $35-$105, all-ages es will make enough money to look at us like outlaws for, gamsupport the free programs, so bling, that’s how we have fun,” that they can be self-sustaining he says. “We might shoot dice instead of relying on grants. and come up on $20. That’s how “That allows this to stay here forever,” he says. we ﬁnna eat for the whole week.” When Robin“Not like how they decide to cut this budget son, then 18, was killed in 2010—the result of and this budget and all of your funding is gone a ﬁght with a friend over a dice game—Wright and this goes to shit.” was just 14 and still in eighth grade. Wright knows firsthand how important a The closure of the CYC basketball program multimedia center could be to young people. left Wright to survive in an environment that “When we give the kids this, it’s what will offered little to no opportunities for black really make the difference,” he says. “Having youth. “When we was going to the center, we somebody that you feel cares about you could weren’t getting shot at,” he says. be the difference in saving a lot of these young By the time he was a sophomore in high kids’ lives.” school, Wright had begun to earn a repu- J

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Top: G Herbo on the Overton campus with Machine Entertainment Group principals Mikkey Halsted (left) and Joseph “JB” Bowden Bottom: The Anthony Overton Child Parent Center é THOUGHTPOET

continued from 26

tation as an offbeat rapper—one who used his words and his guerrilla-style YouTube videos to paint vivid pictures of life in his Chicago hood. Around that time, he was shot in the leg while out with his friend Marvin Carr, aka rapper Capo of Chief Keef’s Glo Gang. Though Carr wasn’t hurt in that incident, in July 2015 he would be killed in an apparent drive-by. In summer 2012, Wright released his breakthrough track, “Kill Shit,” collaborating with rapper Lil Bibby, a friend he’d met at Crown. He became an overnight Chicago sensation, and by the time he turned 17 that October, he’d dropped out of school. But he didn’t make up his mind to leave gang life till two friends— rappers Armani and Young Hustle—introduced him to Bowden. The older man took Wright under his wing and helped him realize that his talent could get him off the streets. Wright also met Foreman, who’s been a friend of Bowden’s for ten years. And because Halsted was looking for Wright, hoping to work with him, he ran into Bowden—leading to the formation of Machine Entertainment Group. Wright knows how lucky he’s been. “I had people like JB who wanted to see me win. I was really people’s favorite rapper, and I was out here risking my life every day,” he says. “I had to really take the time to myself and say, aight, this is gon’ be the difference if I really make it or not. I can’t be in the streets no more. I had to lose friends. I had to lose a lot of stuff. That was one of the toughest things I’ve ever did in my life.” Unfortunately, leaving the streets isn’t just a question of changing your own life. “You gotta commit sins just to take care of your mother, your father, your sister, your little brother. And then you got people trying to kill you for that,” Wright explains. “Then you’re like, ‘Fuck it. I don’t even want to do this shit no more. I’m about to get a nine-to-ﬁve.’ They still gon’ try to kill you. You done gave the streets away and everything, but the streets don’t forgive and they don’t forget.” In February of this year, Wright was arrested for aggravated unlawful use of a loaded weapon (though the arrest report doesn’t

accuse him of firing or even brandishing it). Two of his subsequent Chicago shows—the WGCI Takeover Jam in March and a concert at the Vic in April—were canceled at least partly in response to Chicago police advisories citing security concerns. Bowden understands why Wright had that gun—when he was Wright’s age, he says, growing up in Englewood, he carried weapons to protect himself. “He’s a very smart, intelligent kid,” Bowden says. “Will he make mistakes? Absolutely. But it’s our job to all get together and put our arms around him and protect him. Other than that, they’ll railroad him. They’ll have him sitting in jail.” That’s why Bowden is so passionate about building the multimedia facility on Overton’s

campus. He believes that if more black youth have access to mentors and entrepreneurs, people who look like them and take the time to nurture their talents and interests, Chicago’s black communities will thrive. “The biggest problem with the violence in Chicago is most people never really go in and sit down with these kids. If you don’t have no connection with these kids, they are not going to talk to you,” Bowden says. “What I try and do for Herb and all the kids is bring their gifts out. Everybody wanna see these kids grow. It’s not just Herb. We want to see all the kids grow.” He also wants Chicago’s black youth to be able to grow here, where they came up. He knows that Wright has considered moving to

a city where he’ll feel safer from the fallout of his old life. “When he’s out in LA, he walk around free,” Bowden says. “He should be able to do the same stuff here. If we don’t protect our youth, then we gon’ lose the war. The war ain’t with the old folks. We ain’t got the legs to go all day, all night.” Through the Washington Park Development Group, Bowden and Foreman purchased the Overton property for $350,000 (though the Child Parent Center accounted for just $25,000 of the total). Right now, Bowden says, they’re working to secure a zoning variance allowing commercial use for the plot where the multimedia facility will stand. He estimates it’ll cost another million dollars in renovations to get the facility up and running. “We’re going in it with our money, with our sacrifice, and Herb is contributing money from his shows,” Bowden says. “When he going out on tour, he got a certain percentage of his money because he wants it to go into the community.” For Wright, this project is a testament to his evolution as a man. On his latest studio album, this summer’s Swervo (a collaboration with producer Southside), he talks about being a hero to kids—and understanding the responsibilities that come with having such an influential voice. Wright wants his music to reflect his struggle as a black youth on the east side, but he also hopes to teach the next generation how to make it off the streets like he did. “When you a kid, you didn’t ask to be born into this world. You have a clean slate,” Wright says. “If you got a clean slate, why you gotta grow up in crack houses? Why you gotta grow up starving, not being able to do nothing, holes in your shoes on the first day of school?” Now that the choice is open to him, Wright is determined to take a healing path. “Now all my life consists of is me trying to be a better man, be there for my son and provide for my mother and aunties, and show the youth that I was that, now I’m this. You can be this too.” v

m @TheTRiiBE

The Block Beat multimedia series is a collaboration with the Triibe (thetriibe.com) that roots Chicago musicians in places and neighborhoods that matter to them. Video accompanies this story at chicagoreader.com.

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SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 29

Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of September 27

MUSIC

ALL AGES

FRIDAY28

PICK OF THE WEEK

Kikagaku Moyo bring their far-reaching Japanese psych to Thalia Hall—and Revolution Oktoberfest

Kikagaku Moyo See Pick of the Week. J Fernandez opens. 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $15. 18+ Lala Lala Dehd and Choral Reefr open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $10, $8 in advance. 21+ From her first dreary-but-dreamy garage-rock single as Lala Lala, 2014’s “Fuck With Your Friends,” it was clear Chicago musician Lillie West was planting the seeds of something great. Since then she’s developed her artistry over a handful of independent releases, and tonight she celebrates the release of her brand-new album, The Lamb (Hardly Art). On this record West (backed by Ben Leach on drums and Dehd’s Emily Kempf on bass and backing vocals) continues down the road she started on years ago with intimate recordings of confessional lyrics laid over pushy, hazy, and dark chords. But this time around she punctuates her introspective songs with massive, soaring, swing-for-the-cheap-seats choruses—reaching fragile high notes with her low voice. These are the type of songs that can make you feel nostalgic, sad, and warm all at once, and in this day and age, it’s refreshing to hear a rock record that’s so honest, down-toearth, and just plain good. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

O’My’s Kaina, Sen Morimoto, and Tasha open. 7:30 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage, $20, $18 in advance. b Singer-guitarist Maceo Haymes and singerkeyboardist Nick Hennessey are journeymen musicians whose work behind the scenes backing musicians onstage—they occasionally performed with Chance the Rapper during his ascent, and they continue to collaborate with him—have made their soul group, the O’My’s, a crucial point connecting Chicago’s hip-hop scene with young musicians é JAMIE WDZIEKONSKI

KIKAGAKU MOYO

J Fernandez opens. Fri 9/28, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $15, 18+. Kikagaku Moyo also play as part of Revolution Oktoberfest: Sat 9/29, 5:30 PM (gates at 12 PM), 2323 N. Milwaukee, revbrew.com/2018-oktoberfest, $5 suggested donation, all-ages

TOKYO-BRED PSYCH band Kikagaku Moyo have developed their

musical infatuations. The album also portrays a side of the band

music while focusing on a different aspect of the genre on each

that’s better capable of practicing restraint—their gnarled guitar

album. They started by exploring folksy strains on their 2013

theatrics are less commonplace here than on previous efforts. The

self-titled ﬁrst record, before engaging with ﬂower-power bounce

band slyly incorporate a sense of jazz wonderment into “Orange

on Forest of Lost Children the following year. In 2016, they took a

Peel” as a xylophone wobbles into the song’s ﬁnal portion, and the

laid-back stance on House in the Tall Grass, and on their upcoming

following track, “Amayadori,” brims with beauty, with synthesizer

Masana Temples, due out on Guruguru Brain in October, they’ve

washing across its plucked-strings melody. The ensemble are set to

gone relatively slick. The quintet’s musicianship has been readily

play in the round tonight at Thalia Hall, with the crowd encircling

apparent from the start, but on the new record they embrace their

the musicians as they perform. That’s likely to give the audience a

most impressive compositional voice to date. “Dripping Sun”

vivid view of a band stretching out to reach distant corners of their

is related with precision, and its disparate parts—wah-wahed

genre and enjoy at least a bit of the Motorik psych they trucked in

funk, a pastoral break, and fuzzy finale—starkly outline their

on earlier recordings. —DAVE CANTOR

30 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

Lala Lala é ALEXA VISCIUS

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

The O’My's é RYAN CHUN

who dabble in R&B, funk, jazz, and soul. Their new full-length, Tomorrow (Haight), shows how easily those worlds intersect. On “Puddles,” pitter-patter percussion and watery guitars provide a bedrock for hushed, luxurious vocal harmonies and forcefully rounded, rapid raps from the great Saba; throughout the song the band make measured movements to ensure that every transition ﬁts their relaxed mood. The core duo of the O’My’s have a habit of working with masterful players and big personalities, but with Tomorrow they band together with their buddies to make a quiet, reflective album. On “Idea” Chance tempers his tendency to smoke every second he’s on a track, instead oﬀering his voice as a puzzle piece for a much larger, splendid picture. The O’My’s do crank it up on the wistful, golden, classic-soul throwback “Baskets,” where Haymes’s brassy, weathered voice brings grit to a song that moves so smoothly it might as well be slathered in Crisco. —LEOR GALIL

SATURDAY29 Hyde Park Jazz Festival See also Sunday. This event takes place at 11 venues in Hyde Park. Suggested donation of $5 per set, $125 Jazz Pass provides preferred seating at select venues. For more information, visit hydeparkjazzfestival.org.

MUSIC

be played by a stacked septet of Chicago-based musicians. Gay—who draws from a pool of inﬂuences as vast as Reed’s on his debut album, spring’s Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun—will certainly stand out as a festival highlight if the quality of his performance is anything like that of his record. With his passionate singing, acoustic arrangements that float by with a little grit, and his incorporation of beats and electronics—which have a home in avant-garde jazz much as they do in hip-hop—it’s clear that Gay recognizes the importance of bringing both expected and unexpected inﬂuences into jazz. —IZZY YELLEN

In its 12th year, the Hyde Park Jazz Festival continues to program a diverse lineup of jazz artists. Over the course of two days, the event will showcase over 30 acts at various venues in Hyde Park while embracing countless styles, traditions, and innovations. Though there are plenty of big names on the bill—including Ravi Coltrane with Brandee Younger, Jason Moran (paying tribute to Willie Pickens and Muhal Richard Abrams), Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, and Dee Alexander—the fest

puts emphasis on giants in niche scenes. Two of the most eclectic, not-to-be-missed sets are an ensemble performance led by Mike Reed, The City Was Yellow: The Chicago Suite, and a solo set from Ben LaMar Gay. In the former Reed, a musician, composer, and arts presenter, digs into jazz, improvised music, and other genres made in Chicago between 1980 and 2010 in an eﬀort to create a “real book” of sorts that highlights the city’s rich musical lineage. This performance, the suite’s Chicago premiere, will

Kikagaku Moyo See Pick of the Week, page 30. Part of Revolution Oktoberfest. 5:30 PM (gates at 12 PM), 2323 N. Milwaukee, revbrew.com/2018-oktoberfest, $5 suggested donation. b Zeal & Ardor Astronoid opens. 9 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $16.50. 17+

“What if American slaves had embraced Satan instead of Jesus?” That’s the question used to describe the style of Zeal & Ardor, an audacious mix of black metal, Negro spirituals, electronic accents, and synth interludes created by Swiss-Ameri- J

FESTIVALS

Fall is festival season too Ex Hex play Friday, September 28, at Revolution Oktoberfest. é COURTESY GROUND CONTROL TOURING

Revolution Oktoberfest A wide spectrum of excellent rock bands—including Ex Hex, Kikagaku Moyo (see page 30), Melkbelly, Frankie Cosmos, and King Khan & the Shrines—play this party for beer lovers. Fri 9/28, 4 PM, and Sat 9/29, 1:30 PM, outside Revolution Brewing’s Brewpub, 2323 N. Milwaukee, revbrew.com/2018-oktoberfest, $5 suggested donation, all-ages Edgewater Arts Festival This north-side arts festival celebrates its

neighborhood with three stages of live music, including rock, blues, soul, salsa, flamenco, klezmer, and even barbershop. Sat 9/29 and Sun 9/30, 11 AM, Granville between Broadway and Sheridan, edgewaterartists.com, free, all-ages Hyde Park Jazz Festival See page 31. Sat 9/29 and Sun 9/30, multiple venues in Hyde Park, hydeparkjazzfestival.org, $5 suggested donation, $125 Jazz Pass includes preferred seating at select performances, all-ages

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 31

MUSIC continued from 31

can singer and multi-instrumentalist Manuel Gagneux. The closest analog might be the soulful, political, gospel-infused postpunk of Algiers, but Zeal & Ardor ratchets up the sonic animosity by an order of magnitude. It’s a genuinely moving amalgamation that channels the darkest chapter of American history while leaving ample opportunity to headbang. Gagneux wrote and recorded the project’s first LP, 2016’s Devil Is Fine, entirely solo. The album debuted to rave reviews, and for its follow-up, the recent Stranger Fruit (MKVA), Gagneux assembled a full band. Musically, Stranger Fruit is a melange of styles similar to its predecessor, but Gagneux places a greater emphasis on songcraft than before, and the results sound more composed than the somewhat disjointed, mashed-up feel of Devil Is Fine. On lead single “Gravedigger’s Chant,” he strips away nearly all traces of metal to deliver a chilling hymn powered by a simple piano melody, pounding percussion, and a crescendo of layered effects. The rest of the album is considerably heavier and no lighter in subject matter; on closer “Built on Ashes,” he chants, “At the end / When the fields burn / We are bound to die alone.” If you’re looking for one of the most unorthodox live shows of the year, don’t miss Zeal & Ardor tonight at Subterranean, which is part of the band’s first extensive headlining tour. —SCOTT MORROW

32 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

SUNDAY30

and though Nearer My God is clearly made by the same shabby DIY experimentalists, it’s a completely diﬀerent kind of record. A novella could be written about the stylistic chances Foxing took in making it, with passages about the odd percussion patterns on “Heartbeats,” the ambient interludes of the sprawling “Five Cups,” and the 80s-pop sheen of the dazzling go-for-broke title track. But though the music on the record diverges from their previous material, the band’s end goal in making these choices remains the same as ever: to capture a feeling of sensations and reﬂections that are intimate, but also feel too big for your body to contain. Nearer My God may not have a distinctively emo sound, but it’s the product of a group of musicians asking more of themselves, and that’s as crucial to emo as capos and catharsis. —LEOR GALIL

Hyde Park Jazz Fest See Saturday. This event takes place at 11 venues in Hyde Park. Suggested donation of $5 per set, $125 Jazz Pass provides preferred seating at select venues. For more information, visit hydeparkjazzfestival.org. Foxing Ratboys and Kississippi open. 7 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, sold out. b On Halloween night 2016, a truck pushing 50 miles an hour rammed into the tour van of Saint Louis emo upstarts Foxing. The band members were fine, but their vehicle was totaled. Among the many people who oﬀered their support to the band following the crash was former Death Cab for Cutie guitarist Chris Walla; he mixed the cover of Dido’s “White Flag” that Foxing recorded and released to raise money to cover the vehicle damages. So when it came time for the band to work on their third album, August’s Nearer My God (Triple Crown Records), they enlisted Walla to produce. “We wanted this to be bigger than we were capable of, especially when we knew Chris would be involved with it,” front man Conor Murphy told Stereogum in June. Foxing proved they could go widescreen with their 2013 debut, The Albatross,

Wayfaring, Klang 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $10 suggested donation. 21+

Zeal & Ardor é COURTESY THE ARTIST

Chicago nearly lost a unique and multivariate musical force when James Falzone left town for Seattle in 2016. He cast a wide creative net as a clarinetist, composer, improviser and bandleader, mixing Western and Middle Eastern classical forms, North American and Breton folk songs, and ritual trance practices into the jazz-rooted music he played on his own and with Allos Music Ensemble, Renga J

BTS é BIG HIT ENTERTAINMENT

MUSIC

Ensemble, Klang, and Wayfaring. He was also the music director for Grace Chicago Church and an instructor at several area colleges until he took a position as the chair of music at Cornish College of the Arts. Since he still has family ties here, he comes back to visit on occasion, and sometimes he makes time to play some music while he’s here. This Sunday night he’ll bring two bands to one of his old haunts, the Hungry Brain. Wayfaring is a duo with the similarly eclectic singer and double bassist Katie Ernst. They ﬁrst convened in 2015 and continue to gig sporadically despite the geographical distance between them, most recently in November 2017 to celebrate the release of You Move, I Move, a collection of originals, poetic recitations, and old spirituals and folk songs on his Allos Documents label.

The album’s title aptly describes the give-and-take of their collaborative style of playing, which is so intuitively supportive that the austere duo setting never feels incomplete. The second set will be the first performance by Klang—which includes vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, bassist Jason Roebke, and drummer Tim Daisy—since 2013. The quartet, which originally formed in 2006, never broke up, but the burgeoning careers of its other members ultimately made scheduling impossible. Klang’s music shifts fluidly between lyrical swing and jagged discontinuity, and the three albums they recorded for Allos Documents stand up as paradigms for jazz that embraces the lessons of the past while pointing toward the future. —BILL MEYER J

An Evening with

PAT METHENY with Antonio Sanchez, Linda May Han Oh & Gwilym Simcock

FRIDAY, OCTober 12

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SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 33

MUSIC

continued from 33

TUESDAY2 Amyl & the Sniffers Mama and the Muﬀ Divers open. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12, $10 in advance. 21+ One night in February 2016, a group of friends and roommates in Melbourne, Australia, decided to

34 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

have some fun and play a little music. By the next day they’d recorded and released an EP, Giddy Up, under the name Amyl & the Sniffers—“Amyl” comes from the name of front woman Amy Louise Taylor, and from there the joke is pretty selfexplanatory. This scuzzy four-piece is inspired by garage and early punk (speciﬁcally the gritty, explosive variety that bubbled up in Australia in the 70s and 80s), the rowdy, straightforward rock of AC/ DC and Rose Tattoo, and outlaw country, among other things. Amyl & the Sniﬀers celebrated their

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Telephone Sales Experienced/aggressive telephone closers needed now to sell ad space for Chicago’s oldest and largest newspaper rep firm. Immediate openings in Loop office. Salary + commission. 312-368-4884.

BTS See also Wednesday. 8 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, sold out. b On Sunday, May 6, while the world woke up to the peerless video Childish Gambino released for his song “This Is America,” I noticed something briefly trending above it on Twitter: “Singularity,” the minimal R&B song from K-pop juggernauts BTS. Less than two weeks later, the group dropped their third album, Love Yourself: Tear (Big Hit Entertainment), which became the first K-pop album to reach the top of the Billboard 200—a huge benchmark for a global phenomenon that’s slowly been crossing over into American culture. BTS ain’t the first K-pop act to land in the States—Rosemont Theatre has done a bang-up job of booking some of the bigger acts—but they’ll certainly serve as the measuring stick for American audiences as the stateside presence of K-pop increases. The group appears to have achieved a level of crossover success that few American acts can match— on a recent trip to Target I was pleasantly surprised to find Love Yourself: Tear in the store’s minuscule CD section. And BTS scored again at the end of August when they dropped Love Yourself: Answer (Big Hit Entertainment), which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Answer is a compilation, and as such it’s weighed down by the vulgarities of such a product; in this case that means more than two-dozen songs and an appearance by Steve Aoki. On the plus side, it’s also got big, glistening pop songs to fit any mood. But I’m more keen on the BTS tracks that suggest the best way to listen to them is standing by a window on a rainy day while forlornly gazing outside; “Epiphany” does that pretty well. —LEOR GALIL

WEDNESDAY3 BTS See Tuesday. 8 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, sold out. b v

DESIGN

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Master’s+1yr/Bachelor’s+5 yrs ex p/equiv. Integration Architect (PEIA18): IBM Integration Bus, J ava/J2EE, IBM WebSphere ESB, IBM WTX, UNIX Shell Scripting. Sterling Integrator Programmer (PESIPI18): SBI, Seeburger B2B, WTX, ITX, IBM Websphere Application Server. WTX Consultant EDI, XML, (PEWTX18): EDIFACT, IBM Middleware, Unix/ Linux.

CONSULTING AT KEARNEY INC. has openings (multiple levels) in Chicago IL (with extensive travel and/or possible relocation in unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.), for:

first anniversary last year with the release of Big Attraction, a collection of stripped-down ragers about sex, beer, good times, and working mundane jobs to pay for the next bender (and still make rent). They aren’t reinventing the wheel, but their supersolid songs embody the reckless spirit and irreverence of Aussie punk past and present—as the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t ﬁx it. When Amyl & the Sniﬀers are done with the Empty Bottle, on the other hand, there may be all sorts of shit in need of repair. —JAMIE LUDWIG

MECHANICAL

Engrr – Chicago-Under direction of Project Engr, resp for innovative & tech design solutions per proj reqs & applic codes. Engage in project team meetings; perform calcs, analysis, design complex comps & lead prod of plans, specs, reports, & other design docs. Reqs: BA/BS Eng, Mech Eng,Design + 5 yr exp in job or related; in lieu accept MS in req fields + 3 yrs exp. Will accept suitable combo edu, training, & exp. Prev exp must incl 1 yr exp each w/ Auto CAD, Computer drafting software packages Revit; Engineering exp w/ heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC) using Trace 700 and eQuest v-3.63. Send resumes to M. Ciesielska, EPSTEIN, 600 W Fulton St, CHI, IL 60661-1259 fax 312-4298800 No calls.

General Amyl & the Sniﬀers é JAMIE WDZIEKONSKI

positions may be assigned to various, unanticipated sites throughout the US. Job Code: US178: Computer Systems Analyst (Projects/Analysis): planning, testing & documents. Job Code US 179 Computer Systems Analyst (User Req.s/UAT): design documents, system apps & capabilities. Job Code US180 Software Developer (Design/ Support): development & maintenance + code & testing. Job Code US181 Systems Analyst/ Technical Lead: analysis, issue logs, and testing. Mail resume to: Prasun Maharatna, 2107 North First Street, Suite 100, San Jose, CA 95131. Include job code & full job title/s of interest + recruitment source in cover letter. EOE

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Network Objects, Inc. has multiple openings at multiple level for the following positions: Master’s +1yr exp/Bachelor’s +5 yrs exp/equiv.: SAP ABAP Analyst (NOSAA18): SAP ABAP, SAP R/3, SD, MM, HR, PP.; SAP SD Pricing Consultant (NOSDP18): SAP SD, Pricing, Rebates, Order management, ABAP, Vistex.; SAP BW/BO Analyst (NOSBW16): Experience in SAP.; SAP SD Solutions Architect I (NSAPSDI17): SAP SD, ABAP, MM, FICO, PP, Supply Chain.; SAP SD Functional Analyst (NSSF17): SAP SD, CS, GTS, SAP-EDI, SD-MM, ABAP. Mail resume with job ID to: HR, 2300 Barrington Rd., Suite 400, Hoffman Estates, IL 60169. Travel to unanticipated work sites throughout U.S. Foreign equiv. accepted

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PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Consult, design & implement Microsoft Dynamics apps-based solutions. Req. Bach’s deg. or foreign equiv. in IT, Comp Sci, Engg, Supply Chain Mgmt or rel. + 5 yrs post-bach’s progress. rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg. or foreign equiv. in IT, Comp Sci, Engg, Supply Chain Mgmt or rel. + 3 yrs rel. work exp. Travel up to 80% req. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1887, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.

MOUNT SINAI HOSP. Med. Ctr. of Chicago, IL seeks Senior SQL Database Administrator Administer, troubleshoot & monitor the 24 x7 production environment DB servers & assoc. infrastructure, utilizing SQL Server 20 05/2008/2012/2014. Req’s Bachelors in comp sci., comp. engg., info tech., or rltd tech. field + 8 yrs exp. as SQL DBA or DBA rltd. occ. Exp. Req’d: 8-yrs performing DB backup & recovery, monitoring & performance tuning. Send resume to S.Rayner, HR, 1500 S Fairfield Ave, Chicago, IL 60608 MXOTECH, INC. SEEKS Lead Consultants – Integration Developer

for Chicago, IL to provide tech leadership for integration projects. Master’s in Comp Sci +2yrs exp OR Bachelor’s in Comp Sci +5yrs exp req’d. Skills Req’d: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 or greater, OOP w/C#; SQL; WCF; .Net; SharePoint; data reconciliation; unit testing; automated & testing frameworks. Send resume to: E. Morales Ref: AC jobs@mxotech. com

T&L Evergreen LLC (TL’s Four Seasons), an Illinois restaurant, needs a Chinese cook. The duties involve preparing and cooking Chinese food entries and other related responsibilities. The position is located in Bartlett, Illinois, no travel required. Applicants should send resumes to 110 W. Bartlett Avenue Bartlett, Illinois 60103.

MARKETING SPECIALIST: Glen Ellyn. Research market condi-

tions. Prep reports. Gather data on competitors. Contact media to implement marketing campaign. Assist sales & marketing management w/ adv materials & communications media. Create, design layouts. Bachelor in Business Mngmt and/or Marketing. 2 yrs exp. Res: Mishle Home Health Care, Inc. seniorhelp@mishlehomecare .com

ADVOCATE HEALTH & Hospitals Corp. is seeking an Emergency Medicine Physician in Chicago, IL with the following requirements: MD or foreign equivalent. Residency in Emergency Medicine. IL Medical License. American Board Eligible or Certified in Emergency Medicine. Please submit resume to: Bonnie.Kriescher@advocatehealth. com and reference Code 031585 in subject line of e-mail.

ORBITZ WORLDWIDE, LLC

has openings for REPORTING & ANALYSIS MANAGERS (Job ID#: 728.2552) in Chicago, IL: Apply advanced analytical techniques from fields of statistics and data mining to help solve business problems. To apply, send resume to: Orbitz Recruiting, 333 108th Avenue NE, Bellevue, WA 98004. Must reference Job ID#.

SOFTWARE EXPEDIA, INC. has openings for SOFTWARE ENGINEERS (Job

ID#: 728.5470) in Chicago, IL: Design, implement, and debug software for computers including algorithms and data structures. May telecommute from home. To apply, send resume to Expedia Recruiting, 333 108th Avenue NE, Bellevue, WA 98004. Must reference Job ID#.

DESIGNER: design fine marble & granite fabrications & installations. Batch. degree & 1y exp.req. Mail res: Euro Marble Supply, Ltd, 4552 N Ruby St., Schiller Park IL 60167

PRIVATE DUTY NURSE Needed to provide care for 82 year old female stroke and diabetes patient.. Monday to Friday 9am to 3PM.

REAL ESTATE RENTALS

STUDIO $500-$599 CHICAGO, CAL PARK & Blue Island: Studio $625 & up; 1BR $700 & up; 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Parking. Call 708-388-0170

STUDIO $600-$699 SUNNY ANDERSONVILLE 2 bedroom, Modern bath, kitchen, hardwood floors, hutch, mini blinds, natural woodwork, balcony, no dogs, washer/dryer, deck, garage option. $1245. Oct 1st. 708-482-4712

Chicago, Hyde Park Arms Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, elevator bldg, phon e/cable, switchboard, fridge, priv bath, lndry, $165/wk, $350/bi-wk or $650/mo. Call 773-493-3500

STUDIO $700-$899 LARGE ONE BEDROOM near

red line. 6822 N. Wayne. Available for sublease through 1/31/19. Hardwood floors. Pets OK. $845/month. Available 10/15. (773) 761-4318

LARGE TWO BEDROOM du-

plex near Warren Park. 1900 W Pratt. 2 full bathrooms. Heat included. Private storage. Cats OK. $1600/month. Available 11/1. (773) 761-4318

LARGE ONE BEDROOM near

red line. 6824 N. Wayne. Hardwood floors. Pets OK. $950/month. Heat included. Available 11/1. (773) 7614318

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 35

STUDIO $900 AND OVER

1 BR UNDER $700

1 BR $1100 AND OVER

CHATHAM 7105 S. CHAMPLAIN, 1BR. $6 40.

CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957

77TH & WOOD 6Rm Apt, 2nd fl

2 Bedroom apartment, hdwd flrs + appliances. $625/mo plus security 708-228-3661 or 773-609-8566

S. SHORE 7017 S. Clyde. 1BR,

updated Kit/BA, ten pays heat, nr Metra & shops. $600/mo + $300 move in fee 773-474-0363

NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $133/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 6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200

7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2

HOORAY FOR HALLOWEEN

PROMO! 1/2 MONTH FREE! EXTRA LARGE 2 1/2 rm RAVENSWOOD studio located 1 block from Metra, Marianos Grocery, LA Fitness! LANDLORD PAYS HEAT AND COOKING GAS! Pretty hdwd ﬂrs, tons of closets! Lndry/storage on-site. 4832 N. Wolcott $1,055. www.theschirmﬁrm.com (773) 381-0150.

STUDIO OTHER LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888 CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

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

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

1 BR UNDER $700 GRANT VILLAGE WILL be accepting applications for their senior and disabled housing waiting list on Thursday, September 27, 2018 between 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. for studio and 1 bedrooms at the management office at 4747 S. King Drive. The waiting list is only open to the first 100 applicants.

7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-

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

NEWLY REMOD Studios, 1 & 2BR starting at $580. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat/hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St. 773-619-0204

1 BR $700-$799 AUSTIN 6000 Block of Wabansia. 4 rooms, 1BR, heated, 1st flr, fridge incl. $700/mo + 1 month sec. 773-637-2584

ALSIP: Updated 2BR apt, 1.5BA.

$700/mo + sec dep. Please Call Joe at 708-870-4801

9147 S. ASHLAND. Large Studio $700, CLEAN, QUIET & SECURE, dine-in kitc, hrdwd flrs, appls, lndry. No Pets. 312-914-8967.

KANKAKEE - 3BR Apartment, $750. Stove & fridge. Tenant pays utilities. Call 815-944-8375 or 678-687-3277

1 BR $800-$899 SMOKE FREE BUILDING!!! SOUTH SIDE 5 rooms, 1BR deluxe. 101st/King Dr. well maint.

appls/heat incl, no pets. $800/mo. plus sec. Mr. Ben. 312-802-9492.

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

& 3rd flrs, freshly updated, 3 lrg BRs, appls incl. $1000/mo. Tenant pays all utilities. 847-602-2416

QUALITY APARTMENTS, GREAT Prices! Studios-4BR, from

1 BR $900-$1099

$545. Newly rehabbed. Appliances included. Low Move-in Fees. Hardwood floors. Pangea - Chicago’s South, Southwest & West Neighborhoods. 312-985-0556

MIDWAY AREA/63RD 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)

HOORAY FOR HALLOWEEN

PROMO! 1/2 MONTH FREE! GORGEOUS extra large and sunny 1 bdrm in beautiful English Tudor courtyard building! Only 2 blocks from Irving Park “EL”! Hdwd ﬂrs, built-in bookshelves, builtin china cabinet, formal Dining Room! Lndry/storage on-site. 4233 N. Hermitage: OCT. 1. $1580, ht incl. www.theschirmﬁrm.com (773) 381-0150

1 BR OTHER APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. LTD. SUMMER IS HERE!!! MONST UNITS INCLUDE.. HEAT & HOT WATER STUDIOS FROM $495.00 1BDR FROM $545.00 2BDR FROM $745.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. LTD. SUMMER IS HERE!!! HEAT, HW & CG PLENTY OF PARKING 1BDR FROM $785.00 2BDR FROM $1025.00 3 BDR/2 FULL BATH FROM $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000*** ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled. Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫

$925/mo & 1BR apt, 1BA, $770/mo. Laundry, parking & storage. WICKER PARK, Apartment for rent, 4 rooms, sunny, hdwd 708-268-3762 floors, electronic security, great

CHATHAM 708 East 81st (Langley), 3rd floor, 4 room, 1BR Apt,

CHICAGO, 11422 S. Forest Ave. 1st

landscaping, 1 block to blue line, pets negotiable. Call 773-7728159 or call/text 773-430-7512 SUNNY & LARGE 2 & 3BR, hd wd/ceramic flrs, appls, heat incl’d, Sect 8 OK. $900 plus. 70th & Sangamon/Peoria. 773456-6900 NEWLY REHABBED UNITS, 1 2BR. Ceiling fans, 81st & Dobson, $950/mo. Section 8 Welcome. $500 Move in Fee. Call 773-978-1484 SECTION 8 WELCOME. 8 0 2 2 S. Maryland, 1BR, modern, appliances, off street parking, $625-$980/mo. Call 773618-2231

Chicago, 81st & May, 2 or 3 BR with large kitchen, newly decorated, on quiet block. Available now. $875 & $975. 773-4168800 OAK PARK - 1 & 2BR Apts, beautiful hdwd flrs, appliances included, $1000-$1400/mo. Section 8 Welcome. Call 630747-1994 LOOKING TO MOVE ASAP?

Remodeled 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR Apts. Heat & Appls incl. Sec 8 OK. Southside Only. 773-593-4357 ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT near Loyola Park. 1337 1/2 W. Estes. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. $975/ SUBURBS, RENT TO OW N! Buy with No closing costs and get month (heat included). Available help with your credit. Call 70811/1. 773-761-4318.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS 1st flr, 1BR Apt Heat & Water Incl. $990/mo. Call 847-526-0333

36 CHICAGO READER | SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

SECTION 8 OK; lrg nice 4BR apt in nice, quiet 2-flat, Peoria and 69th St., $1250/mo. We’ll accept 3BR voucher, 312-278-7302

2 BR UNDER $900

3BR apts for section 8 - voucher holders welcome. 773-703-8400

EAST CHATHAM, 4 room,

Decorated

WRIGLEYVILLE: 1800SF 3BR, snrm, new kit. w/deck, yrd, oak flrs, lndry. $1895/htd. ONE MO. FREE. NO DEP. urbanequities.com 773-743-4141

non-residential LOGAN SQUARE CORNER, 5400sqft, restaurant ready or other use, across from Blue line, negotiable for build out. For details, call Doris at 773-780-5000 6956 S. WENTWORTH.

LOVELY NEWLY DECORATED rooms available. $425/mo. Also,

PROMO! 1/2 MONTH FREE! HUGE RAVENSWOOD 2 1/2 RM STUDIO! REMODELED KITCHEN! GRANITE COUNTERS/STAINLESS APPLIANCES! LOVELY HDWD FLRS, LOADS OF CLOSET SPACE! LANDLORD PAYS HEAT AND COOKING GAS! Lndry/storage on-site. $1,100. 4914 N. WOLCOTT www.theschirmﬁrm.com (773) 381-0150

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499

3BR, 2nd flr, Living rm & Dining rm, 1BA, kitchen. $1200/mo + sec. Section 8 OK. 708-259-1841

ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

312-480-0436

$850/mo plus Sec, 2BR Den/Office. Heat/appls incl, no pets Available 10/ 1. 312-608-6378

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 RIVERDALE Newly

2BR. $775. Sec 8 OK. Heat & appl. Call Office: 773-966-5275 or

HOORAY FOR HALLOWEEN

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

7000 S. MERRILL: 2BR, hdwd flrs, lrg FR/snrm, new remod, cable ready, lndry, O’keefe Elem, $825/ mo. Section 8 welcome. 2219 E 87TH ST: 2BR, new bldg, across from Chicago Voc H.S., lndry, hdwd flrs, $900 incls gas, heat & prkg. 708-308-1509 or 773-4933500

69TH / CALIFORNIA 4 1/2 rms, 2BR, appliances, coin laundry, OH, near Holy cross hospital, $860 month + 1 1/2 months Sec Dep. O’Brien Family Realty. 773-5817883 Agent owned

CHICAGO, NEWLY DE C O RATED 2BR Apartment, hardwood floors, blinds, Appliances included. Close to transportation. $650/mo. Call 773-617-2909

CHICAGO, 205 N. LARAMIE, Newly Decorated 2BR Apt incl appls. $795/mo + 1 mo sec dep. Tenant pays all utils. Sect 8 Welc. 773-213-0441

SECTION 8 Ok; Brand new com-

ADDISON/PULASKI, VINTAGE BUILDING, large, sunny 5 room, 2

bedroom apt, hardwood ﬂoors, new appliances, close to Kennedy/Blue Line El, plenty of street parking, laundry facilities, heat included, no pets, no smoking, plenty of street parking, available October 1st, 1250.00 mo, 773-583-7863.

parking incl., hdwd flrs. $875/mo + sec. Near transportation. Available now. 773-957-3684

CHICAGO, 1900 S. Trumbull, Newly decorated 2.5BR Apartment, $700/mo + 1 mo sec. Call 773-626-8993 or 773-653-6538

BRONZEVILLE - REMOD 1BR.

SEC 8 OK! 4952 S. Prairie. $700 and up. Heat, cooking gas & appls incl, lndry on site. Z. 773.406.4841

6935 S. WASHTENAW.

Updated 2BR, 1st floor, Hdwd flrs, appls, nr school, heat incl. $900/mo + $900 sec dep. 773-434-9757

AUSTIN AREA 2BR, 1BA, hdwd

flrs, no pets, close to CTA & bus line. $800/mo. 1 month rent and 1 month sec. 773-237-5720

CHICAGO - 3351 W. 21st St., 2BR,

heat incl, no appls. $750/mo, 1 mo. sec + 1 mo rent. Call Mrs. Jackson from 9am-8pm. 773-521-8836

2 BR $900-$1099

OTHER

AUSTIN, 3BR, 1st floor of 2 flat, quiet neighborhood, near school & trans. Heat, appls & C/ A incl. Tenant pays elec. 708970-1441 COUNTRY CLUB HILLS 3BR, 1.5BA T.H., LR, DR, kit, 1 car attached garage. 1.5 mo sec req. 708-372-2861 or 708-799-1194

GENERAL SECTION 8 WELCOME 13356 S Brandon 4/1 W/D incl

2 BR $1500 AND

$1300. 7134 S. Normal. 4/2. $1250 225 W. 108th Pl. 2/1 w/ ht. $1000. appls inc. No Dep 312-683-5174

OVER

UKRAINIAN VILLAGE. RENOVATED 2 bedroom plus enclosed sun porch. Hardwood floors. Jacuzzi tub. Washer/dryer. Dishwasher. Exposed brick. High ceilings. Central air. Private backyard. $1550. 773-716-4500.

2 BR OTHER ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar

91ST & HALSTED, 2BR, appls &

pletely rehabbed lovely 3BR house, $1250/mo. Eggleston & 102nd St., 312-278-7302

3 BR OR MORE

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

6150 S. VERNON Ave. 3 Bdrm 6159 S. KING DR. 3 Bdrm 7649 S. PHILLIPS. 1-4 Bdrms 6943 S. WOODLAWN.

CHATHAM, 720 E. 81st St. Newly remodeled 1BR, 1BA, hardwood floors,

appliances & heat included. Call 847-533-5463.

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 3BD/1.5BA in Blue Island near

metro, large rooms, heat included. $1100/month. Ms Milly 708-489-6309/708-805-9322. Leave a message

SEC 8 OK. 6120 S. Justine, 3BR. $980. 1 mo sec. Tenant pays Electric and Gas, No Pets. 773-220-7070 Please lv msg

80th & Phillips, Beautiful 1st flr, 3 lrg BR, 1.5BA, new renov, hdwd flrs & appls incl. Off street prkng. $1100/

LARGE 4 BEDROOM house in Cottage Grove Heights. Hardwood ﬂoors, central air, 2 car garage, 2 bathrooms, full basement. Home warranty. Close to public transportation, plenty of shopping, Chicago State University and Bishop Ford Expressway. Tenant pays heat and utilities, owner pays water/sewer. Rent is $1,350 per month + 1 month security. Option to purchase is available. Open house Sunday, September 23rd from 2 to 5.

65TH & CARPENTER, 3BR, 2BA, 1 mo free w/Sec 8. $1250 /

mo. 116th & Racine, 3BR, 2BA, Sec 8 ok, $1375/mo. Carpet, No Sec dep. Call 773-684-1166

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 LARGE 3 BEDROOM, one bath room apartment, 4423 N. Paulina. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. $1790/ month. Heat included. Available

11/1. Parking space available for $75/ month. (773)761-4318.

MOVE RIGHT RICHTON PARK 3BR, 1.5BA T.H, Move-in Special, full fin bsmt, 1 car garage, hdwd flrs, SS Appls, loc friendly. $1600. 708-566-4101

6721 S. CHAPPEL . 4 bdrm Stainless steel appliances, hardwood flrs, granite countertops, laundry on site. No sec deposit $500 lease signing bonus Section 8 welcome 312-778-1262

SENIOR WOMAN in E. Garfield

Park looking for 3 Women 55 and older to share house & utils. No Smoking or drugs. Will do credit check. 773-574-2024 or 708-488-7753

FREE WEEK! 96TH & Halsted &

other locations. Large Rooms, shared kitchen & bath. $100/week and up. Call 773-673-2045

MARKETPLACE GOODS

sealed vintage bottles and decanters. PAYING TOP DOLLAR!! 773-263-5320

C- fans, appls, hdwd flrs, heated, intercom, near trans, laundry rm. $600/mo & up. 773-881-3573

NEW KITCHENS & BATHS.

101st/May. 1BR. 69th/Dante, 3BR. 77t h/Lowe, 2BR. 71st/Bennett. 2BR. Sec 8 Welc. 708-503-1366

FOR SALE LOOKING FOR A COUN TRY HOME WITH 10 ACRES IN WISCONSIN? Contact Tina Osterhaus, Exit Realty Premier Properties, 608-412-0179. Beautiful country homes with land. This weeks featured property is located in the drift less area of Steuben WI. Remodeled beautifully located home with 10 acres. Some Frontage along a stream for your personal use. This is a great recreation area for hunting, fishing, boating and ca mping.Sit back and enjoy the peace and quiet. http ://scwmls.

ublink/default.aspx?GUID=693a65315e10-4c82-a932-774d6cdc 9786&Report=Yes

NEAR CHAMPAIGN: 1.4 acre lot

CALUMET CITY 1st flr, hdwd flrs,

on beaut lake w/great fishing. Near Kickapoo Park w/hunting, horseback riding, bike trails, camping. Logs incl for 1600sf cabin $59,900 815-9199886

ADULT SERVICES

3BR, lrg DR, lrg LR, kitchen, bsmt, finished 6 carpeted rms, 2 car garage. $1500/mo. 708-466-2443

BUYING OLD WHISKEY/ BOURBON/RYE! Looking for full/

2BRS ON 70TH/ MAPLEWOOD & STUDIO & 1BR ON 73RD/ JEFFERY.

Chicago 1646 W. Garfield. 3 bdrm, 1 bath, newly renovated, hardwood floors, appliances included. $875/mo. 773-285-3206

mo & up. 312-818-0236

roommates

1-4 Bdrms

55 PLUS COMMUNITY

1 & 2 Bedroom Apartments Starting at $799 219-650-5000 or 219-314-8192

1700SQFT, newly rehabbed, suitable for daycare, $1500/mo. For more info Call Mario. 773-447-7947

OUTDOOR PATIO FROSTED

unbreakable glass table, 6 three way recline chairs, all clean cushions, 1 leg rest, 1 side table. $180.00. Additional yellow umbrella w/cover and weighted base. $20.00, originally over $700.00, perfect condition, approx. 6 yrs. old. Cash Only, pick-up required.

BLOCK SALE, SATURDAY, 29-

Sep-2018 1100 Block S Humphrey Ave, Oak Park, IL Everything imaginable including children’s, women’s, and men’s clothing; toys, tools, housewares, electronics, and furniture.

ADULT SERVICES

GLENWOOD, Updated large 2BR Condo, $990/mo. HF HS, balcony, C/A, appls, heat/water incl. 2 pkng, laundry. Call 708.268.3762 2107 E. 67TH ST . 2BR, 1BA, hdwd flrs, SS appls, cent heat & air, dishwasher & W/D in unit. Starting at $1100/mo. Call 773-704-3505 BRONZEVILLE- 42nd & Indiana. 2nd flr. Gut rehab 2BR, hdwd flrs, maple kitc cabinets & windows, Sec 8 Welc. $995. 773-447-2122. 2, 3 & 4BR Central/Jackson. $900-$1550. 5BR House. $1600. 3BR. Pulaski/Cermac $950. Tenant pays utils & sec 847-720-9010 639 E. 90TH St., Gorgeous, 2BR, 1st flr, updated kit & bath. $ 875/mo + 1 mo sec. Clean & Quiet. No Pets. 773-930-6045

868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com

2 BR $1100-$1299

CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com

8034 S. Harvard Ave., 2BR Apt $1100/mo + utils. Room to share, $550/mo, utils incl. 1 mo sec required. Call 773-6638182

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

Stuck—again—in a bad relationship, this time sexually

A 62-year-old woman wonders what to settle for after her new partner turns out to prefer his own hand. Q : I’m a 62-year-old woman. I

was married for 33 years and left ﬁve years ago. We hadn’t gotten along for years, but he never stopped wanting or valuing me for sex—in spite of treating me like a household appliance and cheating on me regularly. Not long after the marriage ended, I met a guy online (my same age) who ticked nearly every box on my partner checklist—one of which was an ongoing interest in maintaining sexual relations. In the beginning, things were hot and crazy— but they cooled after a few months (going from once or twice a day to maybe once a month). Other than that, the relationship continued to grow and we enjoyed being together. I tried to carefully broach the subject, but he was not forthcoming. I’m not proud of it, but I checked his Internet history. Big surprise: LOTS OF PORN. No animals or children, but pretty much everything else, with an accent on trans. Eventually, I admitted my sleuthing and asked if his viewing habits were an indicator of his interests or the reason he had turned away from me. After the anger subsided, he explained that he had been single most of his life and had more or less gotten used to taking care of business solo. Also that the women he had been with who ﬂoated his boat sexually had been bad (crazy/unstable) in the partner department, and the good partners (me) had been less than satisfying for him in bed. The bottom line is that we are compatible in most every other area and have built a comfortable life together. We have intercourse every four to six weeks, and maybe once in between he will pleasure me. I enjoy both, and also take care of myself once a week. The struggle for me is more

ego-driven. I’m no raving beauty, but I am reasonably ﬁt and attractive for my age, and (used to) enjoy feeling desired and valued sexually. Can I get to the place of letting go of that and enjoy the rare occasions of physical congress? —SEX ADVICE PLEASE

A : “Good for her for getting

out of a marriage where she was treated like a ‘household appliance’ and getting back in the dating game,” said Joan Price, author of the books Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex and The Ultimate Guide to Sex After 50. “But her new relationship, while it sounds comfortable and aﬀectionate, doesn’t sound sexually fulﬁlling.” This relationship doesn’t just sound unfulfilling sexually, SAP, it sounds infuriating generally. You were led into this relationship under false pretenses. You let your partner know that “an ongoing interest in maintaining sexual relations” was a priority for you, and he allowed you to believe it was a priority for him. In fairness to him, SAP, he may not have known himself to be incapable of sustaining a strong sexual connection, seeing as he’s been single for most of his life. But even if he wasn’t aware he couldn’t meet your needs then, that doesn’t change the fact that you aren’t valued/ fucked the way you want to be valued/fucked now. “I think her best option is to stay friends with this guy but start dating and having sex with others,” said Price. “She could continue to have occasional sex with this man if they both agree to a nonexclusive, friends-with-benefits arrangement. Or they could become platonic pals, if that’s better for them. But

it’s imperative that she talk candidly with him.” You write that you tried to “carefully broach the subject, but he was not forthcoming.” Price wonders whether you were forthcoming yourself. “‘Carefully broach’ usually means ‘I was vague,’” said Price. “Suppose, instead, she said, ‘I really value you, but I don’t think we’re wellmatched sexually. How can we adjust our relationship so we’re not putting sexual pressure on each other and we’re both free to find other sexual outlets?’ Your partner has an outlet that works for him, but you don’t have an outlet that provides you with the feeling of being desired and valued sexually. “SAP deserves a partner who matches her sexually,” said Price. And I agree. If you’re telling yourself that you’ll have to settle for someone who claims he can’t perform for you because you’re not unstable enough to turn him on—you do realize that compliment he paid you (you’re so good!) was actually a dishonest bit of blame shifting/responsibility dodging, right?—then you’re selling yourself short. “I know from personal experience and from the swelling of my inbox that many of us find hot, fabulous sexual partners in our 60s, 70s, and beyond,” said Price. “It’s never too late. She shouldn’t settle for sex that’s less than satisfying, and neither should he. If that means she looks for new partners and he returns to his solo pleasure with the porn he prefers and the hand that knows him best, they might both be happier.” v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at thestranger.com. m @fakedansavage

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SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 37

Flasher é JEN DESSINGER

NEW

Bas 2/10, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Bells Atlas 10/24, 9 PM, Hideout Brother Ali 12/9, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Pieta Brown, David Huckfelt 11/8, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 9/28, 8 AM b Buke & Gase 11/3, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle CKY, Nekrogoblikon 10/29, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Cowboy Junkies 4/13-14, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 9/28, 8 AM b Anthony David 11/26, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/27, noon b Devil Wears Prada 11/23, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Felly, Gyyps 12/1, 6:30 PM, Patio Theater Flasher 12/4, 9 PM, Hideout Haley Fohr & Corey Fogel 10/6, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Donavon Frankenreiter 2/18, 6:30 and 9 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/27, noon b Kenny Garrett Quintet 12/1, 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 9/28, 10 AM b Guided by Voices 12/31, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 9/28, 10 AM Interpol 2/7, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 9/28, 10 AM Jerusalem in My Heart 3/26, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Kimbra 12/5, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Jennifer Knapp & Margaret Becker 12/2, noon, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/27, noon b

Pokey LaFarge 11/27, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/27, noon b L’Imperatrice 5/13, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Amber Liu 12/5, 7:30 PM, Park West, on sale Fri 9/28, 11 AM b Longleash 11/11, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Katharine McPhee 11/5, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/27, noon b Metric, Zoe 3/22, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Sat 9/29, noon, 17+ Mom Jeans 11/8, 6 PM, Subterranean b Nai Palm 10/16, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Nothing,Nowhere 12/19, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge b Lary Over 11/7, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Paris Chansons 12/14, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 9/28, 10 AM b Peel Dream Magazine 11/7, 9 PM, Hideout Pentatonix 12/11-12, 7 PM, Rosemont Theater, Rosemont, on sale Fri 9/28, 10 AM Stelios Petrakis Quartet 11/9, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 9/28, 8 AM b Billy Raﬀoul 11/5, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Saint Jhn 11/24, 9 PM, Metro, 17+ 10,000 Maniacs 2/14 and 2/15, 8 PM; 2/16, 5 and 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/27, noon b Richard Thompson Electric Trio 12/7-8, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 9/28, 10 AM, 17+ Tropa Magica 11/23, 9 PM, Empty Bottle 2cellos 3/26, 7:30 PM, United Center, on sale Fri 9/28, 10 AM

38 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 27, 2018

Velvet Acid Christ 12/8, 9 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Ryley Walker 12/28, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 9/28, 10 AM Peter Wolf & the Midnight Travelers 11/14, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/27, noon b 11/15, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 9/28, 10 AM b Xibalba Itzaes, Unholy Lust 12/7, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge Yung Pinch 11/14, 6:30 PM, Patio Theater

UPDATED Emancipator Ensemble, Papadosio 10/5, 8 PM, the Vic, moved from Riviera Theatre, 18+ Beth Hart 4/25, 7:30 PM, Park West, rescheduled from 9/19, 18+ Lil Xan 10/2, 6:30 PM, House of Blues, canceled Liz Phair, Speedy Ortiz 10/13-14, 9 PM, Metro, 10/13 sold out, 10/14 added, 18+ Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin 11/18, 3 and 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, late show sold out, early show added

UPCOMING Acid Dad 11/2, 9 PM, Empty Bottle AJJ, Kimya Dawson 10/9, 7 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Lily Allen 10/31, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Edward David Anderson 11/10, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Antarctigo Vespucci, Katie Ellen 11/8, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Basia 10/10, 6:30 and 9 PM, City Winery b

b Bass Drum of Death 11/1, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Black Tiger Sex Machine 10/13, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Algebra Blessett 10/25, 8 PM, City Winery b Brockhampton 10/28, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Captured Tracks X with Lina Tullgren, Wax Chattels, and Drahla 11/5, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle F Cloud Nothings, Courtneys 12/14, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Phil Collins 10/22, 8 PM, United Center Cursive 11/15, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Cutout 11/9, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Death From Above, Les Butcherettes 11/16, 8:30 PM, Metro b Dirty Projectors 11/11-13, 9 PM, Sleeping Village El Ten Eleven 11/10, 9 PM, Chop Shop, 18+ Exploded View 11/1, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Garden 11/23, 7:30 PM, Cobra Lounge b Ghost 11/1, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Gorillaz 10/16, 7:30 PM, United Center Grapetooth 11/11, 7 PM, Thalia Hall b Haerts 12/10, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Her’s 11/11, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Horse Feathers 10/24, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston Jawbreaker 11/4, 6:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Junglepussy 10/13, 8 PM, Chop Shop, 18+ Lemon Twigs 1/25, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Lettuce 10/4, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Like Moths to Flames, Oceans Ate Alaska 11/9, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Low 11/16, 7:30 PM, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel b Marias, Triathalon 11/24, 9 PM, Sleeping Village Jon McLaughlin & Matt Wertz 11/18, 4 and 8 PM, City Winery b Menzingers, Tiny Moving Parts 11/14, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Rhett Miller 12/20, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Misﬁts, Fear, Venom Inc. 4/27, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Murder by Death 10/6, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Ocean Blue 10/14, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Odonis Odonis 11/4, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Nnamdi Ogbonnaya & Sen Morimoto 11/9, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Oh Sees, Timmy’s Organism 10/12, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

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

Phish 10/26-28, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Post Animal 12/15, 8 PM, Metro b Procol Harum 2/20-21, 8 PM, City Winery b Jessie Reyez 11/13, 7 PM, Lincoln Hall b Gruﬀ Rhys 10/14, 8 PM, Chop Shop, 18+ Ringworm 10/8, 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Saves the Day, An Horse 11/2, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Travis Scott, Trippie Redd 12/6, 7:30 PM, United Center Snail Mail 1/17, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Terror, Harm’s Way 10/10, 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Twenty One Pilots 10/17, 7 PM, United Center Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons 11/3, 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre Kurt Vile & the Violators 12/22, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Matthew Welch 10/21, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Wild Nothing 11/9, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Pete Yorn 10/23, 7:30 PM, Park West, 18+ Zhu 10/5, 9 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+

SOLD OUT Bonnie “Prince” Billy 10/7, 7:30 PM, Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago Bully 10/18, 9 PM, Hideout Cavetown 12/8, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Denzel Curry 10/4, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b Chelsea Cutler, Christian French 10/2, 8 PM, Chop Shop, 17+ Billie Eilish 10/28, 7 PM, Metro b Every Time I Die, Turnstile 11/12, 6 PM, Metro b Laura Jane Grace & the Devouring Mothers 11/8, 8 PM, Hideout Conan Gray 11/13, 7 PM, Schubas b Jim James, Alynda Segarra 11/9, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Tom Morello 10/8, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Tenacious D 11/13-14, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Lucinda Williams 11/17, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, Oak Park River Forest Food Pantry Beneﬁt Thom Yorke 12/4, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene EARLY ON SATURDAY, September 15, Chicago experimental musician Brett Naucke got home from the High Zero Festival to find he’d been robbed. The items stolen included an iMac and two hard drives that held an album he’d finished just days before. The product of nine months’ work, it was slated for release on the label run by synth manufacturer Make Noise— which will now put out a different and still forthcoming Naucke album, for obvious reasons. “Because I’ve been playing one of the songs live, one of the tracks was completely salvageable,” Naucke says. “It’s actually on my laptop, which is not stolen.” Unfortunately there’s no practical way to re-create the rest of the record. Naucke’s girlfriend Natasha Ryan launched a GoFundMe last week to pay for replacement equipment, and it passed its $1,600 goal in a few hours. He aims to complete a new album this year—the robbery, he says, “put me in supercharged mode.” On Wednesday, October 3, Humboldt Park arts space Threewalls hosts Artificial Light: 365 Days of Sun, a collaboration by artist Makeba Kedem-DuBose, dancer Ennis Martin III, and composer Renee Baker—it’s inspired by the music of Nina Simone and by the stigmas attached to mania and depression. The collaboration features Kedem-DuBose’s drawings, Martin’s choreography, and a performance by Baker’s Chicago Modern Orchestra Project. The evening closes with a talk led by Adler psych professor Nataka Moore. When Life Sentence were active on the Chicago crossover thrash scene, Reagan was president, Metallica were decent, and kids still hung out at Punkin’ Donuts. The band’s short existence was so contentious that dueling lineups played around town before the members settled in court. Mosh-tastic jams such as “Punks for Profit” make their self-titled 1987 debut LP a classic—and on Friday, October 5, it’s getting reissued on vinyl and CD via Bandcamp, augmented by demos and live cuts. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

SEPTEMBER 27, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 39

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