Chicago Reader print issue of October 19, 2023 (Vol. 53, No. 1)

F R E E A N D F R E A K Y S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | O C T O B E R 1 9, 2 0 2 3

In a rat trap, you’ve been caught p. 18 | rats—now and forever p. 34 | There’s a rat in my kitchen, what am I going to do? p. 12

THIS WEEK

C H I C A G O R E A D E R | O C T O B E R 1 9, 2 0 2 3 | V O L U M E 5 3 , N U M B E R 1

IN THIS ISSUE

LETTERS

04 Editor’s Note You talk, we listen.

notorious Chicago rats are the twolegged variety.

25 Isaacs | Culture Maus in wartime

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

THEATER

06 The To-Do Chicago events you should know about.

08 Pets Rx for sick rats

34 Reviews Two Chicago shows put the maligned rodents in the spotlight.

36 Plays of Note Household Spirits at Theater Wit, Night Watch at Raven Theatre, and Seagulls at Pleasant Home.

FOOD & DRINK

FILM

CITY LIFE

10 White | Ratso A legendary Chicago rat talks street food.

NEWS & POLITICS 12 Brown | Infestations In the rattiest city, tenants battle rodents—and landlords.

26 Op-Ed | Artist Jenny Kendler in defense of rats

ARTS & CULTURE

38 Rat Movies The menace of the little guy in films 40 Movies of Note Killers of the Flower Moon finds the right momentum, Old Dads has Bill Burr up to old tricks.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

OPINION

28 Profile Annie Howard on identifying with rats 30 Unions Inside the union campaigns at Newberry Library and ChiArts.

32 Shows to see Recommended exhibitions to see, including Jimmy DeSana at Document 16 Brown | Scabby An inflatable rat with a right to free speech 18 Prout | Posters What rat abatement posters reveal about Chicago’s cultural and historical past.

52 Savage Love Dan Savage has quick answers to your sex questions.

CLASSIFIEDS

42 City of Win Kenyan-born Chai Tulani takes inspiration from across the African diaspora.

44 Chicagoans of Note Josh Piotrowski, DIY haunted-house builder and noise musician 46 Shows and Records of Note Previews of concerts including

COMMENTARY

24 Joravsky | Politics Three

Deeper, the Cosmic Country FiveYear Anniversary Showcase, and a Duro Wicks Hip-Hop Birthday Joint & Lower Links Reunion 50 Early Warnings Must-see shows 50 Gossip Wolf Macie Stewart gives her solo songs their grandest canvas yet, dream-pop artist Lipsticism releases a new album that came out in a rush, and more.

54 Jobs 54 Research 54 Professionals & Services 54 Matches 54 Auditions 54 Community 54 Adult Services ON THE COVER: ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE CENTENO. FOR MORE OF CENTENO’S WORK, GO TO MIKECENTENO.COM.

CEO AND PUBLISHER SOLOMON LIEBERMAN ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER AMBER NETTLES EDITOR IN CHIEF SALEM COLLO-JULIN MANAGING EDITOR SHEBA WHITE ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR SAVANNAH HUGUELEY PRODUCTION MANAGER KIRK WILLIAMSON SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER AMBER HUFF THEATER AND DANCE EDITOR KERRY REID MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO CULTURE EDITOR: FILM, MEDIA, FOOD & DRINK TARYN ALLEN CULTURE EDITOR: ART, ARCHITECTURE, BOOKS, LITERARY ARTS KERRY CARDOZA NEWS EDITOR SHAWN MULCAHY ASSOCIATE EDITOR AND BRANDED CONTENT SPECIALIST JAMIE LUDWIG DIGITAL EDITOR TYRA NICOLE TRICHE SENIOR WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, MIKE SULA FEATURES WRITER KATIE PROUT SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTER DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN STAFF WRITER MICCO CAPORALE SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT ASSOCIATE CHARLI RENKEN ---------------------------------------------------------------VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS ANN SCHOLHAMER CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER DIANE PASCAL VICE PRESIDENT OF PEOPLE AND CULTURE ALIA GRAHAM DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS CHASITY COOPER MULTIMEDIA CONTENT PRODUCER SHAWNEE DAY DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE MICHAEL THOMPSON TECHNOLOGY MANAGER ARTURO ALVAREZ OFFICE MANAGER AND CIRCULATION DIRECTOR SANDRA KLEIN VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES AMY MATHENY SALES TEAM VANESSA FLEMING, WILL ROGERS DIGITAL SALES ASSOCIATE AYANA ROLLING MEDIA SALES ASSOCIATE JILLIAN MUELLER ADVERTISING ADS@CHICAGOREADER.COM CLASSIFIEDS: CLASSIFIEDS.CHICAGOREADER.COM NATIONAL ADVERTISING VOICE MEDIA GROUP 1-888-278-9866 VMGADVERTISING.COM JOE LARKIN AND SUE BELAIR ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com 312-392-2970

THIS WEEK ON CHICAGOREADER.COM

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Wrestling with the Gods Lucha libre makes a grand entrance at Destinos in Lucha Teotl.

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The Rooks revisited

A 60s garage-rock band released one single but left its mark.

Ghosts fill the Raven Theatre Peter Malmö reimagines the Mexican classic Pedro Páramo in remote Wisconsin.

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Community m Letters

EDITOR’S NOTE

Re: “How many opioid overdoses occur on the CTA?” by Katie Prout in the October 5, 2023 issue (Vol. 52, No. 26) I was witness to [a possible overdose] on the Blue Line in 2022. Injection of naloxone (actual medication not confirmed) was administered to no avail. Narcan and naloxone are great if understood how to administer. However, there is clearly a bigger and deeper issue beyond just making these products available. —Nathan Snydacker (snackysnackman), via Instagram Free Narcan in every train station— onboard ads reviewing when and how to administer naloxone. Encourage every rider to carry Narcan and be prepared to save a life. Thanks for this important reporting. —Robin Hustle (porouslyours), via Instagram Re: “Chicago indie rock mourns Ryan Deffet of Space Gators” by J.R. Nelson and Leor Galil (Gossip Wolf) in the October 5, 2023 issue (Vol. 52, No. 26) I had a class with this man at Columbia College Chicago. It breaks my heart to know that a good dude like him has passed away. #RIP #gonetoosoon —Tyler Michael Balentine (tuuu_nineteen), via Instagram Re: “The good of the night: remembering DJ Teri Bristol” by Jacob Arnold (at chicagoreader.com, posted October 5, 2023) She will always be a total legend. You knew it was going to be a great night if she was spinning. —Michael Betancourt, via Facebook Find us on socials: facebook.com/chicagoreader twitter.com/Chicago_Reader instagram.com/chicago_reader

Our production manager Kirk Williamson asked illustrator Mike Centeno to use Lou Grant and All the President’s Men as inspirations for this week’s cover.

MIKE CENTENO FOR CHICAGO READER

W

hen I was around five years old, my mother and I were standing on Canal Street near what is now called the Ogilvie Transportation Center. I had my back to the street, eyes on my mom. There was a rumbling under the ground and I remember watching the aglet from my shoelace shake a little. My mom said nothing, picked me up, and sat me on top of a Chicago Tribune newspaper box.

Seconds later, a large mass of what looked like sewer rats (in my five-year-old mind there were many but it’s possible there were just two or three big ones) ran up onto the sidewalk from inside the sewer grate and passed us. One seemed to scurry across my mom’s shoe. My mom says I said my first swear word that day (but I’m sure it was earlier, we are an expressive bunch).

We all have rat stories and if you haven’t dealt with your share of sometimes scary, sometimes unwanted rodents—do you really live in a city? This issue was produced with October’s rush of urban fauna gathering treats to store in their nests and hopefully make it through the winter, but also produced with an eye on the flurry of heavy and terrible news in the world.

We examine all kinds of rats here: the literal Rattus norvegicus that one might find tromping through one’s compost pile, people who “rat” on others for a possible lesser prison sentence, and the politicized and racist atmospheres that can lead to politicians and others dehumanizing people by comparing them to rodents. We hope you find some solace and points of conversation; let us know what you think.

We made it to Volume 53 with this issue!

Here’s the state of things: Supreme Court justices (at least one particular gas bag) don’t

4 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

seem to understand the role of the free press.

The American populace is constantly sold the idea that several corporate entities provide media that streams into products that they enticed us to buy and this means that we all have “the world at our fingertips” (unless, of course, you’re looking for a diversity and randomness of information and opinions that skirts the algorithms). We here at the mighty Chicago Reader are proud to be in our 53rd year, but we don’t do this to stand alone. Support locally produced, community-based, non-

profit, and people-powered media. Every time you pick up our paper or go to our website, seek out another local Chicago news source at the same time. We want endless newspapers, for each block of our city, countless podcasts, homemade television shows, low-powered and high-powered radio stations, consistent communication, free and available to all. More voices. More readers. v —Salem Collo-Julin, editor in chief m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com

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OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 5

CITY LIFE calendar

The To-Do Upcoming events and ongoing activities you should know about

By MICCO CAPORALE

It’s scary how much fun stuff is happening right now! Spooky season never misses.

F

or a classic autumn adventure appropriate for the whole family, look no further than the annual It Takes a Village (ITAV) Pumpkin Patch . Happening on Saturday, October 21, this free event includes a petting zoo, a bounce house, face painting, food, games, a train, and—oh yeah!—a pumpkin to take home and carve. ITAV is converting the parking lot of their Division Street location (4020 W. Division) into a pumpkin patch, but the fun sprawls across the block. The event happens from 10 AM-2 PM. Reservations are required to guarantee a pumpkin. linktr.ee/itavschools Does a four-on-the-floor beat bring out your devilish side? Sanctum Dark Music Festival might be for you. Now in its second year, this festival is a celebration of macabre club culture, and it provides a reliable sampling of the hottest established and emerging acts in synth pop, darkwave, and electro-industrial. Running from Thursday, October 26 to Saturday, October 28, the fest opens with a lower-key “pre-party” at Epiphany Center for the Arts (201 S. Ashland) featuring Bestial Mouths, Un Hombre Solo, Blood Handsome, and Replicant . Things really heat up the next night at Thalia Hall and the adjoining Tack Room (1807 S. Allport) with Friday’s talent featuring Kontravoid, Buzz Kull, Tempers, Debby Friday, Madeline Goldstein, and Panic Priest. Saturday is also at Thalia Hall, and features performances by the Soft Moon, Geneva Jacuzzi, Pelada, Spike Hellis, SDH, and Conjunto Primitivo. Events at Thalia Hall are for those 17 years old and up, and Tack Room and Epiphany events are 21+.

If you check out our music section, you’ll see my impassioned plea to experience Geneva Jacuzzi, but every night promises at least one act that will delight you, if you’re into music you can dance to in black latex. Speaking of which, this year’s master of ceremonies—er, sacrilege—is Chicago’s favorite rubber-clad

6 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

naughty feline Wildcat Shadow. Tickets start at $40 and go up based on the night with twoand three-night passes available. As organizers explain on the Sanctum website, there are no VIP options so audiences can get the same level of access and artists can be decently compensated. sanctumfest.com Also happening Saturday, October 28 is an anniversary party for the Logan Square art gallery and oddity shop Sideshow Gallery (2219 N. Western). Going from 6-10 PM, the party features magic tricks, sideshow performances, and tarot and crystal ball readings.

Plus, the Guilty Pig food truck will be on-site serving up decadently delicious farm-to-table eats for all the hungriest ghosts and goblins.

Attending the event is free, and costumes are highly encouraged. sideshowgallerychicago.com If you need a little good karma with your witchy fun, check out the Zombi Disco at Color Club (4146 N. Elston), also on Saturday, October 28. Happening from 7 PM-midnight, Zombi Disco is ACRE’s annual fundraiser for their artist-run residency programs. Because it’s an artist-organized event, you know the visuals and ambience will be impeccable. Rae Chardonnay, Finding Ijeoma, Nate Large, and DJ Pluto will be dropping beats all night. The event promises a photobooth, costume contest, and raffle.

Yejin Yoon, Sarita’s Pleasure Pies, and Katie Rauth will be on hand with food pop-up vending while Max Li will offer tintype portraits. Tickets run $20-$50. acreresidency.org

Slow & Low is a free festival running from 10 AM-8 PM on Saturday, October 21 that celebrates all things lowrider. Lowrider cars are mobile art objects that represent customization as a source of pride, self-expression, and community. They’re a result of how Mexican Americans distinguished themselves during the rise of the hot rod in post-war America,

Debby Friday performs Friday, October 27 at Thalia Hall. KATRIN BRAGA

Mary Lattimore performs Friday, October 27 and Saturday, October 28 at Constellation.

JAMIE KELTER DAVIS

and the cars have evolved over the years to reflect technological changes as much as Chicano ideas, attitudes, and struggles at different points. Expect unparalleled sights and sounds that include not only the cars at the heart of the culture but also the fashions, tattoos, wares, and music of lowrider artists.

Admission costs $15 for those three and older or $52 for groups of four. chicagolowriderfestival.com For the Halloween-averse, check out two of the brightest stars in the world of classically infused experimental music at Constellation on Friday, October 27 and Saturday, October 28. Mary Lattimore is a classically trained

harpist with a flat, lilting voice that plucks at listeners’ heartstrings in ways that can be as playful as they are painful. Former Chicagoan Jeremiah Chiu is an electronic music composer with a sound that eagerly wanders, easing in and out of rhythms layered with things like bird calls and off-the-cuff conversations.

While different artists, their approaches are in conversation, each providing thoughtful dispatches from a musical ecosystem that’s like a soft sweater with some pulled and fraying parts showing. Tickets are $25 and available to those 18 and older. constellation-chicago.com v

m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com

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PLACES THAT TREAT RATS

Animal House Chicago, 2752 W. Lawrence, Suite 3 Paws and Feathers Veterinary Clinic, 3674 N. Elston TLC First Animal Hospital, 6468 N. Milwaukee More at chicagoreader.com

CITY LIFE Pets

Surviving rat poisoning, as a rat

When a beloved family pet finds poison intended for rodent invaders, a handful of local exotic animal hospitals can help save them.

By S. NICOLE LANE S. NICOLE LANE

J

ackie and Loretta were born on the north side of Chicago, and lucky for them, my best friend Sage Espindola was looking to adopt.

These two 12-ounce munchkins had particular personalities. Jackie, with her black-andwhite fur, was rambunctious, while Loretta had a softer demeanor, sporting a gray-white soft coat.

And then, in 2020, Jackie and Loretta accidentally ate rat poison.

Late at night after watching a movie, I heard the cries of Sage, who found one of her rats joyfully marching around with a piece of wrapping paper. Once Sage picked Loretta up, she realized what it was. A former tenant had stuffed rat poison back in the crack of her closet, and her curious pets had retrieved it for a little show and tell.

The household immediately jumped into a panicked frenzy. The response wasn’t a one-man job. Sage and I, plus roommates and her former boyfriend, all began feverishly googling, calling, and talking over one another. Eventually, Sage and her boyfriend decided to drive her rats to an emergency clinic in Skokie—the only one open 24 hours—in an attempt to rescue them before they died from the poison.

After a $500 vet bill, the girls survived.

Loretta would go on to struggle with hair loss

8 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

and general fatigue, but Jackie stayed her energetic self, possibly because she ate less poison or none at all.

“My baby bounced back quick,” says Sage about Jackie. “She was strong as a mule.”

Still, Loretta only lasted three more months after ingesting the poison and is buried in Humboldt Park. Jackie went on to make the move to New York City, living with her dog brother, Bucky, and was eventually buried in Herbert Von King Park in Brooklyn after a long life of a little over three years. Both girls are buried under a pile of flowers.

How poison affects your pet So what exactly happened inside of Jackie and Loretta’s bodies after they ate the poison?

Experts agree that it’s a complicated question.

Since there are so many different rat poisons, they all work in different ways.

“Many will work by preventing the clotting of blood, leading to uncontrollable bleeding internally and subsequent death. Others work by damaging the central nervous system,” says Melissa Giese from Chicago Exotics Animal Hospital in Skokie.

Chief of staff Byron de la Navarre opened Animal House of Chicago in 2003 and says,

“Rat poison has been around for a long time, and rats are pretty smart, so they had to change poisons and add different types of poison. And so, different poisons work differently.”

De la Navarre goes on to explain that rats “have their standard things that they always eat. They recognize how it smells, how it looks, how it tastes. And they feel fine eating that stuff. And then every day they come up with something new.”

Rat bait is usually scented and flavored to attract animals. Peanut butter or sweet tastes are among the most popular flavors.

If rats eat a tiny amount of something dangerous or poisonous, they know to avoid it going forward. “So even if you put a big whole block of rat poison down there, they aren’t going to eat the whole thing. They’re just going to take a nibble. And that’s why rat bait works over time. There are very few poisons that kill them right off,” he says.

Rats will return to their poison, and then weeks later, they will die from an internal hemorrhage.

“Most of the poisons work like warfarin, which is a blood thinner,” says de la Navarre.

Essentially, the poison gets into their system and they end up bleeding internally, and sometimes externally through the nose and eyes. “It’s not a nice way to go,” adds de la Navarre.

Rats aren’t the only victims of poisoning, either. The United States Environmental Protection Agency says that more than 100 pets die each year from exposure to rat poison.

When it comes to dogs, de la Navarre says, “They’ll just eat everything and swallow it,” which makes their poison-ingesting situation much more critical.

“If you can, make them vomit,” says de la Navarre.

However, he warns that some toxins are even dangerous to puke, as they are acids and can tear the esophagus on their way back up.

This is where poison control comes in.

When Jackie and Loretta ate their poison dinner, Sage was instructed by the vet to call poison control before bringing them in. In the heat of the moment, every second counts, and the last thing we wanted to do was call poison control to hear that, yes, in fact, they ate poison.

But de la Navarre sheds some insight into the situation: he says that poison control tells the vet what type of poison it is, and this can inform vets so that they know how to treat it.

Giese says, “Depending on the type of poison, we may add additional treatment—it really is important for us to have as much information as possible to have the best chance of the pet surviving.”

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CITY LIFE

(n.) Witch’s Milk

By Kush Thompson

For Britteney and Sydni

Treating your poisoned rat Surviving rat poisoning, as a rat, depends on how much they have eaten and how often they’ve eaten it.

Giese says, “A majority of any toxin ingestion includes flushing the system with fluid therapy and administering medications to counteract or absorb toxic materials such as charcoal.”

De la Navarre says activated charcoal is “designed, even in people, to bind the toxin in your system, in your stomach, in your small intestine and hopefully make it not available to you. Meaning, it’s not going to kill you because it’s been bound up in this activated or detoxified charcoal.”

Another type of treatment is vitamin K, which is given by injection by the veterinarian and orally in the days following. “Giving your rat the appropriate dose gets their levels back up pretty quickly,” says de la Navarre.

“I had to give them medications for months afterward,” says Sage, who had to squirt the vitamin K liquid into their “little mouths daily.”

De la Navarre says that city poison can oftentimes be much more aggressive, more challenging, and more dangerous to treat.

Rats are generally more prone to illness than other pets, too. They have a laundry list of ailments like benign and malignant tumors, respiratory diseases, eye diseases, and dental diseases.

If your pet rat has a decrease or increase in appetite, thirst, urination, diarrhea, frequent sneezing, fur issues, scabs, wounds, o r w h e ez i n g sounds, take them to an exotic vet hospital.

It’s generally advised to take rats in for a health check at least once a year for their first two years of life and then six months from then on.

Rat poisoning isn’t going away anytime soon, and if anything, it’s evolving to keep up with these smart animals. Chicago is still the rattiest city in the country, with more than 214,000 people calling in complaints from 2019 to 2022.

In order to ensure your rental home or surrounding property is rat poison-free, de la Navarre suggests asking the landlord if they have used poison in the home. Even pest exterminators—including the ones who say they are pet-friendly—may not have the safest products for pets.

“Rats are incredibly smart creatures that form bonds with their owners and cagemates,” says Giese. “They can be trained to do all sorts of things or can simply be a companion to share snacks with while you watch a movie. They are also very cute, which never hurts.”

Rats are known to be highly social, intelligent, and affectionate. They constantly want to cuddle, play, and run around greeting everyone in the room.

Before Loretta and Jackie, I wasn’t a fan of rats. Actually, you couldn’t catch me near one. I’d be screaming in an alleyway if I saw one dart between dumpsters. But by the end of their tiny lives, Jackie and Loretta were my nieces. Knowing them changed my whole perception of rats, rat care, and the love that these domesticated rodents can exude. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

the hand I use for nothing, butterflied open in a veiled room. she walks to the end of my palm and says she sees no children and so many. haunted mother, deadwombed by clinic. no trace of my reversed girl in the red weeping. she is gone from my blood. didn’t need a witch to tell me that. to save the house in hillcrest, grandma stirs hummingbird wing into a bowl of honeyed cinnamon. home ripped out of her, anyway. to this day, the house won’t be with nobody else. my mama, humming in astral candlebath – body lilts from body like smoke. she sees herself from the ceiling’s eye, driftwood in moonwake, and forever swears off flight. this is what wordmakers nouned the wonder of deadmilk screaming through barren breast. a beldam’s beckoned song, given by our mothers to nurse the nothing. by winter’s end, I’m hired in a nursery.

I press a tiny colicked thing into my chest and it stills. o, wicked gift. what better cruelty is there than this?

Author of A Church Beneath the Bulldozer (2014) and creator of the pink-haired Blk Hottie portraiture series, Kush Thompson is a Chicago-born poet, painter, educator, and fellow of Luminarts and Cave Canem. She creates archival art; centering often on girlhood and the mechanics of memory.

Her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (2015).

Poem curated by Cortney Lamar Charleston. Cortney Lamar Charleston, originally from the Chicago suburbs, is a Cave Canem fellow and the author of Telepathologies (Saturnalia Books, 2017) and Doppelgangbanger (Haymarket Books, 2021). He serves as a poetry editor at The Rumpus and on the editorial board at Alice James Books.

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

CHEMA SKANDAL! FOR CHICAGO READER

Hours

Wednesday & Friday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM Thursday: 11:00 AM–7:00 PM Saturday: 10:00 AM–5:00 PM

VS Presents: JOURNEY(S) - live podcast recording Thursday, October 19 | 7pm CT

JOURNEY(S) is a visual anthology combining oral history with original poetry, animation, and archival photos to honor the stories of Ethiopian women in America and Black women across the diaspora. This screening of three English episodes of VS Presents: JOURNEY(S) will be followed by conversation between writer, director, and producer, Saaret E. Yoseph, and Chicago poet, Aricka Foreman.

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 9

FOOD & DRINK

Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants at chicagoreader.com/food.

Watch Chic-A-Go-Go on CAN TV (channels 19 and 21) and on YouTube at youtube.com/user/ chicagogo.

STREET FOOD

Ratso To-Go-Go

love rat droppings.

A legendary rat talks Chicago street eats.

Ratso with Marshall Brodien, the late magician who also played “Wizzo” on The Bozo Show.

By SHEBA WHITE

CHIC-A-GO-GO ARCHIVES

South-sider and lifetime teen Ratso is most known for cohosting the beloved dance party Chic-A-Go-Go with his companions (Reader contributor and Roctober zine creator) Jake Austen and Mia Park on Chicago’s public-access channel CAN TV since 1996. With his signature disheveled style, floppy ears, love of punk music, and squeakily delivered humorous observations, it’s easy to see why Ratso has remained a staple presence in Chicago media circles since his early 90s debut in Austen’s Punk’nhead comic strip, where Ratso and the titular character Punk’nhead were also in an unnamed band. “It’s just Punk’nhead’s band.

We’re not big on names, you know? We’re just big on vibes, you know?” For the Rat Issue, Ratso—a self-professed garbage lover—spoke to us about a subject all Chicagoans love to talk about, food.

Sheba White: How long have you been a teenager, Ratso?

Ratso: 1992.

That’s a long time. Have you learned anything about being a teenager for so long that you could share?

If you just keep showing up at school, they don’t kick you out.

I know that you love food. And back in the day, you used to talk about eating a lot of garbage. Did you mean that as “bad for you” foods or did you mean that as literal garbage?

Well, I wouldn’t say it’s bad for you. But I would say literal garbage, as in the sense of

10 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

food from the gutter. And the dumpsters. And the trash cans. But in Chicago, you know, you can sometimes get like three-quarters of an Italian beef in the garbage can.

What’s your favorite Chicago thing to eat?

I would say the au jus after Taste of Chicago when it rains. You can put that on anything!

What have you put it on?

Well, just whatever you find: turkey bones, watermelon rinds, shoes.

There’s been a lot in the news about rats and pizza.

I think that video of that rat struggling with that pizza is fake.

You think it’s fake?

Oh yeah, I mean, a rat could normally balance three pizzas with ease, with grace, like a ballerina.

What’s your favorite pizza?

any super rats, but I appreciate their work. We also can get through a hole the size of like a pinprick—rats are magic.

They are! There have been a lot of reports of rats eating through car wires, plastic plumbing, fiberglass insulation, rubber trash bin lids.

Yeah, but let me tell you something, [long pause] that stuff tastes terrible! There are no reports of the same rat doing it twice!

There are weird things that rats eat like that—weird to humans. For instance, they eat fresh droppings because it helps with their nutrient and mineral absorption. That all seems really extreme and odd to human beings, but are there things that human beings eat that are odd to rats?

Let me tell you something, if you eat in Chicago, you’ve had plenty of rat droppings.

So you think that humans are also enjoying that?

I hope you are; if you love Chicago food, you

I like Italian Fiesta the best. I’m actually kind of sad that Pizza Castle on Garfield closed.

That place was amazing. Their dumpster was never locked and had a big hole in the bottom.

That may be why they closed, but I hope not.

I think I’ve eaten everything on that list. On one pizza! And [long pause] I felt pretty good.

Eat what you love. You only live once. ROLO! Rats Only Live Once!

What places would you suggest that people or rats check out?

The really nice thing about fall and winter is that everybody who is tailgating at Soldier Field goes inside. It’s like being at an amusement park by yourself. It’s amazing!

So there’s food outside after everyone leaves?

Yeah, yeah. All the tailgaters, they just leave stuff, they drop stuff, and it’s a mess. There’s no security there, there’s no people. Everybody’s watching the football game. And you’re just having the Super Bowl of gluttony. For any rats or just any creature that enjoys pavement food, I highly recommend post-tailgate parties.

That’s a great suggestion. The last question is a philosophical question about rats and food. It seems like unless rats are carrying pizza down a New York stoop, which you say is fake.

Fake, staged! I think it’s a real rat; I don’t think it’s a robot. But I think it’s trained to do a little trick for, you know, clout.

OK, got it. But it seems like unless they’re being cute, rats tend to get a bad rap.

They’re sort of seen as being invasive, parasitic, and relentless. Relentless, above all else.

Do all rats know which dumpsters have holes in the bottoms?

Chicago has legendary super rats who can make holes in dumpsters. I’m not related to

There’s a list of foods that rats should avoid eating, like onions, raisins, chocolate, mangoes, dried corn, dried beans. It’s a surprisingly long list. Have you ever eaten any of these or gotten sick?

So basically, totally punk rock. v

CHEMA SKANDAL! FOR CHICAGO READER

m swhite@chicagoreader.com

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OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 11

NEWS & POLITICS

Renters with unwelcome pests have recourse under state and local laws. COURTESY OF PEXELS

HOUSING

There’s a mouse in my house Renters battle unwanted pests—and landlords—in the nation’s rattiest city.

By DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN

T

he week I moved into my first one-bedroom apartment in Rogers Park, I was excited to have a space of my own. Unfortunately, the mice that infested the building were just as excited about my arrival.

Three days into my move, I unlocked my front door to find a mouse jumping at my trash can, looking for the leftover rice and beans I tossed the night before.

“OK, so I’ve got to be mindful about taking out the garbage every day,” I told myself. This probably happened because, in the enthusiasm of living alone, I neglected to realize I had to be smart about completing daily chores on my own.

I didn’t see another one until winter, and that’s when it dawned on me that I had a problem. I left my building after the sighting and sat in my car for two hours in the throes of a panic attack before I was ready to return.

On my way back in, I stopped by a neighbor’s apartment, knocking fiercely, to ask if they had the same issue. “Oh, the mice?” she asked.

12 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

Shawty told me the pests were big fans of her dog’s food. They jumped over her Brussels griffon daily like he was a hurdle in a trackand-field competition or a broomstick at a Black wedding. In other words, she treated her vermin as roommates. I was horrified.

Whenever I saw one, I FaceTimed my family back home in Connecticut in distress. They usually laughed. My mom and her sisters grew up with horrible rat infestations in Brooklyn, NY, and were amused by how paralyzing the situation was for me—they also had street advice on how to deal with it.

First, I submitted a maintenance request to Peak Properties, my management company, and the janitor came to set traps. Knowing I would find dead mice in my apartment unfortunately did not make me feel better. The traps caught a new mouse every few days, mostly in my bedroom or the living room, so I demanded my building seal the holes. The janitor plugged five holes under radiators and between cabinets. But the mice took that as a sign I wanted them to come in through different entryways.

I heard them in the walls as I slept. The stress the situation gave me had me maneuvering through my apartment for the next few months like I was tiptoeing through a minefield, hoping one of my unwelcome roommates wouldn’t reveal themselves to me and send me into a panic attack. After three months of the janitor coming in and out looking for new holes to seal, the problem stopped. But the anxiety that came with moving through the house followed me into my next apartment, until I bought a cat and could finally take a deep breath.

In 2022, pest control company Orkin ranked Chicago the “rattiest” city in the country for the eighth year in a row. Rodent infestations can cause enormous stress on a tenant, but the problem is exponentially worse when landlords don’t treat it as a serious problem.

I was relatively lucky, but many people aren’t.

Knowing this, a myriad of legal aid organizations like the Law Center for Better Housing (LCBH), Beyond Legal Aid, and the Metropolitan Tenants Organization (MTO) exist to help

tenants pressure their landlords into action.

Some Chicagoans have had great experiences with the help. But others still find themselves faced with indifferent owners—or even eviction—after attempts to force building management to do something.

LCBH represents tenants facing eviction or experiencing poor living conditions. The organization hopes to create safer and more comfortable spaces for people to live. The organization also supports tenants referred to LCBH by community groups throughout the city. Mice infestations—alongside rats, cockroaches, and bedbugs—are some of the more common issues they face.

“A lot of times folks are reaching out to us because there’s conditions issues that have been going on for a really long time, and they’re not getting anywhere from trying to reach out to the landlord directly,” says Sam Barth, a staff attorney at LCBH. In Chicago, the Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance (RLTO) lays out the general responsibilities and rights of landlords and

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NEWS & POLITICS tenants. It defines what a landlord is, what a landlord is required to do, and what a tenant should do if the landlord isn’t fixing a conditions issue.

Two key points in the RLTO require a landlord to provide access to essential services like water, electricity, gas, and heat, and to maintain the premises in a habitable condition.

Regardless of what the lease says, the landlord is responsible for poor conditions and for making necessary repairs.

“If there is a pest infestation in a unit or in a building,” Barth says, “it is the landlord’s responsibility to ameliorate the issue—through pest treatments or through traps or plugging holes in the walls where pests are coming in.”

Landlords do not get leniency on mice problems simply because Chicago is a ratty city.

The code even states that landlords must pay for regular trash pickup and make sure garbage isn’t overflowing from dumpsters, two actions that discourage mice and rats from approaching the property. When people contact LCBH for mice issues, it’s usually because the issue has been ongoing with a landlord’s knowledge, they aren’t receiving sufficient or proper treatment, or the tenant feels like the building owner is allowing the issue to get worse, Barth says.

How often do people go along with infestations because they feel powerless to fix them?

“Anecdotally, I have the sense that it does happen quite a bit,” Barth tells the Reader.

“Tenants [are] forced to pay out of pocket, or get their own traps, or try and figure out a solution on their own. What we’ll hear from tenants is, ‘I didn’t realize that the landlord was required to do this,’ or, ‘I thought I had to deal with it on my own.’”

K

iisha Smith has lived in the Chicago area for more than 30 years. Today she lives on the west side in the Lawndale community with her 10-, 15-, and 17-year-old kids. Whenever she moves, the first question Smith asks is, “When was the last time the building was exterminated?” She asks if there are major infestations with mice, bugs, and cockroaches because she wants to know what she’s getting herself into. Sometimes the owners are honest, but most times they’re not. They’ve told Smith, “Oh no, we don’t have that problem,” or even, “We had that problem a long time ago but we took care of it.” Smith often finds that the problem isn’t under control.

“Where I’m living now, the owner’s niece, who’s part of management, she told me in

the beginning, ‘Oh no we don’t do bugs, we don’t do roaches, we don’t do mice,’ and, true enough, we recently learned that there are mice there,” Smith says.

In the past four years, Smith has had to bounce from property to property because of infestation issues. Her story starts in 2019 at a building in the Austin neighborhood, where management company Optimus Realty reassured her there were no infestations. After a few months living there, her family started noticing droppings on the stove and behind appliances. Next, they noticed food left on the counter, like bread, would be eaten through the packaging. “We did contact the owner. He never came out to do anything about it,” Smith says.

It progressed to the point where the Smith family couldn’t leave anything out. And after she found mice droppings in the oven, Smith decided to stop cooking. “The owner never came out to exterminate. He really didn’t care about anything. We were in an emergency situation when we [moved] in. It just seemed as though he felt like, ‘Oh they need me so I ain’t doing nothing.’”

Eventually, her family moved a mile away.

“It was a beautiful place. Beautiful,” Smith says. “And again, we move in and things seem to be perfect.”

In the beginning, the family didn’t notice any of the signs. It was springtime and the Smiths spent little time at home. But sure enough, they’d leave food out and see droppings throughout the apartment. When Smith advised the owner, he sometimes didn’t respond at all. Once, he promised he’d send someone out to do something, but it never happened. Eventually, the conditions of the property got so bad, the city deemed it illegal.

The owner ultimately sold the building because there were so many violations he didn’t want to pay to fix.

The issue followed her to her current apartment.

“Once you get settled in and the weather starts to change, that’s when they start to come out,” Smith says. “One owner even told me that that’s normal and to be expected. No, it’s not. Not if you actually do things that are necessary to the property. There’s ways to keep them out.”

Smith had come home at 1 AM after a celebration and went to use the bathroom. A mouse jumped from behind the toilet, scaring “the hell” out of her before disappearing into the hole through which it entered. That’s when she realized she moved into yet another ro-

they sort of were not treating it as a problem,” she says. “It constantly feels like they are doing the bare minimum for my unit.”

She says it just didn’t feel like her space anymore. Mice in the kitchen upset her the most because she cooks a lot, and the smell of mice droppings and rat poison saturated the room. Outside her building, she says she saw unsealed trash cans and an accumulation of garbage like old TVs, strollers, and furniture on the side of her building. She recognized those were ample hiding spots for the vermin making their way into her building. “It would just make me really sad because I felt like my house was dirty, and that I was dirty when I was trying to keep the place as clean as possible,” McDaniels says.

B A flyer from the tenants union representing residents of First Western Properties COURTESY OF PAUL TSAKIRIS

dent-infested building.

“If mice are going to be able to roam freely and you think it’s not a problem, then the mice should be the ones paying rent or a portion or something, because they have control of the unit,” Smith says. “They come and go [as they] please, they eat through your stuff. That’s disgusting.”

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ulsi McDaniels has been living in her current Pilsen apartment for three years, a unit she says is plagued by mice. She moved to the city ten years ago from Los Angeles and previously experienced infestations of roaches. But this is her first time dealing with this flavor of vermin.

McDaniels says she first saw droppings— though she wasn’t even positive they were droppings because she’d never seen them before. Then, she began to see mice in her kitchen and bedroom, and heard them squeaking incessantly in the walls. She reached out to her management company, First Western Properties, and a janitor came to distribute glue traps and foul-smelling rat poison. But as the weather grew colder, she says her situation grew worse.

It wasn’t until she submitted several maintenance requests that management decided to look for a hole in her building, according to McDaniels. “The main point to that is that I was recognizing that it was a problem and

arth, the housing lawyer, walked me through the different ways a tenant can take action against a negligent landlord. The first step for people experiencing rodent infestations is to call 311. The operator will make a report to the city’s Department of Buildings, which will dispatch a building inspector to the property. This is one major mechanism by which landlords are held accountable for building code violations, Barth says.

If the city finds a property owner has multiple violations, it can take one of two types of actions. It could hold an administrative hearing, where a landlord could be ordered to pay a fine and make repairs to the building. The city could also file a case against the landlord in building court, a division of courtrooms in the Loop’s Daley Center where judges hear cases filed by the City of Chicago against property owners for more serious code violations.

Tenants also have the right to withhold rent, make repairs themselves and deduct the cost from their rent, or terminate a lease if the landlord doesn’t make repairs. “But it has to be done in a very specific way,” Barth says.

“The ordinance is very specific of the requirements for the ways that tenants should notify a landlord.”

First, he recommends that tenants document all apartment issues, reach out to their landlord, talk to an attorney, or see what other resources are available before withholding rent. But under the RLTO, tenants can withhold rent for poor conditions after first giving proper notice to the property manager. The letter should state that the landlord has 14 days to make adequate repairs, or the tenant will start withholding a reasonable percentage of their rent until the issue is resolved.

OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 13

NEWS & POLITICS continued from p. 13

Tenants planning to hire their own plumbers or pest control companies should include in the letter that they’ll deduct the price of such services from their monthly rent.

Owner-occupied buildings with six or fewer units are exempt from most portions of the RLTO. No matter what, though, landlords are required to maintain habitable premises, and tenants can always make reasonable repairs and deduct the cost from their rent under state law.

Two city programs exist to help small landlords secure funds for repairs: one for one-tofour-unit residential properties and the other for multifamily buildings with five or more rented units. For tenants, LCBH’s automated Rentervention website (rentervention.com) can help renters draft 14-day demand letters, understand their legal rights, and learn more about the proper way to withhold rent.

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mith and McDaniels both employed these methods to address their issues, but their results varied. Smith’s attempts to get help from legal aid and 311 have been unsuccessful. Her complaints to the city have gone unaddressed. She’s tried to purchase her own sticky traps and pest control treatment to deduct from rent, and has withheld rent altogether. But landlords have retaliated by beginning eviction processes—even though doing so is illegal under the RLTO. Smith’s efforts to address infestation and other building issues have gotten her evicted from two places, so she feels like the court failed her. She tells the Reader that processes available for tenants are “a bunch of crap.” She also says the multiple legal aid organizations she’s gone through disappeared after she withheld rent.

She approached MTO, Beyond Legal Aid, and LCBH for help in eviction court, and lawyers there told her she had an open-and-shut case since she documented issues so rigorously. But still, they’d tell her that if she didn’t settle they could no longer represent her. That upsets her.

“You wasted all my time when I could have just gotten a paid lawyer. So these legal aid firms really aren’t it,” Smith says.

Barth says that, generally, lawyers choose to settle most cases because of the “risks and unknowns of the trial.” Especially in eviction court, going to trial is a very “high risk, low reward” situation for tenants. The best case scenario at trial is often that the judge will dismiss the case because finding any amount of back rent owed could potentially result in an eviction.

14 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

Smith’s record for evictions related to withholding rent is supposed to be sealed, but getting a judge to do that has been a difficult and slow process. She’s having trouble finding new housing now because, although she’s never had rent issues before, building owners didn’t care if she was a victim in a previous housing dispute.

“Yeah, I got a history of standing up for myself, fighting for what I believe in. And so now y’all want to make it seem like it’s not OK,” Smith says. “If you want to continue to receive your income, aren’t you supposed to maintain the service or make sure the product is what it’s supposed to be?”

Optimus Realty has not responded to requests for comment.

McDaniels says her experience has been more promising. She reached out to other tenants to see if they were facing the same problem—they were—and one of her neighbors floated the idea of starting a tenants union, a proposal she eagerly accepted. And since only six people lived in the building, they had an easy time unionizing, since they only needed three people to represent half the building.

MTO helped her and her neighbors organize themselves by way of monthly meetings, and together they drafted a list of demands.

The union wanted to meet with the building’s management company, but McDaniels says First Western Properties refused to sit at a table with them. Next, the crew sent a letter to their landlord, which, according to McDaniels, documented issues with the building’s conditions and included a threat to deduct rent. The union initially sought a deduction of between 15 percent and 18 percent, with the mice infestation accounting for 10 percent of that. “We were told to be super conservative with the number just in case we had to go to court about it,” McDaniels says. The group brought their first deducted rent checks to a demonstration outside First Western Properties’s office on June 5. With support from community organization Únete La Villita, the union broadcast the rally live on Instagram, led chants about tenant rights, and read and delivered their list of demands.

But McDaniels says building ownership continues to refuse to cash their checks and will not acknowledge the 14-day demand letter by phone or text. McDaniels, who pays her rent on an online portal, says she still receives a $50 late fee each month for not paying full rent, which she says the company also refuses to acknowledge.

First Western Properties strongly refutes

many of these claims. Mo Dadkhah, a lawyer representing the company, said in a statement to the Reader that the building employs a janitor service that “cleans the area weekly,” and added that McDaniels’s building shares space with three others. “Other tenants and tenants of this building leave garbage outside and it is hard to determine what garbage belongs to who,” but he said building management is “removing garbage when necessary.”

“My Client has done anything and everything they can and continue to do in order to help the situation. This is NOT a negligent Landlord, this is a Landlord trying to do the right thing where Tenants are trying to find reasons to not pay,” Dadkhah said.

He told the Reader that “all rent payments received to date were deposited last month or early this month.” And, given that tenants are withholding part of their rent, Dadkhah said management first wanted to consult with an attorney before cashing checks.

Paul Tsakiris, First Western’s president and founder, says an exterminator visits the building monthly and has made additional visits to address the mice infestations. He says the exterminator in July reported that the technicians did not find any activity or infestation of any insects or rodents. But, days earlier, after tenants made repeated calls to 311, the city dispatched an inspector who cited the building’s owners with more than ten violations, city records show, including failure to “exterminate rodents in building and seal openings where they gain access.”

Tsakiris says that McDaniels’s building is 130 years old and needs “a little bit more love than others.” He says the company offered to move tenants to more affordable units in its portfolio but tenants refused. “They’ll say it’s been in disrepair for years. Well, yeah, because you pointed out things. And just because we raised your rent $150 doesn’t mean you’re gonna get a brand-new apartment completely.”

Tsakiris accuses McDaniels of making “slanderous and false” complaints, and suggests, despite findings otherwise by the city, that the union is fabricating reports of mice because “they just don’t want to pay rent.” He says the union has twice rescheduled meetings with building management (the next is scheduled for later this month). Yet he also admits that

the union’s demand letters also have “legitimate” requests, such as for new windows, with which the management company has complied. But after addressing one problem, Tsakiris laments, the union will “keep finding more stuff ” to fix.

“We genuinely empathize and feel for people, for how expensive rent is for some people,” Tsakiris says. “But people have to understand that their rent increased a fraction of what the landlord’s expenses went up . . . We can’t negotiate with Cook County on our taxes, we can’t negotiate with the water department on our water bill.”

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oday, Smith and her three kids hate staying at home. They spend most of their time at her grandparents’ house or the home of her kids’ dad. The kids hate the infestation and are allergic to the pests. If she finds mice in or around furniture, she tosses it. “It’s embarrassing. Like you don’t want to have company. You don’t want to even prepare meals,” Smith says.

She says she’s never had this problem in the suburbs and feels as though her landlords treat mice infestations as an inevitable part of renting in the city. “It’s basically ‘fuck us’ to me.” The lifelong Chicagoan is now considering moving out of state.

She recently visited a potential apartment but, during the tour, learned that the building also was in the throes of an infestation. “It was like ten damn mice on a sticky board. And [the property manager] thought that was cool.”

McDaniels and the other members of her union are glad the city intervened against First Western Properties. The company hasn’t threatened to take action, presumably because it’s “doing everything on paper,” she says. She doesn’t plan on moving out of the apartment.

But she knows the problem is worse when it’s cold, so she’s bracing herself for the winter.

“I know the issues in our building will only get worse. And we have a lot of overturn in the building itself. People move in and out often,” she says. “For the new people that are not in the union, I am expecting the issues of the building to reveal themselves. If the mice issue is as bad as last year—which I think it will be—I don’t know, we’ll be in a bad place.” v

m dmbrown@chicagoreader.com

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Presenting Sponsor OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 15

NEWS & POLITICS the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades—has been Scabby’s “shepherd.”

CFL lends the inflatable to smaller union affiliates, like the Chicago News Guild, for demonstrations.

Villar recalls a 2022 incident in Springfield where members of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers, and Allied Workers Local 112 protested outside a funeral home for using nonunion labor. During the action, one of the facility’s employees walked out and stabbed the inflatable. Villar guffaws over the phone as he recounts the incident to the Reader. “Scabby has been attacked, maligned, but he’s a resilient symbol of the fi ght for workers’ rights.”

IUOE Local 150 sold “rat packs,” including yellow cars and inflatable rats, to locals across the country.

Scabby the Rat has become a mainstay at union demonstrations. COURTESY OF IUOE LOCAL 150

LABOR RIGHTS

The unstoppable, inflatable rat

For decades, Scabby has been a fearsome symbol of workers’ rights

By DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN

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hat does a 20-foot-tall inflatable rat have to do with the long history of public expression in the labor rights movement? The answer: a lot more than you’d expect.

Picture a terrifying sight: a hulking rat balloon, as tall as a yellow school bus is long, whose aesthetic is similar to Venom from Spider-Man. The large, oval eyes on each side of its face are completely red, its mouth turned upward in a snarl above a row of jagged, yellow canines that protrude from either side of the critter’s infamous front two buckteeth.

Not only is the abomination probably blown up in the middle of a public sidewalk teeming with passersby, but it’s likely placed right in front of a business local union workers are

16 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

publicly protesting.

“It’s defi nitely a sight,” says Don Villar, secretary-treasurer of the Chicago Federation of Labor (CFL). “One thing that Scabby the Rat does is draw attention to a problem. If there’s a big Scabby the Rat there, there must be a labor issue there. Naturally, passersby will stop and ask, ‘What’s going on? Why do you have a big inflatable rat in front of the building?’ And our organizers and labor activists will explain that, well, we got a contract fight near, [or] they’re paying substandard wages, or they’re using nonunion labor, they’re violating law—they’re just not treating workers right.”

The CFL acquired their Scabby two years ago. Since then, organizing director Marcus Shepherd—who joined the federation from

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he earliest records of the political critter date back to 1988. At the time, the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 150—which represents about 23,000 workers in northern Illinois, northern Indiana, and southeastern Iowa who operate heavy construction equipment like cranes, bulldozers, and excavators—held demonstrations against several equipment rental shops.

The union got word that a local shop owner was to be honored during a dinner at a nearby hotel. Marilyn Sweeney, wife of current Local 150 president and business manager Jim Sweeney, came up with the idea of drawing rats on a poster board and standing outside the building saying, “This hotel’s got rats!” to make a scene against the businessman inside who they were striking against.

“Signs with the rats were so effective,” says Local 150 spokesperson Ed Maher, “that one of our other organizers had a friend in the stagehands union who created a rat costume, like a rat suit. That was used for a while but, since it’s pretty delicately put together, it couldn’t be washed. And because these suits are used all day in the heat of the summer, the rat suits would get a little bit gamey.”

From there, the idea grew more bold. By 1989, the union had created an inflatable rat that would pop up out of a luggage carrier on the roof of organizers’ cars. They painted the cars yellow, called them the “rat patrol,” and displayed Scabby (then commonly known as Mr. Rat) at construction sites all over the midwest. By December 1989, the union was ready to formally name their unofficial mascot and held a naming competition for the

honor. The next year, the operating engineers announced in a local newspaper that “Scabby” was the winning submission, put forward by member Lou Mahieu, who won a Local 150 jacket for his efforts.

Now, Scabby was ready for world domination. The operating engineers assembled “rat packs,” which included a painted yellow car with a roof rack, an inflatable rat, a pump, and a generator to sell to union locals around the country. The rest is history.

Or so you’d think. Another union also lays claim to the beloved rat.

In suburban Elmhurst, members of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers (IUBAC) Local 56—which represents tuck pointers, tile setters, terrazzo workers, marble setters, plasterers, and precasters—claim that Scabby’s origins lie with them. But their story begins in 1990.

Don Newton and Ken Lambert started the bricklayers organizing program in Chicago.

Newton’s daughter, Susie Sundblom, a tile setter of 20 years, recounted their rendition of Scabby’s genesis to the Reader. Lambert was stuck in traffic one day when he noticed a large inflatable gorilla in front of a car dealership. Amused, Lambert called Newton and suggested the two procure a rat balloon, inspired by the gorilla. The pair contacted Big Sky, an inflatable manufacturer, and asked for a large rat balloon they could use for pickets. Big Sky was skeptical, so they made

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NEWS & POLITICS the two pay for the balloon up front before making anything.

When pressed for a time line on the events, Sundblom says she’s stumped because all the guys that were at Local 56 the first few times they rolled the rat out are “retired or dead.”

What about her thoughts on their competitors across the state? Again, Sundblom is speechless. “I have no idea what they were doing in their office. All I know is that Ken came up with this inflatable. But then again, I was a young teenager while all this was going on. So the actual time line I cannot honestly attest to because that’s not something that I paid attention to.”

IUOE Local 150 is familiar with these claims, and there are congressmen and universities who’ve stood behind IUBAC’s claims as well.

“There’s another union, the Bricklayers District Council [IUBAC], and they’ve been on record in the past and in other publications saying one of the organizers was driving down the street in the summer of 1990 and he just had the brilliant idea to come up with an inflatable rat,” Maher tells the Reader. “I’ve got copies of our newspaper in November of 1989 that have pictures of the inflatable rats, pictures of the contest, where he’s named Scabby. So Scabby, the inflatable rat, existed in 1989. Anybody saying that they came up with the brilliant idea in 1990 isn’t quite possible. It always makes me scratch my head when I see this.”

R

obert Bruno, professor and director of the Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, says the use of the inflatable rat has been, almost from its creation, a recognized form of legal and constitutional publicity.

Unions have a free speech right to send a message about the substandard quality of an employer. In labor disputes, an inflatable rat is equivalent to a big banner and has, for most of its existence, been recognized as speech protected by the First Amendment.

Workers have a right to picket, though there are restrictions on what they can do on a picket line, how many people can be on it, and how threatening it may appear. Employers can ask judges to place restrictions on picketing if it’s seen as coercive and, therefore, unlawful. But there’s a much higher standard for the government to restrict speech. The state must show a real risk of danger before it can censor protected speech.

From left : Before Scabby was an inflatable rat, members of IUOE Local 150 dressed up as rats for demonstrations; a newspaper article announing a contest to name Local 150’s inflatable rat.

COURTESY OF IUOE LOCAL 150

“Passersby know it’s not a giant real rat.

They can tell it’s an infl atable,” Bruno says.

“It’s not keeping anybody from walking into a building. Nobody’s going to suffer any harm.

So this isn’t a picket, this is speech. And therefore it’s lawful. That’s what the current law [says]—it’s a form of constitutionally protected speech.”

According to Bruno, the idea of impactful public messages in support of workers dates back to the 1880s. Unions might’ve had a member who excelled at painting, or songwriting, or dance. Picket lines often featured bands and choirs to keep up workers’ spirits and to grab the public’s attention. In the 1920s, one union put on a Broadway show called Pins and Needles, composed entirely of workers, which became the longest-running musical of its time.

“In those years, where unions were establishing their right to exist, these strategies and tools were widely used and very popular,” Bruno says. “Why music? Why dance?

Why was theater used? Why do you do all that stuff ? Well, because people need to be moved emotionally. And that’s in part what Scabby taps into. There’s a kind of emotional reaction. Because you feel it, as opposed to [me handing] you a chart with lots of numbers on it [that] don’t make sense to you.”

The U.S. Supreme Court fi rst established a union’s right to protected speech in the 1988 case DeBartolo Corp. v. Gulf Coast Trades Council. In this case, a union peacefully distributed flyers, a process known as handbilling, outside a shopping mall. The pamphlets asked patrons not to shop at the mall because

a construction company working for one of its tenants paid substandard wages. In its ruling, the high court held that discussing general labor disputes and low wages either through flyering or via radio advertisements is a protected First Amendment right. The case clarified that unions can conduct informational activity without it being considered picketing.

Lawrence Township, a New Jersey suburb, in 2009 levied a $100 fi ne against an official from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 269 for displaying an inflatable rat at a rally outside a fitness center. The case made its way to the New Jersey Supreme Court, where all seven justices dismissed the fi ne. The court ruled that, while a municipality is entitled to maintain an “aesthetic environment,” it cannot enforce content-based restrictions on expressive displays that aren’t for business and sales purposes.

In 2014, the rat made its appearance in federal court. MicroTech, a New York–based company, asserted that labor union Mason Tenders’ District Council violated its collective bargaining agreement’s no-strike clause by displaying Scabby at a demonstration. Again, our balloon buddy came out on top. Then-U.S. district judge Joseph Bianco pointed out that banning the rat was similar to banning any general speech that could be construed as harmful to the company’s image.

In the waning days of the Trump administration, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) fi led lawsuits against unions across

the country, including IUOE Local 150, arguing the old, tired sentiment that Scabby is “coercive and illegal.” The operating engineers’ union spent a year and a half defending these lawsuits, until 2021 when the NLRB eventually ruled that “displaying a 12-foot inflatable rat with red eyes, fangs, and claws” was not a violation of labor law.

“Many times over the last 25 years, other states and federal circuits have taken up cases involving Scabby the Rat. And they found time and time again that an inflatable rat is a tool of free speech,” Maher, Local 150’s spokesperson, says. “It’s effective. And so it became under attack by those who would try to take advantage of workers.”

Back in the Illinois suburbs, IUOE Local 150, IUBAC Local 56, and their communities all consider Scabby the Rat an old friend. In Plainfield, operating engineers blow up rats at their family picnic each summer, and you’ll catch families posing with Scabby for holiday cards. At IUBAC Local 56’s community Labor Day parade, the union brings out all the inflatables—Scabby the Rat among several others—and all the kids love it.

Maher says his favorite story about Scabby involves Jim and Marilyn Sweeney. The couple was sitting in their living room at home watching The Sopranos when an episode came on featuring an inflatable rat in a labor action. Sweeney just looked over to his wife and smiled.

“Looks like your drawing has gone a long way.” v

m dmbrown@chicagoreader.com OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 17

NEWS & POLITICS

RAT ABATEMENT POSTERS

Target: rats

On a decades-long effort to win hearts and minds

By KATIE PROUT

CHEMA SKANDAL! FOR CHICAGO READER

M

y hair is neatly combed these days, no longer the “rat’s nest” my mom affectionately called it when I was a child. But, as I enter Harold Washington Library on a recent autumn day, I still feel an affinity for the creature multiple mayors have identified as Chicago’s top public enemy. I’m here to look for information on the history of Chicago’s rat abatement posters, and Harold Washington Library holds a slender but valuable amount of rat city ephemera. Ever since my Jewish partner stood in our alley and halfjoked that the poster pasted near our dumpster reminded him of anti-Semitic propaganda popular during the rise of Nazi Germany, I’ve been curious what these posters might reveal about the cultural and political times from which they came.

Inside the library, I make a little nest; I scurry, I wriggle, I find ways to eat food I shouldn’t.

Seated at a table, archival documents fanned in front of me, I open my phone to a picture, sent by a librarian from their break room, of a poster taped to a kitchen cabinet. The poster looks like a xerox of a xerox, but rewards a zoom in.

At least four rats are depicted in its center, living it up in a messy Chicago alley. They sip from putrid puddles, they are ass up in garbage, and they chew holes through the trash can they live in so they can enjoy a little view.

One—the largest—rests comfortably, defiantly, out in the open, sniffing an empty can while a fly as big as my fist hovers close by. Above the trash can, a cry: “GET THAT RAT!” Below the illustration is a message announcing a rat extermination week in June 1947, weeks into

18 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

Mayor Martin H. Kennelly’s first term. “See reverse side to find out WHAT YOU CAN DO to help rid Chicago of this dangerous pest.”

Walk through any Chicago alley, not just mine, and you’ll see one: a yellow poster, perhaps bleached by the elements, stapled to a telephone pole. “WARNING: RATS,” at the top, in bright red font. Below, a graphic of a black, snarling rat caught in red crosshairs.

In Chicago, these posters are as ubiquitous as rats themselves, and have been the subject of many local riffs, including Target: Rats, the board game by Transit Tees and artist Derek Erdman’s “Feed the Rats” poster series, which features the same snarling rat, only this time, surrounded by hearts. Some have been political or bigoted in nature: the abhorrent anti-homeless ones that popped up in Bucktown in 2017, and the “Chicago Has a Rat Problem” posters, featuring former Mayor Lori Lightfoot as a rat, still for sale online. I’ve heard rumors about a rat sticker featuring Alderperson Jim Gardiner’s face, though if so, I can’t find it on the Web. The booklets, letters, and images I review start in 1922, with a declared “WAR ON RATS.” I thumb my way through words like “destruction,” “combatant,” “enemy,” and “win,” and land on a retrospective of rat abatement efforts in Chicago from 1966. It includes a copy of a letter from then-Mayor Richard J. Daley announcing an inspection of every building on

every block in the city.

“Remember, our homes are our responsibility,” the mayor wrote. “The health and safety of our loved ones is our responsibility.” Like other wartime leaders, Daley made a plea for public cooperation, effort, and sacrifice, which, if not freely given, would be enforced by fines, fees, and “legal action.”

I turn a few pages and examine examples of posters and booklets produced under Old Man Daley’s reign. They feature orders and

pleas for Chicagoans to “JOIN OPERATION COVER-ALL!”, a city-led effort to get everyone engaged in covering trash cans with lids, yards with grass, and building holes with new boards, windows, and bricks. Rats are adventurous eaters and build nests in wild areas and inside buildings, if they can get in. The idea then (as now) in rat abatement was to cut off their access to food and shelter, slowing their rates of reproduction and making poison more effective.

On the top of one announcement for Operation Cover-All, the Chicago flag waves crisply, patriotically. On others, women in dresses and neat slacks busy themselves

Chicago Sun (published as THE CHICAGO SUN) - June 16, 1947 - page 23 June 16, 1947 | Chicago Sun (published as THE CHICAGO SUN) | Chicago, Illinois | Page 23

© This entire service and/or content portions thereof are copyrighted by NewsBank and/or its content providers.

A Chicago Sun article from June 17, 1947 announcing Rat Extermination Week.

COURTESY OF CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY

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NEWS & POLITICS

Rat Abatement: A timeline

1 6

CITY OF CHICAGO

5

Don’t Feed The Rats!

2 4

3

The City of Chicago takes an aggressive approach to rodent control, using baiting; sanitation and public education to tackle the issue. But we need residents to help! Even one yard with a food source or hiding place can cause a problem for an entire block. By working together, we can find and eliminate food sources to more effectively combat rodents.

Eliminate the Food Source If rats can’t feed, they can’t breed. Help eliminate food sources by: • Keeping garbage contained within closed carts, bins or dumpsters • Cleaning up after dogs and making sure waste is disposed in sealed containers • Not leaving uncovered pet food outdoors • Removing tires, lumber or 1. Get That Rat, Martin H.old Kennelly adminstration (1947) 2. Operation Cover-All booklet, Richard J. Daley adminstration (1966) 3. Public Enemy booklet, otheradministration piles of debris (1978) 4. Public Enemy poster, Harold Washington administration (1983) 5. Target: Rats poster, designed under Richard Michael A. Bilandic M. Daley administration (2001) and still in use 6. Don’t Feed the Rats door hanger, Rahm Emanuel administration (2016) COURTESY OF CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY AND ALBERTO FERRARI• Weeding and throwing away

rotting fruits and vegetables from gardens

• Maintaining bird feeders

with dustpans and brooms, while men handle hammers. Everyone is white, everyone is united. “DON’T GIVE THE RATS A PLACE TO RAISE A FAMILY” the text proclaims up at me through six decades of dust. “HELP PROTECT YOUR FAMILY’S HEALTH!” In 1966, the same year Operation Cover-All began, Martin Luther King Jr. moved to Chicago to organize a campaign to end segregation and other racist housing practices in the city. One common white segregationist tactic at the time was to frame the presence of a new Black family in the neighborhood as a threat to property prices, and even neighborhood and personal (white) safety.

When it comes to effective messaging, words pair best with images: think warning signs, wanted posters, and wartime propaganda. Reading through the archives, I was again and again reminded of how the U.S. government (along with much of our media) has used the language of war to rouse civilians, encouraging them to act as spies, informants, and more. Past and present, this language often targets an ethnicized or racialized other. Even the image of a rat on a poster has a dark past. Formed during WWII, the Office of War Information oversaw the production of thousands of highly racist, dehumanizing posters depicting both Japanese soldiers and Japanese Americans as rats engaged in espionage, spreading disease, and attacking white women. Over in Germany, the Nazi machine was engaged in a similar propaganda campaign, printing anti-Semitic caricatures of Jewish people as greedy rats who were vectors of disease. (Being Nazis, they are perhaps the most obvious example to point to and condemn, but they weren’t alone. Other European nations were producing similar work both in the years leading up to WWII and long before—looking at you, France.) In both cases, dehumanization made it easier for the rest of the population to see a targeted, demonized other “relocated,” interred, and killed.

I’m not saying that Chicago rat posters are racist, but I am saying that when my partner made his alley observation, I understood what he meant. In 1966, when Operation Cover-All was active, Black people marching for housing justice in profoundly segregated Cicero were violently attacked by their white neighbors. That year was also just one in the decades-long horror that was American military intervention in Vietnam. Consciously or subconsciously, art is in conversation with the time it comes from; why would rat abatement posters be any different?

OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 19

NEWS & POLITICS

A rat abatement poster hanging on a lamppost in a Chicago alley announces the last visit by city rodent control crews CREDIT SHAWN MULCAHY

continued from p. 19

Back in Harold Washington Library, I open up a manila folder and peer into a new decade.

In 1978, under the direction of then-Mayor Michael A. Bilandic, the city released a rat abatement pamphlet. “PUBLIC ENEMY,” its title shouts in capital white letters set in a jet black box. Below the box, the rest of the pamphlet gives way to a, frankly, spectacular orange-and-black print of repeating rat heads, organized diagonally. In contrast with the stark sans serif font of the title, the repeating rat heads look lacey and almost like fleursde-lis. The effect is slightly gothic and a little trippy. It would make incredible wallpaper, or, as Twitter user Tom Bellino pointed out, a new wave album cover.

Where the cover art draws you in, the inside message is strident. After identifying the rat as Chicago’s greatest threat, “inflicting disease, despair, and terror” throughout the city, there’s a list of rat facts that are truly frightening (did you know that the average rat can tread water for three days?). Then a call to action unites the government and the governed: “The only effective means to rid our city of its public enemy,” the pamphlet warned, “is to remove their necessities of sur-

20 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

vival.” Every Chicagoan had a role to play in rat-proofing the city. “The rat can not survive our cooperative force,” it concluded. “Make it your commitment to fight the rat—Chicago’s Public Enemy.”

I sent a photo of Bilandic’s cover (the artwork was also used by the following administration under Mayor Jane Byrne) to Tanner Woodford, founder and executive director of the Design Museum of Chicago. I forgot to send him the booklet’s inside pages, but he didn’t need to see them to read the message. “By the late 1970s, crime was on the rise in Chicago,” he replied back. “The design and message may have intended to grab the public’s attention and emphasize the urgency of the rat problem, likening rats to public enemies in the context of rising crime rates.” In my correspondence with Woodford, I’m reminded of tarot cards.

I recognize that, in a way, we’re using the images to divine a story via archetypes, cultural associations, and what we now know about the past. But just because this work is subjective, it doesn’t mean there isn’t value here—or truth.

The archives for the years Harold Washington was mayor are rich in text—reports, communications, and so forth—and contain some

of the tartest language from a city official I’ve ever seen (“Dear property/business owner,” began a 1986 letter sent to every address on State and Michigan. “Contrary to popular belief, the containment of your waste edible garbage and bulk matter is, prior to pick up by private scavenger or city collection, not the responsibility of City of Chicago.”) But it skimps on images. And so, I turn to the Internet.

On a yellow poster, a black rat with white ears bares its teeth and glares at the viewer.

Its eyes are red, as are the words above it: “PUBLIC ENEMY.” Standing on two legs, the rat lunges forward, barely restrained by the red slash that crosses its body or the accompanying red circle from which it’s clearly taken bites. It grips the circle with its claws. The whole effect is disconcertingly human. I send this one out to Jessica Landau, art historian and assistant instructional professor at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization. “This may be a stretch – but I wouldn’t think it’s necessarily an accident that the rats in both [Bilandic and Washington] public enemy posters are primarily black as well,” she replied.

“In a city as segregated as Chicago, I’m sure discourse around a rat problem was (and perhaps still is) coded racially.” Indeed, a report from the Illinois Answers Project and Block Club Chicago earlier this year found that Chicagoans in the city’s predominately Black and Brown south and west sides are “more likely to have rats or rat excrement in their homes in these regions of the city than North Siders, but are less likely to call 311 because they don’t feel the city will help them.”

The yellow poster from my alley, the one that any Chicagoan who’s taken out their trash has seen, was designed by the Department of Assets, Information, and Services (AIS) during the Richard M. Daley administration. This is according to Alberto Ferrari, creative director for the City of Chicago who I reach out to after I exhaust the library archives and head home.

Ferrari has been with the AIS for about 30 years. He didn’t design that poster though, which makes me feel better about printing the following.

I asked Woodford, the Design Museum of Chicago founder, for a read. The poster’s language and use of crosshairs, he replied, may have intended to catch the attention of busy Chicagoans by “drawing parallels between the need to eliminate rats and the need to address gun violence, suggesting that both are equally

dangerous to the community. This one is so tacky. I hate it.”

This brings us to the most recent rat abatement image, so far as I could find. Intelligent-looking and naturalistic, this rat is neither friend nor foe. Instead, it is depicted as the animal it is. Its fur is a soft black and gray; it has pleasant whiskers. Whereas the Harold Washington rat stood aggressively on two feet, this rat rests gently on its back paws, its front ones relaxed at its chest.

Notably, the text accompanying this is not militaristic, and it’s not shouting. There are fewer all caps: “What YOU need to Know, What YOU need to DO.” Instead, it’s dense with information, reflecting “a more modern approach to public health awareness within the context of mass communication (or even overcommunication),” Woodford wrote. “During an era of various public health challenges, this poster squarely shifts the responsibility to citizens, asking them to take action.” Both he and Landau note that this image is the only one so far to resemble a biological rat, though, as Woodford wrote, “The typography is still distressed, even if the image of the rat isn’t.”

“The Lightfoot pamphlet was designed by us, the graphics team at City Hall. I updated the image on the brochure a few years back,” said Ferrari, a grave man who patiently listened to my interpretative questions. Previously, “it was a more aggressive illustration,” he allowed over email. I asked him to expand on what necessitated the change. “Basically, from time to time, we are requested by clients to update or refresh material. I believe we had to update the pamphlet with the current mayor at the time, Mayor Lightfoot. We also provided them with a new option for the cover image of the rat. There was no real significance to why we chose this one. It was a more realistic interpretation of a real rat.”

Back to my apartment, from the center of a to-do pile that could surely house a generation of rodents, I pull out a poster of my own. A year ago at Printers Row Lit Fest, I met Erdman, the artist who makes posters riffing off the yellow crosshairs one. “FEED THE RATS,” it says.

“RATS ARE VERY SWEET SO YOU SHOULD LOVE THEM AND FEED THEM AND BE THEIR FRIEND.” The crosshairs are still there, but they’re circled by hearts. My partner and I are going to freshen up our apartment later this fall; I plan on having it framed. v

m kprout@chicagoreader.com

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logancenter.uchicago.edu/music OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 21

Paid Sponsored Content

Carolyn Adams Ticket for the Cure saves lives in Illinois Senator Mattie Hunter shares the backstory of the first Illinois Lottery specialty ticket dedicated to breast cancer support

The Carolyn Adams Ticket for the Cure (TFTC) is an Illinois Lottery specialty ticket where 100 percent of profits go towards breast cancer research and support services in Illinois. Initiated by Senator Mattie Hunter and Senate President Emil Jones Jr., the Instant ticket was the first lottery ticket dedicated to breast cancer support in the United States when it was introduced in 2006 and became a model for the creation of other specialty tickets dedicated to a variety of worthy causes. In 2011, the TFTC was renamed in honor of former Illinois Lottery superintendent Carolyn Adams, who helped write the legislation for TFTC before losing her battle to breast cancer at age 44. Since it was first introduced, the ticket has raised more than $15.7 million in grant funding for medical research centers and community organizations across the state, which is distributed by the Illinois Department of Public Health. Tickets cost $3 and are available for purchase at over 7,000 Illinois Lottery retailers statewide. Visit the Illinois Lottery website for more information, and read on for an exclusive interview with Senator Hunter to learn the story behind the Carolyn Adams Ticket for the Cure and how it continues to impact communities across Illinois.

In 2004, a group of Latina women who were not all conversant in English, their translator, and Illinois State Senator Mattie Hunter met at Hunter’s Springfield office to talk about breast cancer. “One lady was saying, ‘We are not doing enough to help women with breast cancer,’” Hunter recalls. “And I said, ‘Well, of course, we’re doing a lot to help women with breast cancer.’”

The woman disagreed. A breast cancer survivor herself, she’d been unaware of early detection methods, such as self-exams, and where to turn for resources and support upon her diagnosis. After connecting with someone in her community, she received life-saving treatment. Now she was on a mission to help others like her.

Hunter’s interest was piqued. She promised the women she’d look into the issue, and when she contacted the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), she was surprised by what she found out. “Lo and behold, that lady was right,” she said. “We weren’t doing enough about 22 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

breast cancer or women’s health in general. That was good information to know. I called that lady back and I told her, ‘We’re going to look into it as in the Senate to see what we can do.’”

Hunter reached out to then-president of the Illinois Senate Emil Jones Jr., who posed the question: “What are you going to do about it?” She told him, “I don’t know.

But I will need you, as well as the entire caucus, to help me take a look at this issue. There are too many women being diagnosed with breast cancer [in Illinois] and we’re not doing enough to help them.” Jones agreed to provide his support.

A couple of hours before midnight on New Year’s Eve, Jones called Hunter with a plan: They’d create an Instant Ticket and donate all the proceeds to breast cancer research, outreach, and support. Illinois had never had a Lottery ticket focused on a specific cause. If they could pull it off, this wouldn’t just be the first of its kind in the state—it would be the first lottery ticket solely for breast cancer support in the United States. Hunter was immediately on board.

When the senate reconvened that January, they set off to make their vision a reality. Word spread as staff began researching and drafting legislation, leading to a fight on the Senate floor between those who supported the idea, and those who argued that the Illinois Lottery was supposed to be dedicated to the Common School Fund.

Hunter argued that along with raising much-needed funds for breast cancer organizations, promotions for the new ticket would lead to a greater number of Illinois Lottery ticket sales overall.

The work commenced, but it was time to get the community involved. In early spring, while many of her colleagues were on spring break, Hunter spent two weeks connecting with women’s organizations around the state, gaining their support, and recruiting witnesses to testify in front of legislative committees—among them was the This sponsored content is paid for by Illinois Lottery

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Illinois state senator Mattie Hunter.

Photo courtesy of Sen. Hunter’s office

woman who initially brought the issue to Hunter’s attention. Hunter also began meeting for regular daylong sessions with Illinois Lottery superintendent Carolyn Adams and her team at the Thompson Center to develop the ticket, as well as marketing and advertising strategies to promote it to the public.

After a lot of hard work, the ticket—now dubbed the Ticket For the Cure—was passed by both houses and signed into law by Governor Rod Blagojevich in July 2005. When it was launched in January 2006, public response was remarkable; by October it had raised $3 million for breast cancer organizations throughout Illinois, prompting Blagojevich to renew it for a second year.

For those involved in its creation, the success of the Ticket for the Cure was bittersweet: Just as the ticket was being rolled out, Adams announced she had been diagnosed

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Paid Sponsored Content for HIV research and outreach groups, veterans support organizations, Special Olympics Illinois, and more. Hunter is clearly proud of that legacy. “Guess who everybody used to create those specialty tickets as a consultant?” she says. “It was me, because nobody had ever done this before. . . . So, I’m the face of this specialty ticket thing.”

Hunter encourages Illinois residents to purchase the Carolyn Adams Ticket for the Cure and other Illinois Lottery specialty tickets with the knowledge that, win or lose, their dollars will support people in their own community.

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and always, she encourages people to learn more about breast cancer and to seek support as needed.

Senator Hunter with representatives from the Illinois Lottery, thfamily of Carolyn Adams, and the Department of Public Health Director LaMar Hasbrouck in 2013 to kick off the 10th edition of the ticket, which had been newly renamed the Carolyn Adams Ticket For the Cure.

Photo courtesy of Sen. Hunter’s office

with breast cancer. Hunter discovered that throughout their months working on the ticket together, Adams had been quietly undergoing chemotherapy during her lunch breaks. “She wasn’t feeling well,” Hunter says. “But she was so loyal and dedicated and committed to getting this thing done.”

In March 2007, Adams passed away from breast cancer at age 44. A couple of years later, Adams’s mother Harriet Van Pelt and Hunter had a difference of opinion over the origins of the Ticket for the Cure. Van Pelt claimed it was her daughter’s brainchild, while Hunter insisted it was Jones’s idea. Van Pelt then proved her wrong. “She showed me documentation from two years before we even got started about how Carolyn had been planning this ticket because of her situation, some of her girlfriends, and other women,” Hunter says.

That conversation led Hunter to sponsor new legislation to honor Adams’s life and legacy, and in 2011 the ticket was renamed the Carolyn Adams Ticket for the Cure. “It was a really sad situation, but it turned out to be a happy moment because it recognized all of her efforts, as well as saving lives,” Hunter says.

Nearly two decades after it was introduced, it’s clear that

“Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in Illinois, and the second leading cause of cancer death,” she says. “It’s important that we watch our bodies and perform self-exams. If you suspect something, don’t be afraid. Go and see a doctor. Whether you are uninsured or underinsured, there’s still somebody out there that will help you. There are a number of organizations that will provide you with a free mammogram, get you in treatment, and get you the help that you need. Our whole thing is saving lives—that’s what this whole thing is all about.”

the Carolyn Adams Ticket for the Cure has had a profound impact on Illinois communities. Its very presence has raised awareness and discourse surrounding breast cancer, while its proceeds have helped researchers and community organizers throughout the state do vital work in outreach, education, screenings, support services (including patient navigation), and more.

Working with IDPH, which disburses the funds, a special advisory committee reviews each proposal to ensure the money is distributed fairly and equally to help address disparities in healthcare. While some grants have helped fund research projects at top Illinois universities, others have been awarded to community organizations focusing on marginalized and underserved populations, such as Chicago’s Tapestry 360 Health and Equal Hope. Hunter herself has spoken in front of Black and Latine churches, among other groups, to engage the public and encourage grassroots organizations to apply.

As the Illinois Lottery’s first specialty ticket, the Carolyn Adams Ticket for the Cure has had an incredible ripple effect beyond breast cancer organizations, directly inspiring the creation of new specialty tickets to raise funds This sponsored content is paid for by Illinois Lottery

OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 23

COMMENTARY

Put a fancy hat on him if you like but he’s still a rat.

COURTESY THE ARTIST VIA CC0

ON POLITICS

Chicago rats

The most notorious rats in Chicago history have generally been the two-legged variety.

By BEN JORAVSKY

W

hen my editor, Salem, asked if I’d write a column on rats in Chicago, I said, “Hell, yes!” I immediately created a top-three list of Danny Solis, John Christopher, and William O’Neal.

Then I realized—wait! Salem meant rats of the four-legged variety. Which, by the way, I could write a book about, having encountered one, two, or three on any given nighttime walk as they madly scurry across alleys, streets, and sidewalks.

But by then it was too late to retreat from my investigation. So sorry, Salem.

The first thing I wondered is why are rats synonymous with tattletales. That led me to the distinction between “snitches” and “rats”—the former being people with more or less benevolent intentions of preventing a crime. As opposed to the latter, who betray a trust to get something in return—for example, a lower prison sentence for a previous crime.

24 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

Then I thought, what is it about rats that’s earned them, you know, a ratty reputation? So I googled rat behavior and wound up reading testimonies from rat lovers about how rats make loving pets. Guess it really does take all kinds in this big old world.

Turns out the deceitful reputation of rats comes from the notion that they are deceptive creatures always looking out for number one.

The first to flee a sinking boat, and all that.

So, let’s get back to the Big Three, starting with . . .

Danny Solis, former 25th ward alderperson, handpicked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to chair the council’s zoning committee.

In 2018, when Solis announced he wasn’t running for reelection on the grounds that he wanted to spend more time with his family, Mayor Rahm thanked him for his service and, oh, let’s just quote the former mayor . . .

“Danny Solis deserves the thanks and con-

gratulations of our entire city after a lifetime of public service. . . . I will forever look fondly on the eight years Danny and I served this great city together and while the simple view may be that he was an ally on the City Council, the reality is much more. Danny is a friend.”

A few weeks later the story broke that Solis, having spent several years wearing a wire for the feds, had surreptitiously recorded conversations with powerful politicians, including former Alderperson Ed Burke and House Speaker Michael Madigan.

According to the Sun-Times, Solis “agreed to cooperate . . . after investigators confronted him in 2016 with evidence of his own wrongdoing.”

That evidence included swapping favors for “Viagra, prostitution services, the use of a multi-million dollar farm and campaign contributions.”

Solis’s recordings formed the backbone of the federal corruption indictment against Burke which ultimately drove him from power.

Though I’m not sure that’s not what Mayor Rahm meant when he thanked Danny for his service.

Next on the list is John Christopher, the wired-up informant in the federal corruption investigation known as Operation Silver Shovel. (If you want to know more, check out Robin Amer’s excellent podcast The City.)

To get an idea of Christopher’s character, consider a few quotes from the Tribune story about him taking the stand in 1998 to testify against a few of the pols he’d bribed.

“Christopher said he pulled off robberies and thefts as a teenage gang member, played cards instead of filling potholes as a City of Chicago employee in the late 1960s . . . ” And “bribed bankers to obtain . . . improper loans.”

And, “. . . after pleading guilty to trying to cheat the city out of $100,000 with phony snowplowing work in the big blizzard of 1979 . . . bribed guards at one minimum-security prison camp so he could roam free during bed checks.”

The feds convinced him to wear a wire, in which he recorded about 1,110 conversations while taking about $150,000 in bribes, in exchange for a lower sentence in cases regarding tax fraud and other crimes.

But I contend Christopher’s worst crime is the one for which no one was indicted, much

less convicted. And that’s the one where, according to the feds, Christopher paid former 24th Ward Alderperson William Henry $5,000 a month to look the other way while he illegally dumped garbage and debris on vacant land at Kostner and Roosevelt in North Lawndale.

The dump—nicknamed Mount Henry—was in open operation for several years with piles of garbage rising six to eight stories high. The piles stayed there for years—long after Christopher had testified.

Christopher’s alleged payoffs to Henry took place before the feds forced him to wear his wire. I’ve always suspected the feds kept the garbage piles in place so as not to blow Christopher’s cover.

Ultimately, Mount Henry says much more about federal and local attitudes. Specifically, they don’t give a damn about poor, Black, west-side communities. I suppose we can thank Christopher for helping bring that revelation to light, as if we already didn’t know it.

Finally, there’s O’Neal. In exchange for not getting prosecuted for stealing a car, O’Neal became an FBI informant, spying on Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton in the late 1960s.

It was O’Neal who gave the feds his drawing of the layout of Hampton’s apartment at 2337 W. Monroe.

And it was O’Neal who allegedly drugged Hampton the night before the predawn raid on December 4, 1969, when Chicago police officers killed Hampton and Mark Clark as they were sleeping.

After the murders, O’Neal went into hiding in a federal witness protection program. In 1989, he resurfaced to give an interview for Eyes On the Prize II, the PBS documentary series.

O’Neal denied he drugged Hampton, but acknowledged he supplied the FBI with drawings of the apartment.

In 1990, O’Neal committed suicide by running onto the Eisenhower Expressway, where he was hit by a car.

All in all, when I consider the legacies of Solis, Christopher, and O’Neal, and the secrets they revealed about Chicago’s corruption, cynicism, and racism . . .

Well, I have to conclude that the four-legged rats might not be so bad after all. v

m bjoravsky@chicagoreader.com

COMMENTARY

ON CULTURE

Maus in wartime Reconsidering Spiegelman

By DEANNA ISAACS

I

t’s common knowledge in the book business that a well-publicized ban can lead to a short-term spike in sales. Take Art Spiegelman’s two-volume graphic novel Maus for example, which tells the story of his parents’ experience in the Holocaust, as told to him much later by his father. After it was banned by a Tennessee school board in January 2022, its sales jumped 753 percent.

The official reason for the ban was bad language and nudity, so naturally everyone who heard about it wanted to take a look. Nothing’s as enticing as a taboo. Turns out the offending language is pretty mild—a few instances of words like “goddamn” and “bitch,” and the nudity mentioned is a single spare drawing of Spiegelman’s mother’s corpse, in a bathtub and mostly underwater after she had slit her wrists.

Comics scholar Hillary Chute told me she doesn’t think the official reason for the ban was the real reason. Words like damn and bitch “in a book about the murder of millions of people seems obviously like a pretext,” she said, adding that if you read the minutes from the relevant school board meeting, it seems possible that—as in bans of work about critical race theory or slavery in general—the real issue is exposing systemic racism and racialized violence.

A graphic book might strike curriculum planners as more accessible and engaging for students, she said, “but what you get with a graphic work is an acknowledgment of these violent realities as a materialized image . . . vivid and concrete.” Chute was an English

professor at the University of Chicago when Spiegelman’s MetaMaus, which she worked on with him for six years, was published in 2011; she’s now at Northeastern University.

What Spiegelman said about that school board is, “I think they want a kinder, gentler Holocaust.”

That ban, and others that followed it, got Maus selected as the Chicago Public Library’s One Book, One Chicago text last fall, when the One Book theme was “Freedom to Read”—a fact that came up months ago when the Reader editorial staff decided to schedule a Rats issue.

It sounded to me like a good opportunity to write about Maus Now, a new collection of essays about Spiegelman’s work, edited by Chute and published late last year.

I didn’t know when I suggested it that there would be a war in the Middle East when the Rats issue went to press.

To our shame, Chicago has managed to get inserted into the fray—first by locals who touted their support for a massacre of civilians, and then with a sickening hate crime.

The Chicago-area killer of a six-year-old Palestinian American boy had a lawn studded with crosses and, as reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, was described by a neighbor as an “extremely” religious person.

On Monday morning, the Chicago Tribune published a letter to the editor that quoted an ancient Persian proverb: “If you corner a cat, it scratches your eye.” This is allegory, not much different from the allegorical device used by Spiegelman in Maus. We’re meant to understand that the letter writer is using

COURTESY PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE

the cat as a stand-in for Palestinians in Gaza.

In Maus, the Nazis are cats, and the Jews are mice.

Chute told me that analogies linking Jewish people with all sorts of vermin in Nazi propaganda, but especially with rats, were a major influence on Spiegelman’s thinking about the animal schema in Maus. It was part of “a history of different forms of dehumanization,” she said, adding that “the animal schema makes the book about othering on a profound level.”

But, she noted, Spiegelman also made his mice abstract enough so that anyone could

identify with them. “He wanted to make the faces of the mice as simple as possible. They’re basically an upside-down triangle with two dots so that no one could read the book and think, ‘That’s not me.’”

“I wrote the introduction to Maus Now alleging that it’s a relevant text for this moment, when we’re battling violence and fascism all over the world,” Chute said.

Point taken. It feels like we’re all mice now. v

m disaacs@chicagoreader.com OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 25

JENNY KENDLER

Kendler is an interdisciplinary artist, wild forager, and environmental activist based in Chicago.

BIODIVERSITY

We’re all in this together In defense of rats

By JENNY KENDLER

O

K, here we go: I’m writing an op-ed to defend rats. Not a popular stance, I am aware.

In my practice as an artist concerned with climate change and biodiversity loss, I suggest that we must move beyond human supremacy if we are to come back into alignment with a world pushed dangerously out of balance. So yes, that includes reconsidering our relationship with rats.

I believe in applying ethics consistently, no matter how different, repellent, or foreign “the other” (in this case, rats) may seem. So where fear, anger, or revulsion clouds judgment, we can gird ourselves with an ethical framework and scientific facts to work against bias and prejudice.

Many humans fear or even hate rats. This is not without reason. Rats can make a mess in our homes and spread disease. This regularly costs city residents time and money. In Chicago, as climate-related flooding increases, the possibility of future outbreaks of leptospirosis (a bacterial disease that humans can develop through contact with soil or water that has been contaminated by bodily fluids from infected animals) is a real concern. I argue that part of how we might improve this outlook is to reconsider rats as a companion species in our larger urban ecosystems.

One compelling reason to do this is that rats are not going anywhere. There is no realistic possibility of evicting rats from “our” cities anytime soon, and so I believe we need a more scientifically-driven, more humane, and less human-centered view of how to better live side-by-side with rats—and they with us.

This starts with the need to know a lot more about rats. In general, rat behavior is not well understood and urban areas don’t tend to have accurate data on how many rats abound, where they live, or even whether or not rat

26 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

populations are increasing.

Methods to reduce rat populations don’t tend to be well studied for effectiveness. And for this reason, cities often do not know if their rat control budgets are being well spent or wasted on ineffective or cruel measures. A 2021 Chicago-based study, whose lead author, Maureen Murray, is Lincoln Park Zoo’s wildlife disease ecologist, showed that rats who had been exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides were actually “significantly more likely to be infected with Leptospira spp. than other rats.”

Rats are sentient animals, care for their young, and even show empathy towards unrelated rats. An often-cited study published in Science in 2011 showed that a rat will release another trapped rat, whether or not they receive any reward, even if the rat is a stranger to them. More surprisingly still, they will voluntarily share highly favored chocolate chips with the freed rat. This suggests that rats likely have emotional lives that drive this empathic behavior—and of course, like us, they certainly feel fear and pain. Glue traps and common anticoagulant poisons cause incredible suffering, and can accidentally kill pets or predators like hawks and falcons.

As ethical beings, we humans are diminished when we act from our base reactions towards these nonhuman creatures, with no regard for their internal experiences and little knowledge of what might actually create a better situation for us all.

I am not suggesting we should live with rats in our homes. It is not positive for humans or rats to be in conflict with one another. This is upsetting and expensive for humans and dangerous for rats. We need to create and maintain healthy boundaries on the personal and municipal levels.

We should be proactively maintaining our homes and yards to keep rats out. Cities

When a rat you’ve never met before shows up instead of flowers SMITHSONIAN’S NATIONAL ZOO/FLICKR VIA CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED

should strengthen laws that make landlords responsible for proper maintenance and humane rat removal. We need to manage our own food waste and feed pets indoors, and our cities need to hold restaurant and grocery owners responsible for appropriate measures to control food waste. (I would argue that municipal composting and food-waste laws in general would go far here, ultimately saving costs and benefiting climate and food security, as well. This could be something implemented under the city’s Department of Environment, currently being resurrected in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s new budget, hint hint.)

We need to work internally to confront our own fear and bias towards rats—and maybe urban, nonhuman animals in general—and we need smart investments by cities into research on rat behaviors and effective and humane control methods. (We could start by better supporting the excellent work of the Urban Wildlife Institute at Lincoln Park Zoo which had to hold a fundraiser to complete work related to their rat study cited above.)

It is also important to note that socioeconomic status and stresses caused by systemic issues like racism and overpolicing reduce city residents’ abilities to effectively manage rat problems in their homes and yards, so the city must be additionally attentive to these areas and apply more effective pressure on noncom-

pliant landlords of properties and vacant lots.

At my own home, I have tried to notice where rats have been moving through the yard and digging. I have used affordable and simple methods like patching concrete, blocking holes with metal sheeting, and maintaining to-the-ground fencing to reduce the amount of rat “traffic” through the yard and to keep them from nesting.

I maintain my garden crops, picking often and trying to keep fruits and veggies up at higher levels. I compost in a ratproof tumbler.

I feed birds from rat-inaccessible window feeders. I try not to let the brush pile up. None of this means that there will be no rats in my yard, but it does allow me to minimize my concerns and therefore feel as though I can accept the presence that rats do have in “my” space.

(Not that I really believe that anyone can or should own land . . .) Sure, I lose some cherry tomatoes, but this is what it is to live in an urban environment—and a shared biosphere.

And before you think, “This person has never experienced a rat home invasion”—I actually have. Years ago, rats entered my art studio through a hole in an exterior wall, which they chewed to enlarge. They ruined materials, made a huge mess, and had me feeling nervous about disease.

Instead of getting scared, I got informed. I looked up the CDC’s instructions for handling

COMMENTARY rat materials. I carefully investigated, found the hole where they were coming in, and patched it temporarily, while notifying my landlord for a permanent fix. We solved the problem and presumptively, the rats went back to living outside. It wasn’t a particularly fun experience, but I do not believe hating rats or putting out cruel or potentially ineffective glue traps or poison would have made it any better.

Had I needed to remove a rat from my studio, I would have used an inexpensive catchand-release trap, and checked it often to be sure the rat didn’t die of thirst. I could even have made a rat-safe trap with materials I already have. There’s a TikTok for that, I’m sure.

You may not agree with me, but ultimately, we have to live with ourselves and I believe truly seeing, respecting, and making space for “the other”—whether human or nonhuman— is the central moral challenge of our time. At the very least, I believe we can mostly agree that causing terrible pain to nonhuman animals—especially for little purpose—is neither ethically nor morally acceptable.

Since there is no way to get rid of rats alto-

gether, and the current situation is far from ideal, I offer instead that we should shift our perspective in meaningful ways to reimagine what that relationship looks like. As cities, we need to understand rats better—and as individuals, I urge us to better understand rats.

The city is an ecosystem and ultimately, we all have to live here together.

And maybe, like me, on darkening evenings when walking along a Chicago alley, you can sometimes cheer these brave little denizens as they zip from fence to fence, using their incredible abilities, honed over millennia, to raise their families and somehow thrive alongside us humans—where few other species can.

Really, it’s quite an achievement.

So when we consider these plucky rodents, rather than reacting with hate and fear, my hope is that we can move towards something more generous and wiser in the way we make mental and physical space for rats—and all nonhuman “others.”

Rats have empathy for strangers, but do we? v

POTUS OR, BEHIND EVERY GREAT DUMBASS ARE SEVEN WOMEN TRYING TO KEEP HIM ALIVE

By SELINA FILLINGER

Directed by Artistic Director AUDREY FRANCIS

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m letters@chicagoreader.com

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ARTS & CULTURE

Never Angeline Nørth’s “It’s Okay, Ratdaughter” zines COURTESY NEVER ANGELINE NØRTH

RAT KID LIFESTYLE

My love affair with rats The way a rat moves through the city—surreptitious and calculated—resonated for me early in my transition.

By ANNIE HOWARD

M

y love affair with rats came imperceptibly, without ready origins. Certainly, it didn’t start with a youthful embrace of pet rats—my friend Will had a few, and their furry bodies scampering around his bedroom only unsettled me. A decade ago, in my first fall at Northwestern University, my friend Ramona slipped a plastic rat into my cardigan pocket, a generic party decoration transformed, in time, into a talisman of sorts. Four years later, as I started my life in Chicago, I came to realize the strange truth: I found myself identifying with the city’s most unlovable of beings, a faint tether of identification growing into the sturdy tendrils of rats’ tails, entwined in the knot of a King Rat. There is one proper origin story, I suppose: while living at the Stone Soup Cooperative in Uptown, where I spent a fleeting, necessary eight months upon crashing out of undergrad, I sat on the ramshackle home’s paint-chipped porch, smoking a joint and shooting the shit

28 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

with my new housemate Bryce. In that moment, a garden-variety rat scampered onto the front steps, considered—horror upon horrors!—running into our collective home, before vanishing once more into the night.

I offered something that didn’t even make sense, yelling to our nocturnal visitor, “I am the rats!”

This sentiment, silly and unconsidered in the moment, grew into a real sense of self-identification in short order. Living communally with other queer and trans people, I began to understand myself as both of those things as well; yet, perhaps just as importantly, I could start to articulate myself in multitudes, which I understood metaphorically in the image of my being a cooperative of rats, sliding through fleeting harmony and chaos in equal measure. I felt like the cooking rat, the long-term planning rat, the be-here-now rat, the reading rat, the gender-confused rat, and countless other rats all living in arrhythmic synchronicity, doing their best to chart a co-

herent path through the city. I cemented my ratty ardor with a tattoo of the iconic Chicago rat a summer later, since joined by two more, a growing mischief (the term for a collective of rats) mirroring my own sense of devious, gnarled city living.

The rats were my own, a way of articulating the complex realities of embodiment as a trans woman living in a trash-strewn, hostile urban environment. Then, just as unexpectedly, I came to understand that these rats were far more than my own.

G

roup identification is a tricky thing.

There are a million ways to be queer, to be trans, to be a trans woman: each of these labels, capturing some facet of how I’ve fashioned myself over the last six or so years, is only a fragment of a much larger picture, the serrated tip of a piece of broken glass that can, in mosaic form, piece together a fuller image of my being. Yet a label is simply that, a word that we affix to ourselves or something

put upon us by others, that is perhaps a starting point for connection, yet never the end of the story. Realizing I was a trans woman who needed cross-sex hormones to become embodied was only a starting point; narrating myself as a collective of rats, then discovering other trans women who had found their own kinship to the quintessential urban creature, helped me get much closer to my true, feral nature.

One of the first people who I saw reflect my appreciation of rats was Never Angeline Nørth, a Pacific Northwest-based writer and artist whose deceptively simple “rat ok” design was gifted to me on a tote bag by my friend Sasha. When we first talked three years ago, Never described a larger posse of what she called “trash animals,” like possums and raccoons that others had bonded with—as opposed to cuter creatures, animals that helped people articulate a sense of chaos. Yet she always wanted more people to appreciate rats, and through her own rat-oriented art, including several zines that explore the sense of familial displacement she experienced through her transition, she began to meet others like me, those who saw rats as their closest kin in the ecosystem of disdained wildlife.

“I always kind of thought that rats got the short end of the stick, and I feel like not enough people talk about them,” Nørth said.

“Now I see more people talk about rats, but that might also be because I talk rats all the time and I feel like the rat people are drawn to me, but I don’t know.”

The way a rat moves through the city— surreptitious and calculated, eager to find the small spaces where others may not know they’re even there—resonated with me early in my transition. At a time in which trans people are being targeted with policies that seek to make us disappear, the ability to hide oneself, to make do while avoiding the powersthat-be that want us gone, had an immense and intuitive appeal. To live on the fringes of the capitalist city, eating other people’s trash and otherwise seeking the company of the other wildlife that inhabit urban spaces, was about as much as I could hope to find for myself under such dire circumstances.

Equally important: the rat is fundamentally a creature of the city, a being that’s just as much an inhabitant of our metropolis as humans. In his book Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants, author Robert Sullivan wrote:

ll

ll

CHEMA SKANDAL! FOR CHICAGO READER

ARTS & CULTURE

“Rats live in man’s parallel universe, surviving on the effluvia of human society; they eat our garbage. I think of rats as our mirror species, reversed but similar, thriving or suffering in the very cities where we do the same.” This feeling of an intertwined fate with our city’s rats, small creatures just trying to eke out their own existence under hostile circumstances, is one that’s only possible because of the city itself, as these creatures refashion their surroundings by burrowing tunnels under sidewalks, secreting food from restaurant dumpsters, in their own improvisational act of survival.

This relationship to the rat—a studied but ultimately distant appreciation, a gratitude for their presence within the city, but not necessarily in my own home—is perhaps easier to cultivate when I’ve never dealt with rats sneaking their way inside. The presence of a rat inside one’s living space is perhaps the most dramatic vision of how a landlord’s neglect exposes the poor to the rat’s terror. It’s an image so striking that such a scene is the very first in Richard Wright’s classic Native Son, as a foot-long rat sneaks into a southside tenement; even in the face of its eventual death by skillet, “the rat emitted a long thin song of defiance, its black beady eyes glittering, its tiny forefeet pawing the air restlessly.”

Forced to fend for themselves under duress, rats are often first to target those who have already been most abandoned by society, the human’s inhospitable living conditions creating an opening that rodents and other pests will pursue with intuitive zeal.

As someone whose day job involves fighting for radical transformations to the way we treat housing, I know the importance of feeling safe and comfortable in one’s own home.

Even when living in horrid, often illegal conditions, renters nonetheless try to make the best of their surroundings, in ways that have often

Nørth’s zines explore the sense of familial displacement she experienced through her transition.

COURTESY NEVER ANGELINE NØRTH

meant taking stock of rats and their efforts to get inside. The rat itself became the focal point of a 1963 rent strike in Harlem, a symbol for the tenants’ growing consciousness that strike leader Jesse Gray would capitalize on. Collecting as many dead rodents as possible, Gray and the tenants he organized would bring them affixed to poles as they picketed their landlord, flipping it from the creature that terrorized them into a marker of their growing militancy.

“The tenants are like rats now,” Gray said.

“Rats feel their power, and they come out in broad daylight and just sit there. Once the tenants feel their power, they stop running.

They’re not afraid anymore.”

I

f I am myself a mischief of rats, charting an unsteady journey into my surroundings, I know that I am not alone. Nørth’s work, especially her “It’s Okay, Ratdaughter” zines, which capture the rat in many forms and shapes, depict her coming to terms with the ways in which years of pre-transition life

created expectations that no longer make sense as she accepts the need to make a great change. “So to be perfectly straightforward, I can’t have someone in my life who doesn’t want to know me the way I am,” one page reads, a sentiment that every trans person must navigate, in some form or fashion, with those that knew them before; a social transformation in which all too many relationships have been shattered, severed by a lack of curiosity about what we might become. Even as I’ve not experienced the loss of birth family that countless others have faced, the doubt expressed in Nørth’s drawings is nonetheless deep-felt, as we push out of our hiding spaces and into the light of day, hoping that other people’s fears will not define our futures.

In this moment, it appears that a love of the rats is not merely confined to trans women.

According to at least one TikTok trend, we’ve just passed through a “Rat Girl Summer,” with the hashtag being used 30 million times since its inception by writer Moira Johnson

in early June. What Johnson found in the rat is admirable: as she suggests in her first video launching the trend, “We’re scurrying around the streets, we’re nibbling on our little snacks, and generally finding ourselves in places we have no business being in.”

As the trend gained momentum, it animated a vital outlook in its devotees, rejecting an overemphasis on appearance and instead encouraging people to embrace an outgoing lifestyle, refusing to overthink the things that make life pleasurable, like the rat that defiantly hauls a slice of pizza down subway steps. To see the rat picked up on such a wide scale excites me; though I’ve had my own long, winding relationship to the rat, this adoption is affirmation that I’m not alone in seeking a different connection to the city, a desire to move through the streets on instinct and passion, without fear.

The rats will always articulate the unspoken parts of ourselves that others disregard. In this, I am reminded of an essay published in Dazed in April, in which James Grieg argued, “As a gay man, the rat is not my enemy, but my comrade in abjection,” a fitting symbol of what others choose to misrepresent in us. I think about musician Ada Rook, who has long centered the rat in her visual imagery and songs, both in solo work and as part of the duo Black Dresses. Rook’s unrelenting, blown-out sounds often defy intelligibility, a sonic tactic that’s made her work popular to those who are often willfully misunderstood, no matter how well they articulate themselves.

Rook has an as-yet-unreleased song called “Rat Kid Lifestyle,” uploaded to YouTube as a live performance from earlier this summer.

Everything about it feels right: Rook tells the crowd to create a tight circle “like a fidget spinner” in the cramped, sweaty room inside Bar Orwell, a low-rent, DIY-oriented dive bar in Toronto, a perfect rat locale. The song is as high intensity and inchoate as so many others that she’s made, and the name “Rat Kid Lifestyle” suggests that it’s just how it’s gonna be. Played at a benefit show to support a friend from being deported from Canada, it also shows that the rats know how to look out for themselves and everyone they care about—if not us, then who?

As the world crumbles around us and our cities fall into disrepair, it’s that basic animal instinct, to look out for those around us and seek collective survival, that the rats might teach us all. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 29

ARTS & CULTURE

LABOR ORGANIZING

Making waves

In the past two years, Chicago’s cultural organizations have welcomed 3,000 new union members.

By ANNETTE LEPIQUE

A union rally outside ChiArts on August 30, 2023 PATRICK LENTZ

“T

he view that unions are a hostile force within a workplace is fundamentally incorrect. Creating a union is an act of love: love for your work, love for your colleagues, and love for the institution that means a great deal to many people.”

This is a view that came to the forefront of my conversation with Analú María López, a staff member at Newberry Library, who believes that a labor union protects the future of the institution. Newberry workers won their union in November 2022, with over 75 percent of the votes cast. Since that time, the union’s organizing committee has been at the bargaining table with management, reaching a tentative agreement in October.

Newberry Workers United is part of the growing wave of workers organizing at cultural institutions in Chicago and beyond over the past two years. The Art Institute of Chicago and School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) was the first notable campaign in the city, filing for their union in the summer of 2021. They met management at the bargaining table in May 2022 and were the first of Chicago’s arts organizations to bring home a tentative union contract in August 2023.

The Field Museum joined the fight in October 2022, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in March 2023, and the Museum of Science and Industry in April 2023. Workers at places like Berlin Nightclub, the University of Illinois Chicago, and the University of Chicago are still

30 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

fighting. Most of these workplaces organized under AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees).

Anders Lindall, the public affairs director for AFSCME Council 31, described this surge as critical to not only the city but to the labor movement as a whole. “When workers see other workers come together, they gain a blueprint for how such organizing can be accomplished,” he said. It is power that has a tangible impact. Just in these past two years, Lindall continued, “Chicago has seen 3,000 new union members in cultural organizations alone.”

Work impacts us all. Most people must work to survive. This is a reality shared between the workers of Starbucks, Amazon, UPS, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), and the recent Jackson Park Hospital nurses union picket line. The shared concerns of paying bills, buying groceries, and having a safe and stable home is why the wave of successful and public-facing unionization efforts in cultural institutions across the city are so important to understand in context. What has happened at these museums, libraries, and clubs transcends their boundaries. Within the last 12 months, a Gallup poll found that 67 percent of Americans approve of labor unions. An April poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that over half of Americans feel a decline in union membership is bad for working people and bad for the country as a whole. If these statistics are coupled together, they present a window into a society that is popu-

lated by working people; workers with a vested interest in job security, safety, and fair pay.

L

ópez, librarian and assistant curator of the Newberry Library’s Ayer collection of American Indian and Indigenous studies, and Catherine Gass, a photographer and longtime digital specialist at the library, gave various reasons for the Newberry’s drive for unionization. López cited “equal pay, better pay, greater diversity in the library’s workforce, and greater transparency from the library’s upper administration” and they both agreed that a union would support the library through collective decisions for a better future. While these reasons for a labor union could easily be shared by most workers, they hold a special meaning for arts and cultural institutions that have stripped workers of their protections over the decades. Such strip mining has occurred in the arts because the sector has flourished under years of nonstandard employment practices (freelance work) and zero-hour contracts, where employers are not obligated to provide any hours to a worker.

Freelance or contract work has expanded in the contemporary art world because, under capitalism, artists are likened to entrepreneurs. It’s a relationship that’s been written on at length, often with the intent to prove that artists actively seek out freelance work because of their need for professional flexibility and a shared, somehow inherent panoply of interests and skills. Under such a critical lens, freelance work is usually touted as a good

thing, an opportunity for artists. However, as freelance work is the main source of income for many arts workers, it sets the groundwork for dire economic conditions as it allows institutions to pay artists very little with no benefits. Couple freelance’s prevalence in the arts with the appearance of zero-hour contracts and you’ll see a labor market with fault lines ready to crack at the next economic or natural disaster. According to an October report from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, the average weekly earnings for museum-sector employees is still almost 20 percent lower than the average U.S. worker.

The Newberry union’s Instagram account notes that the library’s employment requirements and compensation have become increasingly disparate; the training demanded of archival, library, and cultural work continues to increase as compensation dwindles (last year they found that library assistants, a position that usually requires advanced degrees and training, made just above minimum wage in the city of Chicago). These dips in worker pay stand in stark contrast to the salaries made by those in the library’s president’s office. According to its 2021 tax filing, the former president and VP made over $300,000 and $200,000, respectively.

At the time of this article, Newberry management was readying to push back on the union’s call for better and equal pay, and by extension the terms and conditions of library employment, by calling into question the

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ARTS & CULTURE Newberry’s very status as a cultural institution. It’s a common move by management as it allows them to deny the need for parity with other cultural institutions and allows them to obscure their hiring structures under a veil of opacity. (In a statement, the Newberry Library wrote, “We have negotiated in good faith throughout this process and are pleased to share that we have reached a tentative agreement with Newberry Workers United.

We look forward to the ratification process, which is now moving forward.”) Yet, it’s a move that doesn’t faze Gass, who also works as an adjunct assistant professor in SAIC’s photography department. In recollecting a conversation with a colleague at SAIC, Gass told me, “My colleague encouraged me not to think of the union as a challenge but rather as an act of creative world-building, building something better not only for myself but for my colleagues and the library.” López too was driven by the same solidarity and cited her own history with the Newberry’s collection. (She first began work at the library as a student assisting in the digitization of the Indigenous studies collection.) It was then López stated she “witnessed firsthand the collection’s importance to the community.”

Unfortunately such shared importance is regularly turned against an institution’s workers by management. In a conversation with a labor organizer, who wished to remain anonymous, the topic of union busting in the arts, specifically in Chicago, came up. They stated, “The rhetoric of cultural institutions frames their relationship to their workers as communities and families; anything but that of bosses to workforce for whom they are responsible.” A representative from Northwestern library’s bargaining committee echoed the organizer’s sentiment via email and added that during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic they “had no say in the furloughs, which were sprung on us with very little notice and ultimately resulted in the departure of many highly-experienced and deeply appreciated staff. . . . Public-facing employees had very little say in what measures would be put in place to protect them from contracting COVID.”

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hile the lack of worker protections in the arts is not unique, the cultural sector presents a compelling battleground from which workers have made their voices heard. The same passion that draws workers to the arts provides the foundation for a resilient community.

When speaking of the resiliency of the labor community, it’s important to note the impact the CTU has had on the city’s landscape. The CTU has been around in recognizable form since the 1930s and represents over 25,000 workers in the city. Full-time faculty at the Chicago High School for the Arts (ChiArts) joined the CTU under its charter and contract wing in 2018. The school’s part-time teaching artists (the drivers of the school’s largest source of revenue, many of whom are practicing artists) voted to join the CTU in June 2022 due to “stagnant wages, lack of job security, and no basic rights” throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Patrick Lentz, a photographer and visual arts teacher on the bargaining team for teaching artists at ChiArts, said that because teaching artists are part-time and directly responsible for teaching and growing the school’s highest-enrollment draw (their arts programs), they are in a precarious position as workers.

They are not as protected as teachers with full-time status: they typically have limited or no benefits plans and little-to-no job security as classes, and thus income, are not guaranteed semester to semester. Teaching artists also have little-to-no voice in the school’s decision-making processes regarding funding, leadership, and other committee-driven decisions. This precarity in turn directly impacts the students and next generation of artists under these teachers’ care and tutelage.

There again is a sharp discrepancy between the wages of ChiArts’ part-time staff and the school’s leadership. ProPublica records show that the school’s former principal earned over $170,000 during fiscal year 2021. Prior to the new union contract, the starting salary for arts teachers was $55 per hour but that only includes hours in the classroom; none of the time spent preparing curriculum or offering help to students is paid. According to the union’s members, this setup usually would average out to arts teachers making minimum wage or less.

The sharp difference between ChiArts worker wages and those of the school’s administration, along with the precarity faced by the institution’s part-time teaching artists, are conditions shared by adjuncts and staff at SAIC. In the final years of her tenure as SAIC president, Elissa Tenny was reported to make almost three-quarters of a million dollars each year, while lecturers (around half of the school’s teaching faculty) were not eligible for employer-sponsored health insurance.

“For the vast majority of visual artists in

A poster from ChiArts’ first joint contract negotiation for arts and academic teachers.

PATRICK LENTZ

Chicago, meeting your basic life expenses while also continuing your artist’s practice is close to impossible without an additional job outside of gigs,” Lentz said. “I experience this and also see this with our 85 part-time arts teachers firsthand. Yes, there is a passion/ rewarding side of teaching, but there’s also a survival aspect for having consistent income.”

A tentative agreement was made between the CTU and ChiArts administration in early September. This will be the first contract for 85 teaching artists, according to Lentz. The union’s determination throughout 11 months of bargaining paved the way for gains in “protections for part-time teaching artists, restoration of the arts day that management had just cut by 30 percent, and a considerable increase in educator salaries and benefits to buttress the impacts of inflation.” The specifics of these gains are forthcoming in the agreement that CTU is negotiating with the school’s administration.

The structural fissures that the ChiArts faculty union has worked to repair at their school are conditions shared by the majority of working artists throughout the city. Working artists are a highly skilled, specialized workforce in a sector that has thrived on contracting artists in order to avoid the responsibilities of employing them and offering low pay in exchange for cultural and social cachet.

It’s a dynamic that Lentz summed up well.

“This is a fight that feels important for what [a] union for part-time teachers could look like, especially for arts workers where living paycheck to paycheck is the reality for most,

and institutions take advantage of the vulnerability of workers needing steady income outside of the gig economy,” he said.

How art workers are treated by management, administrators, and bosses is shared with most workers under capitalism (low pay, long hours, unsustainable and many times unsafe working conditions). However, arts and cultural workers’ response to these conditions and to the devious union-busting rhetoric they routinely face, like the bad faith accusation that unions are motivated by self-interest, has given rise to an inspiring sense of solidarity.

While the “uniqueness” of this phenomenon in Chicago should not be blown into hyperbole, it is through the act of witnessing workers organize and succeed that other workers can imagine a better life for themselves.

In a system where odds are stacked against the individual, like the loosening of child labor laws in states like Arkansas, national “rightto-work” legislation, and blatant fearmongering by management, we find ourselves in a structure built by and for the rich. Collective action presents the possibility for material and immaterial gains: better pay, better working conditions, and more often than not, hope for the future. Perhaps this is the lesson to take into the future: think of what you owe to those you work with every day.

If it can happen in Chicago, it can happen anywhere. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 31

ARTS & CULTURE From left : Justine Kurland, Luxury, 2022; Jimmy DeSana, Extension Cord, 1979; Barbara Crane, Untitled from the series Private Views, 1980– 84/2009 COURTESY WATERSHED

REVIEWS

R Look but don’t touch

With SCUMB Manifesto, artist Justine Kurland takes an X-Acto knife to the male canon.

“Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.” So begins Valerie Solanas’s incendiary, prophetic SCUM Manifesto, SCUM of course standing for the Society for Cutting Up Men. Artist Justine Kurland channels Solanas’s righteous rage into her ongoing project, SCUMB Manifesto, or the Society for Cutting Up Men’s Books, where she takes an X-Acto knife to the male canon.

The latest iteration of Kurland’s project is on view at Watershed Art & Ecology, in the form of gorgeously composed large-scale collages. Kurland began the project by first cutting up her own photography books by white men. Now friends have purged such books from their own collections, allowing many of the mesmerizing works on view to have been culled from the same titles.

Kurland channels radical feminine energy not just in the physical making of these works, but also in their compositions, where organic, circular shapes reign.

Luxury, made up of images of disassembled body parts, hair, red cocktails, and pink fabric, is composed in the shape of a vulva. The black-and-white Nudes (Bad Mommy) resembles two differently sized breasts. From afar, they look like tissue-paper flowers, but up close they are a mass of body parts. From one of the nipples dangles a string of X-Acto blades, from the other a blade protrudes out, as if daring one to cop a feel. Even in the circular-framed The Mind and the Hand (Circle Jerk), which showcases old men’s faces arranged in phallic shapes, the penises are foolishly dancing in a circle jerk.

Nudes (Target) is one of the most striking pieces here, the cut-up black-and-white images overlapping one another in subtle gradations, like the petals of a flower.

Much of the images Kurland collages seem to be female in nature: there is no shortage of long hair, bare breasts and torsos, smooth legs. In addition to renouncing the white male art canon, the artist is also in a sense reclaiming these likenesses of women. She’s taking back the objectification of the female form, the male gaze, the woman as ever-surveyed, as John Berger posited.

“There are certain themes that keep reemerging in my work,” Kurland said in an interview, among them was

ART & ECOLOGY; JIMMY DESANA TRUST, P·P·O·W, NEW YORK, AND DOCUMENT; DEPAUL ART MUSEUM

“what it is to forge some space that you can occupy.”

With SCUMB Manifesto, Kurland is indeed forging a space of her own—though it’s not necessarily a safe space; you never know where a knife may be hidden.

—KERRY CARDOZA “JUSTINE KURLAND” Through

10/21: Sat 2-7 PM and by appointment, Watershed Art & Ecology, 1821 S. Racine, watershed-art.org, watershedartandecology@gmail.com

DeSana’s luscious R Jimmy suburban wastelands The artist’s first solo exhibition in Chicago If you want to experience the body as an object of disruption amidst suburban wastelands, look to the images of Jimmy DeSana. The Detroit-born photographer was a fixture of the East Village art scene in 1980s New York, and his work demonstrates a studied awareness of gay image makers and forefathers like Andy Warhol and Wakefield Poole. In “Suburban,” on view at Document, 12 images show DeSana’s fascination with the American dream, power, pain, the body as a line or phrase, and luscious gel lights.

DeSana was part of the anti-art and new-wave movements, so his work is both frenetic and polished.

This show focuses on interior spaces and feelings of alienation, likely reflecting DeSana’s upbringing. He came of age at the auto industry’s height only to see his father laid off. The family relocated to Georgia, where his parents split because his father had an affair with a neighbor, and his mother dealt with it by retreating into a strict Methodism. By the time he reached adulthood,

the life he’d been raised to expect had become punishing and strange.

While DeSana studied photography in the late 1960s and early ’70s, he became involved with the gay liberation movement and was especially galvanized by the police raid of a screening of Warhol’s homoerotic western Lonesome Cowboys at the Ansley Mall Mini-Cinema.

After moving to New York in the mid-70s, he aspired to make work that disrupted white heterosexual orthodoxy, but he also wanted to resist a documentarian approach to capturing queer life and attitudes. Not only could documentary photography help police, but it was also boring! More appealing to the artist were scenes where subjects could not be identified and whose own personhood could be subjective, raising questions about how queer people want or are allowed to exist in certain spaces. This is the artist’s first solo show in Chicago—and hopefully a sign of more to come. —MICCO CAPORALE

“SUBURBAN” Through 10/28: Tue-Sat 11 AM-6 PM, Document, 1709 W. Chicago, documentspace.com

R Pools of time

“Life Cycles” paces through fleeting moments and through the storms of the everyday.

What narrative can we tell of a fractured life when gleaned through the nature of the anthropogenic? Possibly a fragmented story of being. “Life Cycles,” a group show curated by Ionit Behar at the DePaul Art Museum, gathers more than 50 artists in various mediums whose work shares a common border in exploring subjectivity through the appendages of life.

The exhibition is enveloped by experiences stemming from petropolitics, erasure, and tradition, to forms of longing, time, daily grievances, and healing. The photographs on view function as casts for the poetic changes in the body, or repressive crafted roles; they also serve as depictions of tender interior moments, or performative documentation.

Curatorially, the works offer a potential inherent relationality that gives way to their innermost nature of meaning. A flower stem collected from a cemetery and delicately covered in dandelion stems (Selva Aparicio’s, Auto-da-Fé (Act of Faith)) can further conjure regeneration, death, and time passing through an ever-changing drawing adjacent to it (Alberto Ortega-Trejo’s Cuando no nos dan fiebres, nos dan dolores en los huesos (When they don’t give us fevers, they give us pains in the bones)).

Similarly, a painting capturing a forest burning (Elsa Muñoz’s The Great Turning) evokes forms of climate catastrophe, loss, and wounds, as well as transformational pains within the everyday (as in the works of Laurel Nakadate’s 365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears and Andrea Carlson’s Ancestor and Descendant).

Arguably all the works allow for a journey of understanding, which unfolds a matrix of spatial affective sapience—all the works, as you move through each space, provide temporary views into the shadows of reality. “Life Cycles” paces through fleeting moments and through the storms of the everyday.

—ISAAC VASQUEZ “LIFE CYCLES” Through 2/11:

Wed-Thu 11 AM-7 PM, Fri-Sun 11 AM-5 PM, DePaul Art Museum, 935 W. Fullerton, resources.depaul. edu/art-museum/exhibitions, free v

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23/24 SEASON

Jungle Book reimagined. Photo by Ambra Vernuccio.

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DANCE

JUNGLE BOOK REIMAGINED AKRAM KHAN COMPANY November 9, 2023 / 7:30PM November 10, 2023 / 7:30PM November 11, 2023 / 2:00PM “…an imaginative, ambitious, morally committed comment on 21st-century mankind’s regrettable apartness from nature.”

— The Telegraph 312.334.7777 | harristheaterchicago.org | 205 East Randolph Street Irving Harris Foundation, Joan W. Harris HTP Mainstage Sponsor

20th Anniversary Season Sponsor

Abby McCormick O’Neil and D. Carroll Joynes

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Lead Presenting Sponsor

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OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 33

THEATER

Rat City: The Musical ANGEL CRUZ

Joseph Bryant in Rat Mass COURTESY THE ARTIST

VERMIN VARIETY HOURS

RAT MASS: A NIGHT OF VILE FLUIDS

Rats—now and forever Two Chicago shows put the maligned rodents in the spotlight.

R

34 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

Jeff Dorchen as Ben the rat—the latter sporting two metal hooks in place of his front paws, which he’d chewed off when caught in a trap.)

Two recent shows created by veterans of the local sketch and stand-up comedy scenes aim to challenge the negative stereotypes of rattus. Rat City, an immersive musical, played at the Raven Room at Redline VR in June. And Rat Mass has a regular once-per-month Sunday gig at the Annoyance (they’re presenting a special Halloween-themed edition on October 22).

In Rat City, a plucky burrow of Chicago street rats gathers for Ratapalooza—“a night to celebrate excess, whether it be food, friendship, or communicable diseases.” Featured

RAT CITY: THE MUSICAL

For information on future shows, follow them on Instagram, @ratcitythemusical

By KERRY REID

ats run rampant on Chicago streets, but on Chicago stages? Not so much.

Kids’ productions of Charlotte’s Web may shine a light now and again on Templeton, the sneaky (but ultimately praiseworthy) barn rat who helps save Wilbur’s life, as well as Charlotte’s progeny. Some versions of The Nutcracker go with a Rat King instead of a Mouse King as the foe of the title character.

But generally speaking, rats in theater are a marginalized anthropomorphic community.

(Though I would be remiss to not mention the 1990 Theater Oobleck show, When Will the Rats Come to Chew Through Your Anus?, written by Mickle Maher and the Oobleck ensemble and featuring Maher as Willard and

Sun 10/22 8 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, theannoyance.com, $15; open run once per month (see website for updates)

headliner? Chance the Ratter, of course. But when a colony of feral cats invades, a cat and rat same-sex couple finds themselves, á la Tony and Maria in West Side Story, trying to keep their love alive in the face of cross-species battle. There’s also a duplicitous raccoon podcaster named Banksy, scheming rival gang leaders, and the prospect of the rats “moving to a nice safe suburb” rather than standing and fighting for their urban colony. It’s an endearingly silly high-energy show, complete with shout-outs to Chicago staples such as Portillo’s and Malört.

Cocreator/coproducer Elaine Golden says that the inspiration for Rat City came in part from the Cats at Work program run through

Tree House Humane Society, in which feral felines are placed in communities to help control the rodent population, with humans providing “food, water, shelter, and wellness” to the participating pussy cats. “I just thought it was so interesting that they placed these cats at homes and businesses to displace the rat population. And to me it sort of felt like a metaphor for displacement or like an intimidation tactic for gentrification,” Golden says.

The show created a small cult following during its run at the Raven Room. I saw the special June 25 Pride performance on video, and the house was packed with people not just in Pride gear, but also sporting little rat ears on their heads. “We tried to make it as im-

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THEATER mersive an experience as we could, given the constraints of the space,” Golden says.

Golden, who primarily performs as a standup comic around town, notes that she learned a lot about rats in the process of researching the show. (Abigail Cline and Warren C. Dailey collaborated on the score—the Raven Room show featured recorded musical tracks to which the cast sang live.)

“I think if they weren’t chewing on people’s wires and getting into their homes, people would be mostly fine with them. They’re really social creatures. They like the night, and they’re really friendly,” notes Golden.

In addition to hoping to get more performances for Rat City up early next year (possibly in an extended format), Golden and her collaborators are also developing a new monthly cabaret show, which will focus on a different creature each month. “That is also sort of like using animal whimsy and immersive themes, but more focused as a variety show,” says Golden. One possible title? Little Low Creatures Comedy Hour.

For Perry Letourneau and Joseph Bryant, creators of Rat Mass, personifying rats isn’t the point for their show; it’s designed more as a celebration of rat lives. The two men, who met at the Second City Conservatory, found themselves simpatico creatively. “At one point, Perry said he wanted to start a variety show, and I said, ‘Hmmm, let’s make it really interesting,’” says Bryant. “He said, ‘What if it was a religion,’ and I said, ‘Yup, that’s interesting.’ Both of us really have this shared love of creatures and nature.” Bryant was raised Southern Baptist and Letourneau attended Catholic school.

They played around with various animals who could be the centerpiece of their faux-religious ceremony, including crabs and pigeons.

But the rats won out. “I think part of it is this local connection,” notes Letourneau. “They’re just everywhere. We thought it would be interesting to hone in on this thing that is all around us and just having a lot of respect and love for it.”

“Rats are citizens just like us,” says Bryant.

The two point out that the Halloween show is a little bit different in format than the usual show, which Bryant notes is run “like a religious service, specifically a Catholic Mass. So there’s not a narrative structure which people follow like a musical or a straight play. It’s sort of a real space. We don’t have a fourth wall and we don’t suspend disbelief.” The audience

becomes the congregation, and guest acts are folded into the concept. “A stand-up act might be a guest speaker, or a musical guest might be the choir,” says Bryant.

Letourneau adds, “The only ceremony we’ll do every time is communion, which for us is shots of Malört.” They also have “Sin Bingo” in place of the sacrament of confession.

As “creature preachers,” Bryant says, “This is not a service for rats to come to. This is a service in celebration of rats that Perry and I lead for everybody else in the community who agrees that rats are beautiful.”

“Chicago is the rat capital of the country,” says Letourneau. “That comes up pretty often—this is an environment that they’ve learned to thrive and survive in.” He notes that in colder climates, like Chicago, mother rats will join together to nest their offspring for warmth. “I think that’s so cute and there are just lessons to be learned there about community.”

“The educational aspect [of the show] is less a bookish aspect like ‘This is why rats are great. This is what you love about rats,’ and more of a genuine spiritual connection that allows us to build with a secular community that isn’t looking for church,” adds Bryant, noting that they have had discussions with the audience about who likes rats and who is scared of them.

Neither man has ever had a pet rat. But Bryant says that seeing the rats in the city “makes me happy and joyful. I was sitting by the lake one night, looking up at the moon and reciting the first rat hymn I wrote for the show. And then I looked down and saw that there was a rat on the lake, looking up at the same moon that I was while I was reciting the poem.”

Though it’s not designed as a preachy show, Letourneau says that he does hope the show can help shift people’s perspectives on rats.

“I think there is a tendency to look at them as carrying disease and infesting alleys, and I think it’s easy to overlook that this is a living thing. If nothing else, I hope that by the end of a Rat Mass, people have started to think about this living creature with emotions and a soul.”

When I ask them if they, like Golden, are interested in expanding to shows about other maligned urban wildlife, Bryant says, “I think we’ve hit on a cultural centerpiece of Chicago with rats. But we love all creatures. So never say never.” v

NOW THROUGH NOV 18, 2023

SANCTUARY

CITY

By MARTYNA MAJOK Directed by STEPH PAUL Featuring GRANT KENNEDY LEWIS, BRANDON RIVERA and JOCELYN ZAMUDIO

“STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL AND ...EMOTIONALLY IMMERSIVE” - Chicago Sun-Times

“DEEPLY INVOLVING. IT’S REALLY SOMETHING” - Chicago Tribune

Performances are in English, with a Spanish language captioned performance on Sat Nov 4

TICKETS START AT $20/$15 STUDENTS steppenwolf.org | 312-335-1650

m kreid@chicagoreader.com OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 35

THEATER OPENING

R Ghosts and dysfunction

Communing with Household Spirits at Theater Wit Mia McCullough’s play, now receiving its world premiere at Theater Wit, is about the immovable object meeting the irresistible force: a family’s forceful denial of its panoply of problems is finally exploded by confronting its past. So far I could be describing Long Day’s Journey Into Night or August: Osage County, but the wrinkle here is that the past is literally sitting in the kitchen in the form of a ghost knitting an impossibly long scarf.

This is Clara, first wife of Philip and mother of Erik, who observes all that goes on in the second marriage while remaining unobserved by everyone except the housekeeper. And “all that goes on” includes every possible form of dysfunction including alcoholism, a nearly loveless second marriage, tension between stepsiblings, and spooky narration by a life-sized doll whose internal cavity contained valuables smuggled away from the Nazis and now contains contraband bottles of wine.

That’s a lot to incorporate in a single evening, and indeed the play runs two and a half hours. But McCullough has written, and Eileen Tull directs, fully fleshed-out characters who evolve from sitcom pains in the ass to touching human beings over the course of the play. The seven-person cast is impeccable, led

by Ilyssa Fradin as Clara, yearning even a dozen years after her suicide to communicate with and touch her son. Doug MacKechnie is superb as Philip, struggling to admit and then conquer his alcoholism and then falling off the wagon in spectacular style, while Cindy Gold as housekeeper Angela is the only grounded one in the family and at the same time the only one aware of the ghost. I’d like to move into Manuel Ortiz’s set, and Rachel Sypniewski’s costumes tell us quite a bit about the characters before they open their mouths.

The play is overcrowded, though, and the references to the family’s Jewish heritage are perhaps too weighty for a piece that has plenty of heft without hauling around the excess baggage of history. But it’s still an absorbing work. A word of warning: though its PR describes Household Spirits as “a dark comedy,” it’s not a comedy at all—it’s a family drama with some witty lines and a rather chilling climax. —KELLY KLEIMAN HOUSE-

HOLD SPIRITS Through 11/11: Thu-Sat 7 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Mon 10/30 7 PM (industry night); Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, theaterwit.org, $25-$55

R Games people play

Teatro Tariakuri brings an adult twist to classic proverbs.

Nestled in a strip of storefronts in Marquette Park, Teatro Tariakuri (led by founder and artistic director Karla Galván) has been offering Spanish-language comedies and family shows for 20 years. (They first produced in Pilsen, before rising rents pushed them further south, and took a seven-year break before opening their current cozy venue.) Their latest, Lotería: Dichos, Proverbios, Albures, presented as part of Destinos: 6th Chicago International Latino Theater Festival, is decidedly more on the adult side of the spectrum.

The premise for this fast-moving and crowd-pleasing show, created by frequent Tariakuri collaborator Tomás Urtusástegui and directed by Galván and Esteban Pantoja, is that the figures of the lotería game (similar to

36 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

bingo) are replaced by popular sayings, proverbs, and jokes heavy on double entendres. A cast of seven runs through a series of sketches, many with unabashedly naughty scenarios and props, to illustrate the common conditions of people behaving foolishly, whether in love or on the job. Manuel Duarte plays the emcee, decked out in a green sequined jacket and an ever-changing series of ridiculous hats, and singer Patricia Galvan blows the roof off with her numbers at the top of the show. There are English subtitles, but don’t worry if you don’t catch every translation—the ensemble is so good at physical comedy and reacting to each other that even those of us whose Spanish is rusty can pick up on most of the jokes. With free popcorn in the lobby adding to the welcoming atmosphere, Teatro Tariakuri creates a fine place to leave your worries on the doorstep for a while and just enjoy the human comedy. —KERRY REID LOTERÍA: DICHOS, PROVERBIOS, ALBURES

Through 11/11: Sat 7 PM, Sun 6 PM; no show Sat 10/21; Teatro Tariakuri, 3117 W. 63rd St., teatrotariakuri. org, $30, in Spanish with English subtitles, 18+

R Whose body?

Raven’s Night Watch elevates the derivative plot.

Last year for the Destinos festival and Teatro Vista, Georgette Verdin directed Paloma Nozicka’s haunting Enough to Let the Light In, which amply demonstrated her ability to create chilling atmospherics onstage.

Night Watch, Verdin’s latest production, doesn’t have the same depth as Nozicka’s play, which was as much about guilt, loss, and isolation as it was about possible supernatural presences. Written in 1972 by Lucille Fletcher (perhaps best known as the author of Sorry, Wrong Number, which started out as a radio play before being turned into a hugely successful cinematic vehicle for Barbara Stanwyck), Night Watch feels more than a little derivative, with echoes of earlier Hitchcockian thrillers such as Rear Window and Marnie, as well as a touch of Gaslight.

Elaine (Aila Ayilam Peck) is a wealthy, neurotic Manhattanite suffering from insomnia. One night, she

momentarily sees a figure of a dead man sitting in a chair in the window of the abandoned building across the garden from the luxe home she shares with her second husband, stockbroker John (Kroydell Galima). At her insistence, John calls the cops to investigate, but they turn up nothing.

Did Elaine imagine it? Is someone gaslighting her?

We learn that Elaine’s first husband died in a car accident with his paramour, and that both the violent death and his betrayal threw her into a psychological tailspin.

Her friend and nurse from those days, Blanche (Jodi Gage) lives with Elaine and John—but how trustworthy is she? What does the German housekeeper and cook, Helga (Kathy Scambiatterra) know about what’s going on? And is the fey neighborhood gossip (Matthew Martinez Hannon) harboring his own resentments toward Elaine and her gentrifying husband?

It’s decidedly creaky at points, but Peck delivers a compelling performance as a woman on the edge, and for the most part, the rest of Verdin’s cast also leans into the just-this-side-of-campy aesthetic required to make it

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THEATER Household Spirits CHARLES OSGOOD

work. Christopher Meister as the beleaguered detective barges in once in a while to remind Elaine that they have real crimes to solve in the city, damn it—which, along with a veiled reference to the Kitty Genovese slaying adds some urban grit to the setting. Mara Ishihara Zinky’s set and Steph Taylor’s costumes capture upscale 1970s living, and the lights by Lee Fiskness and sound by Christopher Kriz provide the suitably disquieting shifts in perception. It’s not a great play by any means, but for those seeking some seasonal chills with a cunning and well-seasoned cast, it’s worth a look. —KERRY REID

NIGHT WATCH Through 11/12: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, raventheatre. com, $45 (student/military/industry $35)

R Rocking With Chekhov

Seagulls turns the Russian classic into a witty contemporary musical.

There is something about Anton Chekhov’s first successful full-length play, The Seagull, that attracts playwrights to try their hand at creating their own adaptations— faithful or otherwise. Maybe it’s the fact that the characters at the center of this nearly 130-year-old play—the narcissistic mother, her emotionally damaged son, his talented but blindly ambitious girlfriend—feel so contemporary and compelling.

Some of these translations/adaptations are not bad; few of them do anything more than piggyback on Chekhov’s greatness. Beth Hyland’s indie-rock musical adaptation is the rare exception—a witty, intelligent, heartfelt adaptation that stands on its own. In fact, Hyland’s transformation is so complete, you would hardly be faulted for not knowing Hyland’s characters and story are loosely based on Chekhov’s original.

Hyland strips down the play to four characters, all members of a struggling college rock band called Seagulls, led by the tortured son of a former pop star with major mommy issues. The story that unfolds is very Chekhovian—characters talk past each other, others love too much or too little, hearts silently break, life goes on—but Hyland gives it all a modern twist. Hyland has a gift for believable, 21st-century dialogue, and her original songs both advance the story and are great tunes in their own right.

Hyland’s story unfolds at the perfect pace, thanks to director Rebecca Willingham’s expert direction and the pitch-perfect four-person cast. (Willingham, Hyland’s frequent artistic collaborator, has directed two previous versions of Seagulls.) Aurora Penepacker stands out as Nina, the ambitious, talented singer who learns the most bittersweet of Chekhov’s lessons: sometimes success feels a lot like failure. —JACK HELBIG SEAGULLS

Through 11/19: Wed-Fri 8 PM, Sun 2 and 5 PM;

Pleasant Home, 217 Home Ave., Oak Park, oakparkfestival.com, $45

Satchmo at the Cadillac Palace

A Wonderful World just misses the mark on Louis Armstrong.

Now in a short run with Broadway in Chicago before a hoped-for New York production, A Wonderful World still has a ways to go before it feels like a fully realized portrait of Louis Armstrong. Then again, there were so many facets to the musician that it’s hard to imagine anyone could do full justice to him. (The late Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout wrote a generally well-received solo play, Satchmo at the Waldorf, several years ago; Teachout also wrote the 2010 biography Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong.)

The show has a terrific central performance from James Monroe Iglehart as Armstrong, and the supporting cast is also strong. But currently, Aurin Squire’s book is both overstuffed and underdeveloped. The first act in particular feels like it’s rushing along through a series of Armstrong’s wives, which means that his second wife, Lil Hardin—a major collaborator and influence on the musician—gets short shrift. (Jennie Harney-Fleming is excellent as Hardin, which makes it even more frustrating that she’s so soon erased from the story, as is Gavin

Gregory’s King Joe Oliver.)

In the second act, the show settles into a sharper focus on the paradoxes of Pops. He’s a popular entertainer sometimes dismissed by others as too eager to please white audiences, but as an encounter with Lincoln Perry (DeWitt Fleming Jr.), aka “Stepin Fetchit,” ably demonstrates, sometimes success means literally tap-dancing your way around the white power structures in entertainment. A scene late in the show, where he tells a flunky at Richard Nixon’s White House just what she can do with the presidential invitation to perform there, makes it clear that Pops was no pushover.

The songs are a suitable greatest-hits assemblage, and Christopher Renshaw’s staging moves with efficient aplomb across the eras of Armstrong’s history, but right now A Wonderful World feels caught between biography and showmanship. On one hand, it’s admirable that Squire is going for more than just a jukebox musical revue. On the other, it’s frustrating that we don’t get enough of either the indelible performer’s stage style or the backstory that made him one of the most enduring figures in American popular culture. But as an introduction to the man, it’s not a bad start. —KERRY REID A WONDERFUL WORLD Through 10/29: Wed 2

and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph, broadwayinchicago.com, $21-$101 v

OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 37

FILM

A still from The Food of the Gods TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES

GENRE

Hollywood Hates Rats But I stand with the little guy.

By JOEY SHAPIRO

C

hicago has a rat problem, and it’s as simple as this: we’re not practicing the Golden Rule with our rodent neighbors. We trap them, we poison them, we run them over, and what have they done to harm us?

(Don’t answer that.) Now, I’m no city boy. I’m from a small country town called Pasadena, California—perhaps you’ve heard of it. My rat encounters were few and far between until I moved to Chicago in 2019, and at the time I sincerely believed “rat” was just a derogatory term for a mouse. I was shocked by the anti-rat sentiments that seemed to be shared by everyone I met here, and I count myself as an unequivocal ally to the rat community. They’re cute, they squeak, and they’re abundant, what’s the problem? (Don’t answer that either.)

If rats can’t get fair treatment in the court of public opinion, they can at least get justice from the next best judicial institutions: Hollywood movie studios, where people treat each other right. In the history of motion pictures, the only three unequivocally pro-rat movies

38 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

have been Ratatouille (2007), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), and Sondra Locke’s directorial debut Ratboy (1986). If you’re not familiar with the last title, I’d advise from personal experience you keep it that way. The rat revenge movie, however, is a long-respected horror subgenre tapped into by everyone from Stephen King (1990’s Graveyard Shift) to film noir legend Ida Lupino (1976’s The Food of the Gods) to frequent Bruce Lee director Robert Clouse (1982’s Deadly Eyes).

The genesis of this wave of rat horror can be traced directly to Willard, a surprisingly solid 1971 psychodrama about a put-upon 26-yearold whose only companions in life are his loyal army of rats trained to kill, burglarize, and do little tricks for him. What could go wrong?

Well, once the rats finish eating him, their leader Ben goes on to star in a sequel several degrees more unhinged than Willard: Ben, released a year later, in which Ben the rat escapes the police and hides out as an unofficial therapy animal to Danny, a child with a serious heart condition. Sounds sweet, and it is (he

sings to Ben and performs marionette shows for him!), but here’s the thing: Ben loves to kill. He loves it so much that he sneaks out of Danny’s tender embrace every night, crawls into the sewer, and commands a rodent street gang to murder civilians—and occasionally steal cheesy popcorn from the grocery store.

Ben feels like three unrelated movies spliced together: a Disney tearjerker, a tame but ridiculous killer rat movie, and a gritty police procedural populated by dead-eyed men who look like they got lost on their way to the set of Columbo. As such, it’s filled with bizarre tonal discrepancies, chief among them when Danny’s sister screams upon finding feral rats in his bed and he quizzically responds, “What?

It’s just Ben and Mrs. Ben.” Still, the biggest cultural impact of the film is not its strangeness but its number one hit single theme song by then 14-year-old Michael Jackson, a tender ballad about being best friends with a rat addicted to murder.

Danny and Ben’s interspecies friendship is given a counterpoint in 1983’s Of Unknown Origin, a movie about rat-human relations that are soured from the start. Peter Weller, in a pre-Robocop performance, plays Bart Hughes, an investment banker looking to move up the corporate ladder after buying and renovating a new home for his family. While his wife and son are out of town, he plans to work on the project that could earn him his promotion, but he instead becomes increasingly obsessed with the one thing interfering with the picture-perfect life he’s built for himself: a rat in the walls.

What begins with Bart considering an exterminator rapidly spirals into him manically reciting rat facts at a dinner party (“Did you know your average rat can squeeze through a hole no bigger than a quarter, then swim and tread water for three days?”) and tearing his beautiful brownstone apart to kill his rat rival.

At one point, after playing the blunt force angle for a while, he resorts to more psychological methods of intimidation and warns the rat through the walls that he’s “tried dope before, so that’s who you’re dealing with.” The central metaphor can be read in any number of ways: Is it about a man achieving his American dream and still feeling unfulfilled? Maybe the fine line between civilized man and primal violence? It doesn’t matter, because in the time you spent worrying about subtext, Peter Weller has DIYed a baseball bat into some kind of medieval weapon and is thwacking down

the walls of his home.

None of this is overwhelmingly positive representation for the rat community, but if you pit an especially mean rat up against an investment banker, I am obviously rooting against the banker, and both Ben and Willard suggest that rats have a capacity for love that coexists with their thirst for blood. Most rat horror movies are less generous than that.

2002’s evocatively titled TV movie The Rats treats them as an instinct-driven hive mind rather than, say, misunderstood and highly intelligent creatures capable of empathy.

That movie, which follows an infestation in a department store that escalates to engulf all of New York City, climaxes with Twin Peaks alumnus Mädchen Amick nearly drowning in an olympic swimming pool filled with CGI rats then escaping just as the pool explodes, rats and all. Worse still are The Food of the Gods (1976) and Rats: Night of Terror (1984), both of which feature unsimulated rat deaths onscreen.

Glorified rodent snuff films like that are upsetting but unsurprising in a city where dead rats are a normalized part of life. I’m a good citizen and close my dumpster lids, but when I come home from work, it brings me a little bit of joy to see my local rats scurrying by, carefree and unbothered by the haters. It takes a big man to stand with the millions and millions of little guys. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

CHEMA SKANDAL! FOR CHICAGO READER

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THIS WEEK AT

THE LOGAN THE EXORCIST

OCT 20-23 AT 11 PM

Buy Tickets

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View full schedule at cicff40.eventive.org

29th Annual Black Harvest Film Festival Revolutionary Visions November 3-16 20+ features • 10 short film programs Filmmaker Q&As • Special events + more!

Tickets & festival lineup: siskelfilmcenter.org/blackharvest OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 39

R READER RECOMMENDED

FILM

Get showtimes and see reviews of everything playing this week at chicagoreader.com/movies.

A still from Killers of the Flower Moon APPLE TV+

NOW PLAYING

R Killers of the Flower Moon

A long runtime isn’t inherently bad. These days, audiences tire out easily—worried about bathroom breaks or waning attention spans. In many cases, their complaints hold merit, but the added hours don’t damn a film. That is if the director finds the right momentum.

At 206 minutes, Killers of the Flower Moon is a colossal testament to Martin Scorsese’s enduring ability as a filmmaker, compounded by gripping performances from Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Killers of the Flower Moon unfolds amid a string of brutal murders within the wealthy Osage Nation, who rose to prominence after discovering oil on the reservation in the early 20th century. The film opens with Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio), a dim WWI veteran, who arrives in town to find his soft-spoken and calculating uncle, William Hale (De Niro). Soon after arriving, Ernest falls for Mollie (Gladstone), an unmarried Osage Nation member, and the two marry. But in the backdrop of their romance, a sinister plan breeds, and Ernest is more than complicit.

Unlike most crime thrillers, the film’s “twist” is on full display. Scorsese refrains from hiding William and Ernest’s diabolical intentions. Instead, he unfurls the conspiracy to slaughter the Osage and capture their wealth right before us. But his directness does not mute the heartbreak, pain, or even shock of the murder and deception that follows.

Ernest and William’s machinations transpire with unnerving composure. Almost unbothered by the murders, their mounting treachery becomes increasingly violent—and closer to home. Mollie’s family and friends lose their lives, but she’s unable to face the truth, looking at Ernest with skepticism, not condemnation.

Here, Gladstone pulls the whole film together. Her performance both translates the disbelief and despair to the audience and emblematizes the historical betrayal of Native Americans. In the film, Scorcese studies evil’s facade and then peeks inside. To no one’s surprise, it’s an ugly truth. —MAXWELL RABB R, 206 min. Wide

release in theaters

Old Dads Bill Burr’s directorial debut, Old Dads, follows three middle-aged fathers as they adjust to a world that has moved past their cultural mores. They blinked and, suddenly, it was no longer cool to call your friends names for female genitalia. Each dad faces their own trials; Jack (Bill Burr) struggles with his anger, Connor (Bobby

Cannavale) is controlled by his wife, and Mike (Bokeem Woodbine) is dating a young woman who doesn’t want kids and loves going to the gym. In essence, Old Dads is an opportunity for other middle-aged men to live vicariously through these three characters.

A huge part of that escapism relies on the film’s formulaic storytelling. In scene after scene, Jack encounters a person representative of the modern era, takes down that character by highlighting their hypocrisy or false moralism, and then moves on to the next scene to continue Burr’s proxy warfare against changing times.

This structure is grating not so much for its outdated politics, but because of its repetition.

Jack’s gadfly act becomes tiresome quickly, though the film seemingly wants to criticize him for his stubbornness. Yet, the film never becomes a meaningful character study about obsolescence; instead, it remains a series of loose observations stitched together to prove how sanctimonious modern society has become.

Because of this, it is a film full of thoroughly unlikable characters—including Jack—heavy in its criticism but sparse in its actual humor. Burr isn’t always off-target; the film’s attacks on start-up culture and private schools ring true, truer at least than his slamming of feminism or Neosporin.

The film is ultimately a mixed bag of social commentary that mistakes being cranky for being compelling. I only hope that if Burr chooses to follow up Old Dads with another feature, he learns some new tricks. —MYLE YAN TAY R, 104 min. Netflix v

OPENS OCT 22 40 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

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Let’s Play!

DON’T MISS THIS CLASSIC, MAGICAL MUSICAL

Make time to learn something new with music and dance classes at Old Town School! We offer flexible schedules for all skill levels both in-person and online.

OCTOBER 19 - NOVEMBER 12, 2023 (847) 673-6300

MusicTheaterWorks.com

Sign up for classes today at

oldtownschool.org MUSIC CLASSES FOR ADULTS & KIDS LINCOLN SQUARE LINCOLN PARK SOUTH LOOP & ONLINE OTS_1_2V_ClassAd_072921.indd 1

7/23/21 2:21 PM OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 41

MUSIC

CITY OF WIN

‘For me, music and spirituality are intertwined as one’ Kenyan-born Chai Tulani takes inspiration from across the African diaspora on the new Rift Valley 773/312.

By ALEJANDRO HERNANDEZ

City of Win is a series curated by Isiah “ThoughtPoet” Veney and written by Alejandro Hernandez that uses prose and photography to create portraits of Chicago musicians and cultural innovators working to create positive change in their communities.

42 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

“M

usic is a spiritual thing.” These are the words of legendary Nigerian musician and activist Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, and if any artist in Chicago still carries the same pan-African spirit Fela did so many years ago, it’s Chai Tulani.

Born in Kenya and raised in Chicago, Tulani has been a fixture in the city’s creative community for a decade. He fuses Afrobeats, spoken word, and hip-hop in his projects, embracing the interaction between his cultural heritage and his upbringing in Altgeld Gardens. He says he learned English by picking up Ebonics from

his friends at school, many of whom had immigrant backgrounds too, coming from the Caribbean. At home, he listened to Black artists from across the globe, including Fela, folk and blues singer Tracy Chapman, and Jamaican reggae icon Bob Marley.

“There’s a common quote that says, ‘I’m not African because I was born in Africa, but I’m African because Africa was born in me,’” says Tulani. “From reggaeton to reggae to Afrobeats and all the way over to hip-hop, the way we are connected is beautiful. I can understand how [people see the genres] as different

things, but they’ve always been the same thing in my mind, in my heart, and in my eyes.”

Tulani’s latest album, last month’s Rift Valley 773/312, embodies this pan-African pride with guest artists and inspirations from across the diaspora. Intro track “Ginger” features Puerto Rican artist ONU reciting a powerful spoken-word poem, while on the drill- influenced “Angel Wings” and “Dear Lord” rapper Trapula Ase stands out amid the fast-paced production. The album’s mellow R&B slow jam is “Divine Greatness,” which features soulful vocals from JazStarr and

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UPCOMING CONCERTS AT

MUSIC Chai Tulani in West Englewood PHOTOS BY THOUGHTPOET FOR CHICAGO READER

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NEW SHOWS ANNOUNCED • ON SALE NOW! 12/2 Funkadesi 27th Anniversary Concert 12/2 Seamus Egan (of Solas) 12/9 The Claudettes 12/22-23 Mariachi Herencia de México: A Mariachi Christmas WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18 8PM

La Vent du Nord In Maurer Hall

poems recited by Leximonee and ONU at the beginning and end of the track, respectively.

Tulani makes references to African spirituality throughout the album. “Music has been a spiritual experience for me, even since before I knew what spirituality was,” he says. “The first song that made me fall in love with music was Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car.’ I was like eight when I heard that song, and I just really liked the way it sounded, but subconsciously, I was hearing what she was saying. And she was talking about how she really wanted to be somebody . . . and that was very spiritual to me at that time, because that’s how I felt on the inside. And that’s what music does—it speaks to how you feel on the inside.”

At age ten, Tulani got into reggae, discovering the music of Bob Marley and learning about the Rastafarian movement. He cites this knowledge as the catalyst for his decision to become a musician.

At first he just enjoyed the music, but he believes that as he fine-tuned his own spirituality (he follows the Ifá faith), reggae’s strong pan-African and Rastafari themes subconsciously influenced him to strengthen that connection. In August 2022 he opened for Bob Marley’s former band the Wailers in Chicago, and last October he shared a bill with Marley’s grandson Skip in Tempe, Arizona—opportunities that Tulani describes as full-circle moments.

“For me, music and spirituality are intertwined as one,” he says. “[Music] is a tool. It’s a very powerful tool. Just knowing that you give people inspiration, hope, and the drive to go and create, that’s a kind of joy money can’t buy. So I know that no matter where music takes me, my biggest accomplishment is that I’ve inspired people—because they’ve told me, and they’ve shown me.” v

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19 8PM

Hawktail + Väsen In Maurer Hall

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20 8PM

Bill Frisell FIVE

Thomas Morgan, Rudy Royston Tony Scherr & Kenny Wollesen In Maurer Hall

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21 5PM & 8PM

Steep Canyon Rangers In Maurer Hall

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27 8PM

Mr. Sun / Lonesome Ace String Band In Szold Hall SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28 8PM

Darlingside

with special guest Field Guide In Maurer Hall

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29 10AM

Spooky Singalong

Family Concert - Wear Your Halloween Costume In Maurer Hall FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3 8PM SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4 8PM

Bruce Cockburn In Maurer Hall SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4 8PM

Community: A Choreographer's Festival In Szold Hall

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5 7PM

Alison Brown / Special Consensus In Maurer Hall

m letters@chicagoreader.com

WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES

Photos by ThoughtPoet of Unsocial Aesthetics (UAES), a digital creative studio and resource collective designed to elevate communitydriven storytelling and social activism in Chicago and beyond

10/25 11/01

FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE

Almafuerte Día de los Muertos

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 43

MUSIC CHICAGOANS OF NOTE

Josh Piotrowski, DIY haunted-house builder and noise musician “I’m literally trying to sound like a horror movie.”

As told to MICCO CAPORALE

M “Bat Boy grown up!” says Josh Piotrowski. He holds a Styrofoam skull sculpture finished with various adhesives, including hot glue for its teeth. COURTESY THE ARTIST

Josh Piotrowski was born to make you scream.

The 41-year-old Chicago native grew up in Albany Park as part of a family full of haunt enthusiasts, including a younger sister who worked on a haunted trail for the Park District.

In his late teens and early 20s, he worked in costume shops and party-planning stores, which fueled his obsession with the spookiest time of the year—as well as his curiosity about building his own horror installations.

In 2009, Piotrowski was living in nowdefunct south-side punk house Rancho Huevos. Over eight Halloween seasons, he worked with friends and community members to convert the basement into a free homemade haunted house open to punks and neighbors.

When it began to attract crowds too big for the space, Piotrowski moved it out of Rancho

44 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

Huevos, and since then it’s been held annually at various DIY spaces across town. The haunted house also gave rise to Piotrowski’s noise project Gas Mask Horse, which he started in 2010 to soundtrack his scares. It’s grown into an ongoing macabre takeover of stages and bars.

Piotrowski also has a theatrical metal project with his partner Roni Hyde called Infants of Sacrilege. Hyde plays in noise-punk trio Dusty Turrets, who open a five-band bill at Cole’s on October 28 that’s headlined by Philadelphia goblincore duo Evil Sword. Piotrowski will be building a scary photo booth to accompany the gig—one of three Halloween-season installations he’s planning this year, including a twofloor haunted maze at a DIY spot in Jefferson Park.

y birthday is right before Halloween, so that time of year was always big in my family. My parents always got us carving pumpkins and painting stuff. I remember making a ceramic skull when I was maybe ten or 12. My dad, he does a lot of art. He was a union carpenter, and both my parents paint, so I was always inspired by my folks.

I would try to draw skulls and monsters and stuff, but I was never that good. I’m still not. I started funneling that into other creative pursuits. Sculpture, collage. In high school we had a Dada art club, so I got into messier and more destructive art. That eventually led to weird costuming and stuff.

One of my first jobs was at Fantasy Headquarters [aka Fantasy Costumes]. It’s a big costume shop on Milwaukee in Portage Park.

I was 17 and worked in the rentals area. When people walked in, you’d throw a switch and there’d be, like, a smoke machine and a couple monsters that would move around on timers. I loved that. I knew I wanted to do stuff like that all the time.

After that I worked at another costume shop, and they would discard stuff—like sun-damaged costumes and stuff. I asked, “Can I take some of this?” In my first couple of installations, I did an Invisible Man window display, some Jason Voorhees stuff—easy stuff. But it just kept growing. I was in punk

bands at the time, and we did a show at a gallery space downtown. I had a small walkthrough there one Halloween, and then after that, we just kept going every Halloween.

The haunts have always been super low-budget. We try to do it entirely free. I get stuff out of the trash. It’s fun because there’s no overhead. We don’t have to rent space or pay actors. We get people to volunteer, and then we don’t have to charge. Volunteers always want to help make stuff too. It creates this fun community vibe.

Our first haunt at Rancho was in 2009. We did a Halloween event the year before, but I think we had just projections and black-light stuff. The first year we had a narrative walk was 2009. At Rancho we really had a lot of freedom. There was space to work on sculpture and silk-screening and stuff. I could do different things all the time and not have to worry about cleaning it up right away.

My helpers and I learned how to use the space to our advantage with lighting and sound design and stuff. In the beginning, we would have all these different areas, with a tape deck here and there, but as time went on we got more sophisticated. Instead of running around rewinding tapes to the right part or making sure somebody’s there to flip the tape so the sound continues, you’ve got one person in the center who’s doing puppetry. They can

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MUSIC see people through sight holes and pull triggers for gags at the right time.

We started with reductive sculptures and painting and live actors. But now we’re getting into a little bit of animatronics and using windshield-wiper motors to create movement.

Figuring out how to do haunts has been kind of trial and error. Nowadays, it’s a little bit easier. I’ve learned a lot more and been able to tighten things up because of YouTube and forums and online groups—even on Facebook, like-minded people will give cool ideas.

In the first haunted house we did a car gag based on Resurrection Mary. Because nobody expects to be hit by a car inside, right? Way back when, I remember seeing the full front end of a car, like, lurch out of a hallway at Hades Haunted House. When I was a kid, that scared the hell out of me. I always thought, “I gotta redo that.”

One day I was riding my bicycle down an alley and saw the front bumper of a vehicle down the street from Rancho. I was like, “Oh man, this is perfect.” It took a while, but I was able to rig it up with a foldable shopping cart, clamp some headlights on, and some other stuff. There’s this familiar local song that comes on the radio—like this jingle about donating your car—but we pitch-shifted it and had it playing in the haunted house, and then the car comes up and scares you, you know? I put it on an isolated switch and figured out a decent sound effect and got it all timed so that just one person could operate it. We pulled it off!

When Rancho dried up, we moved to Kombucha Club in Brighton Park. We were at Kombucha Club for two years. When COVID hit, we didn’t do anything that year. We did an event at the Logan Square skate park in 2021 with props and lights and all that stuff. I think four or five bands played.

Last year, we did a big installation in a park—just a generator setup. It was the last weekend before Halloween, and friends and neighborhood families came. We set up a bunch of things. I had a full getup and a vampire cave and makeup. Everything looked legit. This year we’re doing mythology stuff at a DIY spot in Jefferson Park. I’ve got a musical skeleton with a lap harp as a rib cage, and it’ll have these motorized aspects and play itself.

Music was always a thing in my house growing up too. It was never frowned upon to get into weird music or anything. I got into psychobilly for a little while, because I love the monsters and stuff, but I’ve never really liked the music as much. Punk rock is great. So

many bands have fantastic messages, and the presentation of their work and everything— just very political and very grassroots. They don’t need someone else to show them or allow them to do it. They’re creating their own universe. There’s a lot of punk in horror too.

Horror movies often have snail mail and tape trading. Just a lot of crossover in conventions and aesthetics.

The first time I played as Gas Mask Horse was 2010. I’d been in a lot of punk bands before, but I’d been doing my own thing for a while and focusing on art stuff. I did a cassette of all the background music from the haunted house.

I started Gas Mask Horse like a week after one of the haunted houses. I had a lightsensitive theremin built into this skeleton with contact microphones within the armatures. I could make really loud, high-gain, cutting sounds that were really visceral. One of my friends was putting together a show, and he invited me to play. But he said I couldn’t play with a band—it had to be something I made by myself. I had made these things for the haunted house, so I was like, “Well, I’m going to write this dramatic narrative of the haunted house and try and base a set around this noise-creation skeleton prop that I made.”

After that, we did some haunted pop-ups for bars and stuff. That actually led to a couple of cool shows. I performed with this west-side gangsta-rap group called Triple Darkness.

That was cool for me, because growing up in the city you always heard cool house music and stuff. I love hip-hop. Triple Darkness is, like, a super local group. It was such a bizarre show, because I’m doing this weird horror noise with the pulsing loud punk-rock drums.

Then afterwards, the dudes in Triple Darkness were just rapping so hard.

Gas Mask Horse performances are very sensory. Depending on the space, I burn incense and mess with the lights. I love to change the atmosphere and try to create as unique an atmosphere as I can. I have a lot of my own lighting and homemade props. I do my own set design, and I think that brings an element of excitement. One of the big reasons why I started this project was to be, like, blown-out, weird DIY horror theater. I’ll do shadow puppetry or different costuming. I’ve had dancers come out with me in a guided skeleton outfit.

And the music—a lot of it has this kind of punk beat, like that fast Discharge/Mob 47 D-beat drumming, almost like house-music drumming. Instead of guitar riffs, it’s got synthesizers and theremins. I made an optical

Josh Piotrowski included this schematic from 2009’s Haunted Archer Avenue tour in an issue of his zine Start Your Own Haunted House.

COURTESY THE ARTIST

theremin. As the light changes brightness, or as I’m changing colors of lights, the tone in the room will change as a result. It’s got this very textural feeling to it.

Aside from the aesthetics of Gas Mask Horse, I’m literally trying to sound like a horror movie. A lot of the dramatic narrations are based on haunted legends from the Chicago area. In my other band [Infants of Sacrilege], we use a riff that we call “spider walk,” which is based on the Exorcist scene of Linda Blair walking down the stairs. I bring horror into a lot of my music.

I also make a zine called Start Your Own Haunted House. There are three issues, and they’re sold at Quimby’s. They’re all project

oriented. There’s that car gag I was telling you about—like a really detailed explanation on how to build that. There’s projects on how to sculpt Styrofoam wig heads into skulls, a fakeblood recipe, a couple of ghost stories. The third issue’s got a CD to listen to while you read it with 3D glasses on. It’s a great soundtrack, and the 3D makes it really unsettling.

I’m working on a new issue that’s going to be, like, the best of those three. I’m going to cut and collage old issues together. Then it’s going to have new stuff in full color with some makeup tutorials on, like, fake skin with Knox gelatin and stuff. v

m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 45

Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of October 19

MUSIC

b ALL AGES F

PICK OF THE WEEK

THURSDAY19

Deeper make cold postpunk shine bright on their Sub Pop debut

Heartgaze Divino Niño headline; Victor Internet and Heartgaze open. 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $30, $25 in advance. 18+ As Heartgaze, Clemente Calandra makes skewed underground pop songs that stitch together stifflegged drum ’n’ bass breaks, nimble acoustic guitars with the raw vulnerability of mainstream emo, and shocks of feedback that smell like dimly lit basement noise shows. Born and raised in Argentina, Calandra created Heartgaze in Chile and then moved to Chicago in 2019. On Heartgaze’s debut album, Casi Angeles <3 (released in April via Chilean label Error de Moda), Calandra sings in Spanish over instrumentals that chirp and thump, and the woozy heartache in their voice evokes youthful romanticism even if you can’t understand a word.

Heartgaze’s music belongs to the sprawling world of hyperpop, which now seems to have an umbrella wide enough to accommodate anyone whose pop aesthetic includes a single off-kilter element.

“Hyperpop” might not be a particularly precise descriptor, but Heartgaze’s songwriting distinguishes itself in its succinctness, even during the dramatic outbursts that close “Esmalte d Uñas.” Calandra always maintains tight control over every element of their compact, sculpted instrumentals, and they do it without squeezing the intense emotion out of the tracks—it stays at the fore, and it’ll leave a mark.

—LEOR GALIL

SUNDAY22 Messa Maggot Heart coheadline. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $16. 21+

ALEXA VISCIUS

DEEPER, MIA JOY, LAWN

Thu 10/26, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $20, $240 opera box (seats six). 17+

CHICAGO BAND DEEPER can translate chilly UK postpunk into a midwestern dialect—their music has lots of space and lakeshore bluster, and these guys have clearly spent uncounted hours packed into an unheated van driving to out-of-town gigs. Since issuing their 2020 breakthrough, Auto-Pain, Deeper have expanded their lineup from three to four with the addition of Born Yesterday Records cofounder Kevin Fairbairn, also of indie group Clearance. (Fairbairn plays bass, and previous bassist Drew McBride has switched to guitar.) In September, Deeper released their Sub Pop debut, Careful!, which lets a few shafts of sunlight into their steel-gray sound. At the start of “Pressure,” for example, dewy synth notes cling to the guitars in a way that adds the barest suggestion of warmth to the group’s minimal, black-ice rhythms

46 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

and stubborn riffs. Deeper can still feel like a sudden gust of February frost, but a newfound optimism seems to look forward to spring.

They’re now using more synthesizer and occasionally even saxophone, but this expanded palette doesn’t always make the band sound hopeful; sometimes it simply enhances whatever bleak mood they’re already in.

The gently humming synths and bouncy percussion that open “Fame” repeat their pattern so insistently that they create a sense of tension and unease—it’s almost like they’re foreshadowing the dissonant, maleficent guitars that are about to slice through the song. “Fame” evokes more than dread, though, and as the track progresses, Deeper tease out a subtle funkiness, encouraging you to dance with the magnetic pull of their sharp, locked-in playing. —LEOR GALIL

Messa’s music embodies all the classic elements of occult rock and doom: thick, heavy guitars; warm, sparse production; slow, spacious arrangements; and a powerhouse vocalist (in this case Sara Bianchin) who conjures a world of emotions with the turn of a phrase. But rather than stick with tradition, the Italian four-piece use it as a springboard for exploration, defying the purists in their corner of the metal world by incorporating jazz, downtempo, folk, prog, and other styles not typically associated with it. On their third album, last year’s Close (Svart), they take their ambition even further, incorporating new instrumentation, including mandolin, dulcimer, and oud (which guitarist Alberto Piccolo learned for the occasion) into arrangements that draw inspiration from their Mediterranean heritage as well as modern tastes. “Orphalese” uses duduk, a traditional double reed, to build haunting, transcendent atmospheres, while “Leffotrak” (an outlier here) plunges into an abyss of blood-curdling black and death metal. Messa are on a coheadlining tour with Berlin hard rockers Maggot Heart, and it’s been a long time coming. Last October, Messa and their crew were on the way home from several dates in France when another driver struck their van head-on; some members needed surgery, and the band were sidelined for months. So you can use this show to celebrate Messa’s survival as well as to find catharsis in their forlorn but majestic songs.

—JAMIE LUDWIG

MUSIC

Joey Nebulous ASH DYE

WEDNESDAY25 Duro Wicks Hip-Hop Birthday Joint & Lower Links Reunion Featuring DJs SP1 and Sean Doe plus guest DJs Rapture and Tone B. Nimble with performances by Ang13, Aztec Dinero & DJ Ceez, Mass Hysteria, and Urbanized, with special guests Spalaney’s (and more) plus a sneak preview of the movie Catalyst.

Hosted by Dirty MF. 7 PM, the Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park West, $15, $10 in advance. 21+ Chicago hasn’t always been welcoming of hip-hop.

In the late 80s and early 90s, its artistic viability was often overlooked or ignored by local clubs and radio stations. That disregard lasted long enough that when Chicago hip-hop finally blew up internationally years later, many people were blindsided.

But those in the know have always been cognizant of our beloved city’s cultural influence within the genre.

That’s partly due to the work of Duro Wicks, who took it upon himself to create space for hiphop to grow in Chicago long before any traditional venue embraced the form. Writing for the Reader in November 1994, Rosalind Cummings dubbed him “one of the godfathers of the Wicker Park hip-hop scene,” recognizing the key roles of his group He Who Walks Three Ways and the parties and open mikes he hosted in the neighborhood starting in 1991. Late that year, he launched an important allages hip-hop open mike at Club Lower Links. The series drew kids from across Chicagoland to the basement venue to witness the budding scene take shape—despite segregation within the city’s music culture and dismissive snobs who thumbed their noses at what soon became a global sensation. The Lower Links parties didn’t last long, but Wicks continued his hot party-promoter streak for the next few years, stamping Wicker Park with his events at clubs such as Estelle’s, Red Dog, and HotHouse (which plans to open a new space in Bronzeville in 2025, its first since the South Loop venue that

The Separatist Party, with drummer and bandleader Mike Reed standing at right LINE RAUD

closed in 2007). He retired from party promotion in the mid-90s, but he continues to champion new music behind the scenes and onstage.

This blowout at the Promontory celebrates 50 years of hip-hop—especially the halcyon days before it took a corporate turn—and doubles as a reunion for the community born 32 years ago at Lower Links. It’s also Wicks’s 56th birthday bash, and there’s plenty of reason to honor this patron saint of Chicago hip-hop.

To help commemorate it all, a cast of local talent has been assembled by filmmaker Dave Steck (who went to high school with Wicks), and as part of the event he’ll also offer a sneak peek at scenes from his upcoming documentary, Catalyst: Duro Wicks & Chicago Hip Hop. Nineties great Dirty MF will host, and respected DJs SP1, Tone B. Nimble, DJ Rapture, and Sean Doe will spin throughout the night. Rap royalty such as Ang13 and Mass Hysteria will perform, along with special guests and other surprises yet to be revealed. To be at this party is to bear witness to Wicks and friends’ testaments of passion, perseverance, and pure, unadulterated love of Chicago’s great hip-hop history. —CRISTALLE BOWEN

THURSDAY26 Deeper See Pick of the Week at left. Mia Joy and Lawn open. 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $20, $240 opera box (seats six). 17+ Joey Nebulous Tenci and Pinksqueeze open.

8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $15, $13 in advance. 21+ Indie rocker Joseph Farago sings in a falsetto that can get nearly as high a teenager singing chipmunk style with a lungful of helium. He leads the band Joey Nebulous, which he formed as an Oberlin student in 2015, and he now lives in Chicago, where he’s also played in the bands Jodi and Tenci. Fara-

go’s work in Joey Nebulous balances the vulnerable tenderness of those groups’ delicate indie rock with a playfully goofy euphoria, and his extraordinary voice does a lot to bind those often contrasting elements together—it helps his personal confessions coexist with his sense of humor, without undermining either. On the new Joey Nebulous album, Joey Spumoni Creamy Dreamy Party All the Time (Dear Life), Farago sometimes seems to make his singing part of the joke, pushing up his pitch till he sounds like a squeaking mouse. On “Star of the Movie,” a cheeky number about straight Hollywood A-listers making films about gay lives, he uses this technique to ridicule the idea of Scarlett Johansson and Michael Bay working on Brokeback Mountain 2.

Farago is joking, of course, but he’s also making an earnest argument that people should tell their own stories; he delivers it in a soothing voice over the song’s hook, while a sunny acoustic guitar line skips along in bouncing rhythms. (If you think the director of Transformers can portray the interior lives of queer people better than actual queer people could, well, maybe this album isn’t for you.)

Farago plays Joey Nebulous’s lighthearted, sentimental songs with sure-footed confidence, and he moves in lockstep with the rest of the band: the guest-packed album lineup is anchored by keyboardist-vocalist Margaret McCarthy, bassistguitarist-vocalist Wilson Brehmer, and drummers Logan Novak and Seth Engel. Joey Spumoni Creamy Dreamy Party All the Time is as quirky as its title, and some of the gentlest passages are also downright cute. Farago’s use of humor adds nuance as well as levity to his portraits of gay life and love, and it lets him bring more of himself into this music—giving Joey Nebulous’s sound a more pointed poignancy. —LEOR GALIL

The Separatist Party 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $20. 18+ Mike Reed thinks big. He’s an accomplished organizer who helped conceive the Pitchfork Music Festi-

val. His two venues, the Hungry Brain and Constellation, serve not only to support the local creativemusic community but also to foster a dialogue between it and similar scenes in other states and abroad. And when he turns to leading a band, the drummer and composer writes taut jazz tunes that often address historical and existential themes. “The Separatist Party” is the name of Reed’s latest combo as well as his latest album, released this week by Astral Spirits and We Jazz. It’s the first volume in a projected trilogy exploring alienation and isolation, but the music feels more like an antidote to loneliness than an exposition of it. Accompanied by five local artists—cornetist Ben Lamar Gay, vocalist Marvin Tate, and all three members of drone explorers Bitchin Bajas—Reed has fashioned a hybrid sound that threads exploratory horn figures and acidic guitar leads through an irresistibly propulsive groove matrix of electronic pulses and massed percussion.

The larger theme emerges only when Tate takes the microphone to share memories of relationships that crumbled and fell into the yawning fault lines of racial and sexual incomprehension. The Separatist Party was recorded in early 2022, and in recent months the band have played gigs in the U.S. and Europe—I can’t wait to hear how their music has grown since they took it on the road. —BILL MEYER

FRIDAY27 Cosmic Country Five-Year Anniversary Showcase With coheadliners Esther Rose and Kacy & Clayton, plus featured guests including Sima Cunningham, Rahila Coats and Clarence Young of the Family Junket, David Brown, Matthew Yee, and Gag Reflex. Hosted by Andrew Sa. 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $20. 18+ Five years ago, the Hideout’s talent booker at the time, Sullivan Davis, teamed up with producer and musician Dorian Gehrig to start the Cosmic Coun-

OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 47

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/musicreviews.

Geneva Jacuzzi HEATHER GILDROY

continued from p. 47

try Showcase. Their dream was to bring to life Gram Parsons’s philosophy of a welcoming, expansive, and absolutely trippy form of country music, freed of its hidebound and less imaginative old wooden box. Now hosted by angel-voiced and devilishly witty crooner Andrew Sa (who released a gorgeous EP of country covers in 2021), the showcase has a decidedly queer spin, and it presented some of the final performances by Sa’s mentor, the great Patrick Haggerty of Lavender Country, before he died at age 78 in 2022. That sense of history and continuity informs the Cosmic Country Showcase and gives it a torch to carry through its crowd-pleasing and occasionally crowd-baffling revues.

Cosmic Country went virtual when venues were closed during the early days of the pandemic, which whetted everyone’s appetite for more. (It didn’t hurt that Spencer Tweedy—who plays in the house band with Davis and Gehrig—published a timely book on self-recording in October 2020.) Since live performances resumed in 2021, the showcase has bounced among several local venues.

This fifth-anniversary Cosmic Country party at Lincoln Hall features two headliners: New Mexicobased singer-songwriter Esther Rose recently released her fourth album, a lovely and bittersweet chronicle of wanderlust called Safe to Run (New West), and Canadian folk duo Kacy & Clayton recorded their Jeff Tweedy-produced 2017 album, The Siren’s Song, in Chicago after touring with Wilco. More recently the duo recorded a 2020 full-length collaboration with New Zealand singer-

48 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

songwriter Marlon Williams. Cosmic Country’s first host, David Brown, will drop in from his current home in California, and sketch-comedy group Gag Reflex will make sure things never get too serious— as if that were ever a risk.

The showcase is pulling out all the stops with surprise guest stars too, and its efforts will add up to the sort of atmosphere that has made Cosmic Country such an enduring cult hit. It’s got country soul for sure, but it’s also part outlandish comedy, part drag show, and all razzle-dazzle. As an extra bonus, with a date this close to Halloween, the organizers will doubtless show no restraint whatsoever with the usual puppets and costumes.

—MONICA KENDRICK

SATURDAY28 Geneva Jacuzzi This show closes the Sanctum Dark Music Festival, which begins with a preparty Thu 10/26 and continues Fri 10/27 and tonight.

The Soft Moon headline; Geneva Jacuzzi, Pelada, Spike Hellis, SDH, and Conjunto Primitivo open.

6 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $68, $120 twoday pass, $155 three-day pass. 17+ Geneva Jacuzzi is like if Nina Hagen grew up in a doomsday cult. (And Jacuzzi did, in fact, grow up in a doomsday cult.) In a 2020 interview with Genius List, the Los Angeles-based artist explained her

love of jacuzzis, describing them as “these tiny, weird, warm whirlpools of bacteria, chemicals, pleasure, and relaxation.” She doesn’t go in them often, but she was baptized in one. They’re neat!

Jacuzzi’s willingness to be playfully off-kilter and fun distinguishes her from other darkwave artists. My favorite record in her catalog is the 2008 self-release Rat Killer, because her sound is at its most uncomfortable. She relies on sparse synthesizers, Italo-disco flourishes, lo-fi vocals, and Dada-like lyrics to produce songs with names such as “We Are Furniture” and “Sal’s Tropical Depression.” Rat Killer was largely disseminated via Myspace and similar platforms, making it a relic of an earlier Internet as much as a testament to her talent for attracting a cultlike following by being unabashedly dark and weird.

Since then, Jacuzzi’s recording style has grown poppier and more polished, but she’s funneled the raw, maniacal energy of her debut album into her stage show. These days, she’s spoken about as someone you see, not someone you hear—she’s a real performer’s musician, like a goth Peaches sans the heavy gender themes. Instead, Jacuzzi uses her elaborate costumes and props to draw people into a romantic, absurdist void, where she sings about things like “tying a noose around the love caboose” (on 2010’s “Love Caboose”) while immersed in tinsel, pyramids, tentacles, and other elements that evoke a pre-CGI Tim Burton aesthetic. At two-day Chicago coldwave and dance festival Sanctum, Jacuzzi shares the bill with comrades from her local scene, including synth-pop singer Madeline Goldstein, electro-industrial artist Debby Friday, and minimalist EBM duo Spike Hellis, all of whom have a similar penchant for eye-catching live shows. Jacuzzi appears just before Oakland outfit the Soft Moon close the festival, but as the most seasoned of her Hollywood-inspired peers, she’s likely to put on a performance just as worthy of the headlining slot.

—MICCO CAPORALE

Trouble Part of day one of the festival Heavy Chicago, which continues on Sat 11/4 and Sun 11/5.

Trouble headline; Acid King, Bongzilla, and Novembers Doom open. 6 PM, Avondale Music Hall, 3336 N. Milwaukee, $35 single-day pass, $70 a two-day pass (Sat 10/28 and Sat 11/4), $100 three-day pass. 17+ The folks at Last Rites know that if you’re going to launch a metal festival, you better have an irreplaceable Rolodex. For the debut of Heavy Chicago, these veteran local underground rock promoters have booked some huge out-of-town headliners whose histories go back to the early 1980s: sludgy riff masters Corrosion of Conformity (Saturday, November 4) and crossover thrash icons D.R.I. (Sunday, November 5). But I’m particularly interested in Trouble, the Chicago group headlining the fest’s first day on Saturday, October 28. Their twisting, perversely optimistic opuses have influenced untold numbers of doom bands since the 1984 release of their debut LP, Psalm 9, and this is their first Chicago show since a Beat Kitchen date in December 2018.

Guitarists Rick Wartell and Bruce Franklin are

the only founding members remaining in Trouble’s current incarnation. Since 2012, Kyle Thomas of Exhorder has fronted Trouble (he was also their vocalist for a few years in the late 90s), and in 2021 original vocalist Eric Wagner, who’d left the band in 2008, died from COVID-related pneumonia. Now that a reunion of the original lineup is impossible, this show has added significance—and how often do we get to celebrate these doom progenitors at a headlining festival set? Dutch label Hammerheart recently released the two-CD Trouble compilation Revelations of the Insane (it came out physically last year and digitally this year), whose rarities and demos document the band’s evolution between 1980 and 1994. The bluesy tracks that open Revelations have a raw, feral energy that makes the collection worth seeking out, especially if you’re dipping your toes into Trouble’s discography and lore for the first time. The motorcycle thrum of “Demon’s Claw” could make you a believer even quicker than Psalm 9. —LEOR GALIL

WEDNESDAY1 Sampha 8 PM, the Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, $35. 18+ Superstars keep calling on Sampha. Perhaps you’ve heard his vocals and piano on one of the many features he’s done for Drake, or maybe you caught his 2022 duet with Kendrick Lamar on SNL. The UK musician has been a coveted musical collaborator since his 2011 tracks with Jessie Ware and Sbtrkt.

His gentle tenor makes an earnest counterpoint to the reference-packed boasts of major rap stars and helps color in the pop-art visions of R&B and soul singers such as Frank Ocean and Solange. But he’s released only one full-length under his own name to date: 2017’s Process, where he explores his grief over his mother’s death with piano ballads and garage drum patterns. It appeared on a stack of year-end lists and won the UK’s prestigious Mercury Prize.

Sampha became a parent himself in spring 2020.

On his brand-new sophomore album, Lahai (due October 20 on Young), he addresses the fears and thrills of new fatherhood through soul melodies and rhythm arrangements that recall his youthful enthusiasm for house music. The two-word chorus on “Only” is straightforward in its message of devotion, but Sampha’s voice arcs across octaves and into a skillful falsetto that could thwart amateurs attempting to sing along. Bursts of horns feel like relieving the pressure changes in your ears on an ascending airplane. “Spirit 2.0” celebrates letting go of control and relying on loved ones for “Automatic selfprotection / Like airbags in my limbs.” According to a recent Vulture profile, it’s his three-year-old daughter’s favorite song.

I appreciate when artists do what Sampha has here: take their time between projects and make each new release feel like checking in on a distant friend. I look forward to catching up with Sampha’s new material as well as old favorites such as “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano” at this Riviera Theatre concert. —JACK RIEDY v

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NIGHTLY

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TUE SD A Y OC T 24 / 8 P M / 1 8+

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SAT NOV 11

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BARNS COURTNEY + Yonaka + James Bruner

FRI NOV 17

HALF MOON RUN

LUCERO + JASON BOLAND & THE STRAGGLERS

+ Billie Marten

S A T UR D A Y N O V 2 5 / 8 PM / 1 8 + L I QU I D S OU L F VV E AT U R I NG MA R S WI L LI AM S

MUSIC FOR MARS

with The Joe Marcinek Band and Jesse De La Pena

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T UE S D A Y N O V 2 8 / 8 P M / 1 8 + K I C K STA N D P RO DUC T I O N S & M E T RO P R E S E N T

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FR I D E C 0 8 + S A T D E C 0 9 / 8 P M / 1 8 + R I OT F E ST A N D T H E L AWR E NC E A RM S P R E S E N T

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OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 49

EARLY WARNINGS

UPCOMING CONCERTS TO HAVE ON YOUR RADAR

b ALL AGES

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

Early Warnings newsletter: sign up here SUN 12/17 Action Bronson 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ FRI 12/22 Advance Base, Boduf Songs 9 PM, Hungry Brain

Gloria Trevi COURTESY GREAT TALENT RECORDS

SAT 12/30 I Fight Dragons 7 PM, Bottom Lounge b

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

BEYOND

THU 11/2 Enrique Iglesias, Pitbull, Ricky Martin 7 PM, United Center b Wynonna Judd 7:30 PM, Rosemont Theatre, Rosemont b

FRI 12/1 Q. Moore, Vandell Andrew 8 PM, the Promontory b Smoking Popes, Sludgeworth, Teenage Halloween, Devon Kay & the Solutions 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Troyboi 10 PM, Radius Chicago, 18+

FRI 1/12/2024 Align 8 PM, Chop Shop, 18+

FRI 11/3 Nia Archives 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ SAT 11/4 Curls, Junegrass, Free Times 8:30 PM, Hideout Rich Jones, Shrapknel, J Bambii, Udababy 10 PM, Empty Bottle SUN 11/5 Thomas Giles 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ TUE 11/7 Devil Master, Fuming Mouth, Final Gasp 7:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ WED 11/8 Ana Everling 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music F b THU 11/9 Trenchies, Daundry, Roof Dogs 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ SAT 11/11 Nick Shoulders & the Okay Crawdad 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b WED 11/15 Beach Fossils, Turnover 7:30 PM, Metro, 18+ THU 11/16 Xiuhtezcatl, Mato Wayuhi 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ SAT 11/18 Fran, Glow in the Dark Flowers 9 PM, Hungry Brain WED 11/22 Chicago Soul Jazz Collective featuring Yvonne Gage 8 PM, Jazz Showcase b

SAT 12/2 Funkadesi 27th Anniversary Concert featuring Funkadesi, Soulbillys, Nestor Gomez vs.

Jitesh Jaggi, Sonal Aggarwal 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b SUN 12/3 Brendan James 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston b MON 12/4 Romy 7 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ TUE 12/5 Mandy, Indiana 9 PM, Empty Bottle Q101’s Twisted Xmas featuring Black Keys, Local H, Alexsucks 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+

WED 12/6 Nefesh Mountain 7:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Q101’s Twisted Xmas featuring Lovejoy, White Reaper, Brigitte Calls Me Baby 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ THU 12/7 Q101’s Twisted Xmas featuring Bleachers, Misterwives, Sincere Engineer 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ FRI 12/8 Q101’s Twisted Xmas featuring Young the Giant, Gaslight Anthem, Little Image 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ SAT 12/9 Claudettes 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Princess Chelsea, Kitty 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+

50 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

SAT 1/13/2024 Course, Steve Dawson 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ SAT 1/20/2024 Armnhmr, Layz, Tynan, Mamba 10 PM, Radius Chicago, 18+ Big Head Todd & the Monsters, Cracker 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ FRI 1/26/2024 Digable Planets, Kassa Overall 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ FRI 2/23/2024 Jamila Woods, Kara Jackson 8 PM, the Vic b FRI 3/1/2024 Petey 8:30 PM, the Vic b SAT 3/2/2024 Tyler Ramsey 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn SAT 3/9/2024 Cherry Glazerr, Wombo 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ THU 3/21/2024 Sleater-Kinney 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b

TUE 3/26/2024 Mahalia 6:30 PM, House of Blues b FRI 3/29/2024 Elephant Stone 10 PM, Empty Bottle Lany 8 PM, Salt Shed, 17+ SAT 3/30/2024 Lany 8 PM, Salt Shed, 17+ SAT 5/18/2024 Gloria Trevi, Mar 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont b THU 6/13/2024 Tyler Childers, S.G. Goodman 7:30 PM, United Center b v

IN SEPTEMBER 2021, Macie Stewart of Finom released her debut solo album, Mouth Full of Glass. She enriched its gentle, intimate songs with opulent strings and horns, but she’s infrequently performed those arrangements live due in part to the difficulty of bringing them to the stage. She assembled a sextet for a pair of release shows at the Hideout, then briefly toured her solo material in a trio with cellist Lia Kohl and keyboardistguitarist Michael Hilger. On Friday, October 20, at Epiphany Center for the Arts, Stewart will premiere the most ambitious realization yet of Mouth Full of Glass, performing with a small orchestra.

“It feels very cathartic to be able to perform this thing that I recorded largely alone and in total isolation,” Stewart says. “To perform it with a group of 12 people that I admire and love dearly, it feels full circle—but also something that I never imagined would happen with the record.”

Stewart started down the road to this concert in January, when she applied for an individual artist grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.

“I dreamed of trying to do something for orchestra,” she says, “and it’s hard to get that many people in a room and appropriately compensate them for their work and their time.” She received the grant in August, and by then she already had an idea who she’d invite. The lineup includes Kohl, Hilger, violinists Mallory Linehan, Karlyn Gehring, and Zara Zaharieva; saxophonists Dustin Laurenzi and Sen Morimoto; cellist Olula Negre; violist Karlita Williams; double bassist Zach Moore; and multi-instrumentalist Rob Frye.

The full orchestra began rehearsing in person Monday at Experimental Sound Studio in Edgewater, and ESS is partnering with Stewart to present and promote the performance.

“I wanted to work with them as well, because they have experience recording ensembles like this,” Stewart says. “The performance on the 20th is going to be a live recording.”

The Epiphany set will also be something of a homecoming for Stewart—her teenage band Kids These Days played their second gig in the same space. “Everyone walked around the corner from Whitney Young to come to the show,” she recalls. “That was kind of why I wanted to do it there too—it feels like a full-circle moment.”

WHEN LOCAL DREAM-POP ARTIST Alana Schachtel, aka Lipsticism , released Two Mirrors Facing Each Other in December

2022, she explained in an artist’s statement that it was recorded across four difficult years.

“I was experiencing a debilitating chronic illness which sapped my energy,” she wrote.

“In a way, this album is a collection of songs that resulted from my own therapeutic utilization of music and the creative process.” The album’s lush and refreshing melodies have kept it on Gossip Wolf’s playlist ever since, and earlier this month Schachtel teased a new album, Elapsed Kiss, on Instagram.

In contrast to its predecessor, Elapsed Kiss took Schachtel seven weeks to finish. “I felt so sure of the sonic world I wanted to bring into existence and the songs kept pouring out,” she posted. “It usually comes very slowly to me.” The album is due via UK indie Phantom Limb on Friday, October 20, and based on the two tracks released at the time of this writing, “Hold Me Release Me” and “Free,” Schachtel has broadened her palette with throbbing rhythms and splashes of warm electronica. Lipsticism’s next local show is at the Hideout on Thursday, November 16, opening for Fire-Toolz, RXM Reality, and Fruit Looops.

IN 19 YEARS OF ATTENDING the CHIRP Record Fair & Other Delights, this wolf has bought enough premium vinyl, collectible memorabilia, and other groovy schwag to fill an entire IKEA bookshelf. (And benefiting an excellent radio station in the process has its own rewards!) The 2023 iteration of this annual event hits Plumbers Union Hall (1340 W. Washington) on Saturday, October 21, and corrals dozens of vendors (including those from the Andersonville Vintage Market) as well as a loaded lineup of live bands and DJs, a photo booth, and a kids’ area featuring an “instrument petting zoo” courtesy of the Old Town School of Folk Music.

Among the artists scheduled to perform are Baby Teeth , Madame Reaper, Jessica Risker, and Glad Rags; the DJs spinning between sets include RP Boo, Heart of Chicago Soul Club, and members of postpunk band Ovef Ow. Dimo’s Pizza and Illuminated Brew Works will sell food and beer, and Illuminated has christened a CHIRP “Crate Digger” Brown Ale for the occasion. Tickets (available through recordfair.chirpradio.org or at the door) are $25 for early admission at 8 AM, $10 for regular admission at 10 AM. The fair runs till 6 PM. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or email gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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MEAGAN MCNEAL OCT 24TH

RAMY YOUSEF OCT 26TH

THE BRIDGE

RICHIE GOODS& CHIEN CHIEN LU

NOV 7TH

NOV 11TH

promontorychicago.com // 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. W.// 312.801.2100 OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 51

SAVAGE LOVE COTTONBRO STUDIO/PEXELS

keep an erection while enduring things that appear to be painful? Do they take a drug?

Q: What is the etiquette

recommend to someone who has a question that doesn’t have enough to do with sex or relationships?

a: Shower off, towel off, get off—perhaps in a more reliable orifice.

a: My short list: Carolyn Hax, Miss Manners, Lizzie Post and Dan Post Senning, Lori Gottlieb, Meredith Goldstein, and Alison Green.

Moonlighting with OnlyFans, loving your body, and other quick answers to short questions.

a: Lots of male porn performers take drugs— ingestible or injectable erectile dysfunction medications—to stay hard during porn shoots. Some may take boner drugs to keep an erection while enduring something that they may not enjoy (although lots of porn performers, like lots of regular people, enjoy BDSM), but most take boner drugs so they don’t lose their erection during the tedious parts of the shoot, e.g., lining up shots, repositioning cameras, or getting into bondage.

By DAN SAVAGE

Q: How does one retrain

SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS

Quickies

their dick to stay hard for another person during partnered sex after decades of self-pleasure?

Q : I’m a 57-year-old

guy, married but separated,

in reasonable shape. I usually masturbate at night as a “sleeping pill.” Over the past few years, it’s gotten more difficult to orgasm. I get hard, I vary my technique, but I just can’t come.

Sometimes I’m up for hours jerking it before trying to fall asleep. Toys like sleeves sometimes help, but they’re messy since they need lube, so that’s not my first choice.

Any magic suggestions for things to try?

a: Fire on all cylinders: use

sleeves and lube (keep a small stack of hand towels on your nightstand), put clothespins on your tits (whether they’re wired or not), get a powerful vibrator with a sleeve attachment, slip a plug in your ass (flared base!), read some erotica and/or watch some porn.

Past a certain age, you may

need to really crank things up to meet your production goals.

Q: What is the most

common cause of bickering in long-term relationships?

a: There are four: the unbelievably stupid shit your partner insists on doing (despite being asked not to do that shit), the bleedingly obvious shit your partner refuses to do (despite being asked to do that shit), the stupid shit your partner likes (despite it being explained to them how stupid that shit is), and the amazing shit your partner doesn’t like (despite it being explained to them how amazing that shit is).

Basically, it’s them.

Q: Is sexual compatibility in a relationship a prerequisite or an achievement?

a: Establishing some basic/

52 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

bedrock/baseline sexual compatibility at the start is a prerequisite; sustaining sexual compatibility over time is an achievement.

Q: What’s the best

threesome position? (Do not say “The Eiffel Tower.”)

a: The Three Gorges Dam. Q: My rent went way up and I’m thinking about starting an OnlyFans account for extra cash. Thoughts?

a: You submitted your question via Instagram DM, so I took the liberty of scrolling through your feed . . . and the answer is yes.

Q: Online romance novels

help get me off. Lately, I’ve been reading about BDSM, as some of the lighter versions of that practice are featured in novels I’ve recently read. How do guys

a: One incorporates self-

pleasure into the partnered sex that one is fortunate enough to be having with another person. One might also want to lay one’s hands on some boner pills.

Q: Former fat girl here.

How do I not hate my body compared to the cute girl my boyfriend and I play with?

a: “Comparison is the thief of joy,” as someone or other once said. “Stop comparing bodies” is a lot easier said than done, I realize, and taking “yes” for an answer isn’t always easy either. But if I could learn to do it (I’m a former fat kid myself) so can you.

Q: Thoughts on the person

who went to the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco covered with his own feces?

a: Fucking disgusting.

when you puke on a sex partner during a deepthroating session?

Q: Someone I met on

BiggerCity moved across the country to my city. He then changed his BiggerCity name to one that includes my BC name. It’s hot as fuck.

But I just realized he might be a stalker. Within the last hour I left him a bunch of flirty texts. Stupid and horny.

TBH, now I’m a bit scared.

Any suggestions?

a: Moving across the country to be closer to someone you met on a dating app and taking his name . . . does seem a little stalky. It also screams “I don’t have a job or friends,” (he’s broke and won’t be missed back home) or “I don’t need a job or friends,” (he’s wealthy and is an asshole). If your gut is telling you to block him, block him.

Q: Straight cuck here. I did

the one thing a cuck should never do and blew up at my girlfriend for doing what I’d asked her to do. I found a kink-positive therapist, did the work, and now I am ready to try this again. But I’m single now. Advice?

a: Um, this seems kind of obvious and I’m sure your therapist covered it with you, but . . . go find a new girlfriend and don’t fuck it up this time.

Q: This is too off-topic for a

regular column, but perhaps you could answer in one of your Quickies columns, or turn it over to your readers? Which currentlyactive English-language advice columnists would you

Q: Is it possible to learn to squirt or is it “either you’ve got it or you don’t”?

a: I’ve spoken to women who’ve tried to learn and couldn’t. They, unsurprisingly, tend to believe a woman either has it or she doesn’t.

I’ve also spoken to women who’ve tried to learn and succeeded. They unsurprisingly believe squirting can be got.

Q: Any advice for a

burgeoning masochist?

a: Don’t let anyone do anything to you that they haven’t let someone else do to them—also, masochists make the best sadists.

Q: Are “gynosexual” and “androsexual” real sexual identities or are they like “sapiosexual”?

a: A gynosexual is someone who is attracted to women and/or femme traits and/or people and an androsexual is someone who’s attracted to men and/or masc traits and/ or people—and seeing as there are people out there who fit those descriptions, I guess we’ll have to concede that those are real sexual identities . . . unlike “sapiosexual,” which is some made-up bullshit. v Ask your burning questions, download podcasts, read full column archives, and more at the URL savage.love. m mailbox@savage.love

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PRESENTS

A SPECIAL THANKS

to everyone who made the Reader UnGala happen: Event Committee Members

Eileen Rhodes | Vanessa Fernandez | Tracy Baim David Hiller | Solomon Lieberman | Reese Marcusson | Amy Matheny | Diane Pascal

2023 UnGala Sponsors

California Avenue Sponsor

Halsted Street Sponsor

Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive Sponsor

DuSable Lake Shore Drive Sponsors

A very special thank you to our EVENT PRODUCER IB & FRIENDS

A very special thank you to our VENUE HOST Epiphany Center for the Arts

OCTOBER 19, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 53

CLASSIFIEDS JOBS RESEARCH PROFESSIONALS & SERVICES MATCHES AUDITIONS COMMUNITY ADULT SERVICES

JOBS Manager IT Strategy and BPO We s t Monroe Partners, Inc. seeks Manager IT Strategy and BPO in Chicago, IL to Provide IT and functional strategy and process optimization solutions in support of large-scale p ro c e s s / t e c h n o l o g y projects and/or other transformational initiatives. Manage 2-5 consultants.

85% travel to client sites across the US. 100% Telecommuting permitted within the U.S. Apply https://www. jobpostingtoday.com/ Ref: 42182.

Principal Engineer Baxter Healthcare Corporation is seeking a Principal Engineer in Round Lake, IL to Develop and author design documentation, work with cross functional teams to define requirements and specifications, and create prototype builds to sustain and enhance fielded products/support field corrective action; Plan, schedule and manage software development team by conducting code reviews, define workload estimation, lead CCB, conduct event-based risk reviews, perform unit-testing, subsystem testing and participate/ lead system integration activities. May work up to 20% remotely; time in office required weekly; must live within commuting distance of the worksite. Full time. $144,560 - $156,000 per year. Qualified applicants can apply directly to the Baxter Website at: jobs.baxter. com. Please search job #JR-113659. EOE Sr. Manager West Monroe Partners, Inc. seeks Sr. Manager in Chicago, IL to earn the trust of senior leaders at client organizations and partner with them to create strategic solutions and turn goals into concrete projects and proposals.

100% telecommuting w/in the U.S., 85% travel to unanticipated client sites. Apply https:// www.jobpostingtoday. com/ Ref: 85069.

Electrical Engineer exp U.S. Services Inc. is seeking an Electrical Engineer in Chicago, IL to execute all reqd aspects of electrical engineering for project delivery using a solid understanding of engineering fundamentals & advanced concepts. Up to 40% remote work allowed. 20% domestic & int’l travel reqd. Co HQ in Chicago, IL. Apply at www.exp.com, search for job# 10699

54 CHICAGO READER - OCTOBER 19, 2023

Planning Consultant Holsten Management Corp seeks a f/t Planning Consultant (Chicago, IL). Req. Master’s in Urb Planning & Policy or Pub Admin. w/ 6 mos exp as Urb Planner, Urb Dsgn, Real Estate Dev’p Anlst or Affordable Housing Dev’p Anlst, plus 6 mos exp using Adobe I l l u s t r a t o r, Tr i m b l e SketchUp Pro & ESRI ArcGIS software.

Domestic travel req’d. Send resume to: peterholsten@ holstenchicago.com.

Operations Manager Operations Manager: Elk Grove Village IL. Direct & coord activities of transp comp to obtain optimum efficiency in ops to max profits. Plan & develop org policies & goals. Coord activities of entity. Coord marketing, sales, advertising.

Comm w/clients, employees. Responsible for marketing. Plan & manage business budget. Analyze financials.

Prep docs for accountant. HS. 2 yrs exp. Res: RG Express Logistics, Inc, kamil040816@ gmail.com Manager, IT- Data Engineering Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC seeks Manager, IT- Data Engineering to work in Glenview, IL & be responsible for managing initiatives to expand & optimize our data & data pipeline architecture, as well as optimizing data flow & collection for cross functional teams. Degree & commensurate exp. req\’d. Apply online by searching keyword R-75141 at careers. kraftheinz.com/careers PEAK6 Capital Management LLC seeks Manager, Trader in Chicago, IL to use financial anlys & risk manag techniques to devise trading strat.

R e q s . M a s t e r ’s o r foreign equiv in Finance, Managmnt, or rel. field & 2 yrs of exp. as Trader or rel. role. Exp. must incl. conductg data & stat anlys using Python, SQL & Excel VBA & P&L & quant. financial anlys.

Position will be HQ’d in Chicago, IL but is a telecommute position, a l l o w g f o r re m o t e employ from various unanticipated worksites throughout U.S. Email re s u m e : s v a l l e t t e @ peak6.com A r c h e r D e n t i s t r y, LLC seeks Associate Dentists for Chicago, IL location to diagnose & provide appropriate dental treatments to patients. DDM/ DDS/ related field +1yr exp req’d. Req’d Licenses & Certifications: IL Dental License. Send resume

to: Hazma Mohammed, hmohammed@ a rc h e rd e n t i s t r y. c o m REF: SC Bookkeeping, Accounting and Auditing Clerk Bookkeeping, Accounting and Auditing Clerk – Young Kim and Co., Inc. (Chicago, IL): Responsible for computing, classifying and recording numerical data to keep financial records of clients to prepare and file periodic federal, state and local tax filings of various payroll, tax deposits and payments for the firms clients who are mostly small and medium size businesses owned by recent Korean immigrants. Job requires a high school diploma (or equivalent) and 6 months of experience in bookkeeping, accounting, auditing clerk or related occupation; or in lieu of the 6 months experience, the Employer will accept at least one year (24 credit hours) of post-secondary college education (or foreign equivalent) in accounting or business administration or related major fields. Must be fluent (able to read, write, and speak) in the Korean language required. To apply, email resume to ac3318@gmail.com and reference job code: SHD-23.

Assistant Teaching Professor, Chicago.

Te a c h u n d e r g r a d / grad courses in comp. science, including AI. Master’s in comp. science/closely related, expertise in artificial intelligence required. Mail res., cov. Let. To Melissa Munoz-Rush, Manager, H u m a n R e s o u rc e s , Illinois Institute of Technology, 10 W 35th St., Ste. 1300, Chicago, IL 60616.

(Rosemont, IL) Metal One America, Inc. seeks Product Specialist, U.S. Flat Rolled Steel Division w/Bach or for deg equiv in Bus, Econ, Mktg or rltd fld & 2 yrs exp in pos offered or sale of steel prod incl exp in trade negot for steel; sell & purch commod in intl mrkts; coord commod mater flows from intl suppliers; commod mrkt & stat analy & commod mrkt res. Occ intl and freq dom trips reqd. Apply to S. Wilson, 6250 N. River Rd, Ste 2055, Rosemont, IL 60018 Construction Project Manager Construction Project Manager: Direct & coord activities of employees to obtain o p t i m u m e ff i c i e n c y in sales & ops to max profits. Comm w/

clients, employees, subcontractors, real estate agents, attorneys. Prep contracts, proposals & estimates for constr bids. Plan, direct, coord activities concerned w/ constr & maintenance of structures. Participate in conceptual devlpt of constr project & oversee its organization, sched, budgeting & implementation. Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering - Construction Management, 2 yrs exp.

Res: MK Construction & Builers, Inc. 2000 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago IL 60647 Operations Manager Operations Manager: Work w/GM & mgnt to set, impl policies, procedures. Manage relationships w/key operations vendors.

Dealing w/supply chain.

Manage junior customer service reps. Resolve customer complaints.

Process orders, requests. Keep records of customer interactions.

Provide professional customer support. Manage logistic team, sched pick-ups, deliveries.

Inventory optimization, working closely w/ warehouse manager.

Associate’s Degree, 2 yrs exp in any managerial position. Res: SAC Furniture, Inc. 801 E Park Ave, Libertyville IL 60048 Senior Software Engineer Third Eye Health Inc. (Chicago, IL): devel, create, & modify applications & s/ware needs based on the company’s needs. Telecommuting from w/in the U.S. allowed.

Reqs: Bachelor’s in Comp Sci, Comp Eng, or a closely rel field. Must have any level of demonstrated knwldg of: 1) Programming languages: C#, .NET Core Web API, Swift, Android, HTML5/ CSS, JavaScript/jQuery; and 2) MS-SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Git (coursework accepted). Email res to Lucas Baran, CTO & Co-Founder at lbaran@ thirdeyehealth.net w/ ref to job code SSE23.

Architectural Designer (BLDG Projects, Inc.; Chicago, IL): Responsible for coordinating project design, developing creative design concepts and solutions for projects. Send resumes to: HR, BLDG Projects, Inc., 4468 N. Elston Ave., Chicago, IL, 60630.

Lead Data Scientist Lead Data Scientist: MS or forgn equiv in Data Sci, CS, Electrical Engg or rel; + 3 yrs exp. Use exp w/ stat methods; R/Python/SQL; mach.

lear ning algorithms; cloud-based data processing; Tableau; CLV/CAC/NPS; + AWS/ Sn o w f la k e s t o r a g e / o rc h e s t r / v i s u a l i z t o synthesize + analyze BI/trend data. National Collegiate Scouting Association LLC. May telecommute to Chicago IL from any US loc.

F/T. $175K/yr-$200K/ yr. Benefits: https:// tinyurl.com/yc2drau6.

Send resume to jtoney@ ncsasports.org re: job 6355. No calls/agents/ visa sponsorship.

Applications Specialist Arthur J. Gallagher in Rolling Meadows, IL seeks Applications Specialist to design & implement effective & scalable solutions. Reqs BS + 3 yrs exp. Hybrid in-office / remote. To apply: mail resumes to HR, Ref. Applications Specialist 000402; 2850 Golf Road, Rolling Meadows, IL 60008.

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RESEARCH MJM 52 SEEKS JEW- Mid 40s WM seeking woman Mid 40s white Have you had an unwanted sexual experience since age 18? Did you tell someone in your life about it who is also willing to participate?

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WRIGHTWOOD

CHICAGO

DEMOCRACY IS FRAGILE...

CAN AN ALGORITHM BREAK IT? 17 ARTISTS EXPLORE THE PROMISE & DANGER OF OUR DIGITAL WORLD IN THIS AWARD-WINNING EXHIBITION

THIS EXHIBITION IS PRESENTED BY ALPHAWOOD EXHIBITIONS AT WRIGHTWOOD 659.

DIFFERENCE MACHINES: TECHNOLOGY AND IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY ART IS ORGANIZED

BY THE BUFFALO AKG ART MUSEUM.

OCT/13 - DEC/16 | wrightwood659.org