Print Issue of November 9, 2017 (Volume 47, Number 6)

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | N O V E M B E R 9, 2 0 1 7

Sights to see at

CIMMfest

The Chicago International Movies & Music Festival makes its November debut with feature films about queer punk, David Bowie, New Orleans piano, gospel quartets, Ozzfest, Malian traditional music, and lots more. 23

Who’s steering Chicago’s driverless future? 11 Cook County’s masturbation epidemic is out of hand. 12

Yony Leyser’s documentary Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution

2 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 9, 2017

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THIS WEEK

C H I C A G O R E A D E R | N O V E M B E R 9, 2 0 1 7 | V O L U M E 4 7, N U M B E R 6

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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, JAMIE LUDWIG, KATE SCHMIDT SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, AIMEE LEVITT, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, IRENE HSIAO, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, OLIVER SAVA, KEVIN WARWICK, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS MOLLY O’MERA ---------------------------------------------------------------ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER BEST SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES FABIO CAVALIERI, BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD

FEATURES

IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda The play Captain Steve’s Caring Kingdom, the comedy show The Low Upside With John Sabine, Risk! podcast recording, the film Lady Bird, and more recommended goings-on about town

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Out of hand

A epidemic of indecent exposure in Cook County court lockups poses a threat to public defenders and raises questions about jail conditions, county budget, and defendants’ rights.

BY MAYA DUKMASOVA 12

CITY LIFE

8 Street View An LA transplant finds freedom in 70s-inspired fashions.

8 Chicagoans A metal detectorist makes a living finding people’s lost jewelry.

9 Joravsky | Politics The Richard J. Daley-era Chicago 21 plan is alive in the Amazon bid.

11 Transportation Who’s behind the wheel of Chicago’s driverless future?

13 Police reform Are there alternatives to calling 911?

18 Dance Faye Driscoll’s Thank You for Coming: Play promises fun for those who do.

19 Visual Art Don’t celebrate the Russian Revolution.

20 Movies In Rage, a TV journalist in Communist Poland tries to outrun his personal and professional lies.

20 Movies Order and chaos duke it out at the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation.

21 Movies 78/52 slices and dices the shower scene from Hitchcock’s Psycho.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

30 Shows of note Ibeyi, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, Mndsgn, and more of the week’s best 33 The Secret History of Chicago Music Cosmic-minded jazz combo Spaceship Love made its only album in the 80s.

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ARTS & CULTURE

15 Comedy & Movies Andy Dick is no longer funny to the Chicago Comedy Film Festival.

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ON THE COVER: AN IMAGE OF THE 1989 SAN FRANCISCO PRIDE PARADE FROM YONY LEYSER’S DOCUMENTARY QUEERCORE: HOW TO PUNK A REVOLUTION

MOVIES & MUSIC

Sights to see at CIMMfest

The Chicago International Movies & Music Festival makes its November debut with feature films about David Bowie, queer punk, New Orleans piano, gospel quartets, Ozzfest, Malian traditional music, and lots more.

BY LUCA CIMARUSTI, LEOR GALIL, J.R. JONES, JAMIE LUDWIG, PETER MARGASAK, REECE PENDLETON, AND TAL ROSENBERG 23

17 Theater Janine Nabers’s Welcome to Jesus aspires to be the Jordan Peele movie Get Out. 17 Comedy The improv group Cook County Social Club says no to good taste.

36 Restaurant review: The Delta Mississippi red hot tamales are the link between north and south at the new Wicker Park barstaurant.

CLASSIFIEDS

38 Jobs 38 Apartments & Spaces 39 Marketplace 40 Straight Dope Do supergeniuses still exist?

41 Savage Love Can a two-daddy poly relationship work?

42 Early Warnings Roy Ayers, Taylor Bennett, Foo Fighters, Mavis Staples, and more shows you should know about in the weeks to come 42 Gossip Wolf Damon Locks crafts a sound essay at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and other music news.

NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 3

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THEATER Bob: A Life in Five Acts It’s a bummer that the title of this 2012 one-act dramedy by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb is so uninviting, because the story isn’t. A young man, abandoned as an infant in a White Castle bathroom, travels the country with his working-class adoptive mother as they do their best to turn living out of their car into an educational adventure. Nachtrieb’s script uses playful movement interludes, light comedy, and a fablelike heightened style to convey a hopeful, romantic vision of the American spirit. For both better and worse, codirectors Derek Bertelsen and Will Quam’s production for the Comrades is, like Nachtrieb’s script, twee but ultimately moving. —DAN JAKES Through 11/21: Sun-Tue 7:30 PM, Apollo Theater, 2540 N. Lincoln, 773-935-6100, the-comrades.com, $15.

Bobby Pin Girls Written by R ensemble member Janey Bell, Bobby Pin Girls details a wild night

shared by old friends and roommates Ana (Grace Hutchings) and Bree (Emilie Modaff). Immediately intimate by virtue of its setting (an artsy second-floor apartment), this absorbing production from Nothing Without a Company follows aspiring actress Ana’s sexually confusing interactions with her female director and male castmate (Debo Balogun), while Bree deals with her hand grenade of an ex (Peter Wilde).

What’s most fun and surprising here is the comedy, from verbal jabs to physical, that punctuates the heavy scenes. Hutchings and Modaff in particular offer raw performances that also manage not to take themselves too seriously—as Bell writes, “Every error is an opportunity to laugh.” This is sloppy, slapstick, and set to a memorable soundtrack of up-and-coming local musicians. Ben Kaye directed.

—MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 12/3: Wed-Sat 8 PM, Sun 6 PM (no shows 11/22-11/26), the Chicago Mosaic School, 1101 W. Granville, 773-975-8966, nothingwithoutacompany.org, $20-$25, $10-$15 students and industry.

Captain Steve’s Caring KingR dom Mike Ooi sets his unlikely marvel of a play in a make-believe world

where tiny animals—Ellie Elephant, Beaky Falcon, OK Bear, etc—live until it’s time to appear in the titular vintage children’s television show, which seems about as trippy and awful as H. R. Pufnstuf or The Banana Splits Adventure Hour. They’re plagued by workaday problems (lousy jobs, marital discord, unadmitted alcoholism), all of which they believe Captain Steve can solve through wisdom, magic, and indiscriminate cheerfulness. But his failure to show up at broadcast time initiates a cheeky, hilarious existential crisis, part Lord of the Flies, part Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Ooi mostly avoids facile irreverence in favor of poignant foolishness, steering a stalwart cast to disarming emotional depths.

All he needs is an ending. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 12/9: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 11/29, 8 PM (industry night), the Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard, thefactorytheater.com, $25, $15 students and seniors, $5 industry.

Die Walküre The second installR ment of Lyric Opera’s four-season Ring Cycle continues the openly theatri-

cal steampunk environment established in last season’s Rhinegold. The giant rolling towers are back, along with equine contraptions ridden by maiden warriors to some of opera’s most famous music. The effect can be (take your pick) amusingly circuslike or a little too precious, but a gorgeous performance by bass-baritone Eric Owens as the distressed god Wotan and superb work by the rest of a world-class cast—especially soprano Christine Goerke as the valkyrie of the title (and Wotan’s favorite daughter)—make this a not-to-be-missed production. Composer-librettist Richard Wagner’s mid-19th-century exploration of familial (and other) passions, including a defense of incest that’s the logical end point of a “pure blood” obsession that made him a Hitler favorite, is still both moving and shocking. David Pountney is the director; Andrew Davis conducts.

—DEANNA ISAACS Through 11/30: Fri 11/10, 5:30 PM; Thu 11/14 and Sat 11/18, 5:30 PM; Sun 1/26, 1 PM; Thu 11/30, 5:30 PM, Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker, 312-827-5600, lyricopera.org, $20-$299.

42nd Street Originally produced on Broadway in 1980, this musical takes its title and some of its plot and tunes from the iconic 1933 film, though according to the program Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble’s book is based on the 1932 novel the original movie was adapted from, and many of the show’s tunes (most of them written by Harry Warren and Al Dubin) come from a host of other Depression-era Warner Bros. musicals (among them Gold Diggers of 1933, 1935, and 1937). The show was the big nostalgia hit of the Reagan era, but it hasn’t aged well. Stewart and Bramble’s intentionally cliche-filled book feels more shopworn than charming.

And the ill-conceived orchestration’s attempt to make the many wonderful old songs in the score sound more “contemporary” (to 1980 ears) only gives the show the feel of a bad cruise-ship revue. Michael Heitzman’s ensemble is solid, though—Gene Weygandt makes a wonderful, curmudgeonly director—and Emilio Sosa’s period costumes are pure eye candy. —JACK HELBIG Through 1/7: Wed 1:30 PM, Thu 1:30 and 8 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM, Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace, 100 Drury Ln., Oakbrook Terrace, 630-530-0111, drurylaneoakbrook.com, $57.

J.B. Archibald MacLeish’s Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning 1958 modernist retelling of the Book of Job gets a passionate, sometimes furious revival from City Lit Theater. Set on the grounds outside a circus big top, two vendors named Zuss and Nickles decide to play God and Satan and walk the audience through Job’s trials and tribulations. All 23 roles in the play are played masterfully by an ensemble of nine women over 55. This casting accentuates MacLeish’s deft commentary on the suffering of the forgotten and slighted, and be they angels or devils, the characters all wrestle with the big questions with earnestness and wit. As Job (called J.B. here) says near the end by way of explaining why he never lost faith, “What suffers loves.” Brian Pastor directed. —DMITRY SAMAROV Through 12/10: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 11/27 and 12/4, 7:30 PM, City Lit Theater, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-293-3682, citylit.org, $32, $27 seniors, $12 students and military.

Newsies Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre has succeeded lately by rethinking as well as reviving classic shows. The company’s Man of La Mancha was surprisingly dark, its How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying unexpectedly feminist. This mounting of Newsies looks at first like it might do something similar: I was struck by how director-choreographer Alex Sanchez and his lead, Patrick Rooney, found the quiet wistfulness in the opening song—struck enough to wonder whether Sanchez might use Marriott’s in-the-round stage to bring the Disney blockbuster about an 1899 labor strike down to human size. But soon enough Sanchez falls into the trap of trying to approximate effects he can’t reproduce. Though he gets strong singing, entertaining performances, and some great gymnastic dancing out of his cast, the big, beautiful Broadway version has all that and more. Lacking a new approach, the show can’t help but pale by comparison. —TONY ADLER Through 12/31: Wed 1 and 8 PM, Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 4:30 and 8 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM, Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, 10 Marriott Dr., Lincolnshire, 847-634-0200, marriotttheatre.com, $50-$60.

School of Rock If you’re going to appreciate anything about this musical (presented here in an Equity touring production), start with the business model. Some brilliant soul looked at a silly 2003 Jack Black movie vehicle and realized it would make the ideal foundation for a live family entertainment, precisely because it offers kids the fantasy of rebelling against said family without actually missing any meals. Adapting the original screenplay

by Mike White, Julian Fellowes’s book gives us Dewey, frustrated rocker and amoral slob, who cons his way into a teaching job at an exclusive elementary school, discovers that the students there have musical skill, and trains them to win glory in a battle-of-the-bands competition. That’s just the start of a nearly endless swarm of implausibilities, but making sense is hardly the point when wish fulfillment is the commodity for sale. —TONY ADLER Through 11/19: Wed 2 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, $27-$98.

Yasmina’s Necklace ò LIZ LAUREN

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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of November 9 For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda.

This Wonderful Life American R Blues Theater founding ensemble member James Leaming is brilliant in

this one-man rendition of It’s a Wonderful Life, the Christmastime classic about a small-town fella who learns the meaning of his life just as he’s about to throw it away. Leaming serves as both storyteller and actor, playing all the parts as he recounts the familiar story of Frank Capra’s 1946 film. Leaming pokes fun at the old movie’s hokier aspects while celebrating its enduring emotional power, and he deftly and delightfully mimics the iconic portrayals by James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Donna Reed, Henry Travers, and the rest of Capra’s cast. Carmen Roman’s staging supports Leaming’s virtuosic performance with clever multimedia projections by Joe Huppert. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 11/26: Wed-Sat 8 PM (except Wed 11/8, 10:30 AM, and Thu 11/23, no show), Sun 2 PM; also Fri 11/10, 10:30 AM; Sat 11/18, 3 PM; Fri 11/24, 3 PM, the Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway, 773-769-9112, americanbluestheater.com, $29.

From “Designers With Character” at Instituto Cervantes less improv at whiz-bang speed. See preview page 17. Fri 11/10, 8 and 10:30 PM, iO Theater, the Mission Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com/chicago, $20.

I’m Too Fat for This Show Kate Huffman, a stalwart at iO West in Los Angeles, documents 20 years of living with an eating disorder fueled by OCD. Mon 11/13, 6:30 PM, iO Theater, the Mission Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com/ chicago, $10.

Yasmina’s Necklace Chicago R playwright Rohina Malik gracefully balances the political and the personal

in her intelligent, moving 2016 play, first produced and directed by Ann Filmer at Berwyn’s 16th Street Theatre and now being revived at the Goodman. The story, about a talented Iraqi refugee grappling with her past, is the perfect vehicle for Susaan Jamshidi, an actor equally adept at comedy and serious drama—though Malik’s gift for dialogue and storytelling practically guarantees Jamshidi won’t be the last actor to shine in this role. None of the play’s intimacy is lost in the Goodman’s considerably larger performing space, and Filmer’s crisp direction ensures that none of Malik’s points get blunted. —JACK HELBIG Through 11/19: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $10-$44.

DANCE A-Squared Asian American Performing Arts Festival Dancers of Asian descent present pieces inspired by their roots. 11/9-11/12: Thu-Sun 7 PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773281-0824, linkshall.org, $20, $15 students and seniors.

COMEDY Annoyance Christmas Pageant R Both A Charlie Brown Christmas and the story of Rudolph are amiably

spoofed in this annual yuletide tradition.

Through 12/23: Sat 7 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, 773-697-9693, theannoyance.com, $20, $12 children under 12.

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Cook County Social Club The storied improv group from the late 2000s returns to iO to revel in shame-

which performers tell personal stories they’ve never shared before. Emma Alamo, Haley Willow, Jacoby Cochran, and Maureen Muldoon, prepare to be embarrassed. Thu 11/9, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, 773-525-2501, lh-st. com, $22 in advance, $25 at the door.

Dar Williams The renowned R singer-songwriter performs, then outlines her book What I Found in a

Thousand Towns, which focuses on what her travels have taught her about community unity. Sat 11/11, 5 and 8 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, 909 W. Armitage, 773-728-6000, oldtownschool.org, $40.

VISUAL ART

Dar Williams ò TRISTAN LOPER The Low Upside With John R Sabine John Sabine is a cheeky comic. He’s one of the only people I’ve

seen who can unironically lampoon the Dave Matthews Band. As the eponymous Dave, he thanks his endless band members at the end of a show, including “a swarm of bees on the bongos.” He angles toward absurd playing a macho motivational speaker defining what constitutes grounds for turning in your “man card,” e.g., “If you think lizards are homeless turtles . . . turn in your man card!” And so forth. Sabine’s show plays like a McSweeney’s listicle, punctuated by his constantly shifting characters, from a confident Julian Assange to an anxious German teacher. He’s clever, charming, and knows how to read a room: I saw him turn up the ham-o-meter when playing to a room full of 40th birthday party attendees unfamiliar with sketch. —STEVE HEISLER Through 11/25: Sat 8:30 PM, iO Theater, the Mission Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com/chicago, $16.

Designers With Character A showcase of contemporary graphic design in Spain featuring the work of Marta Cerdà Alimbau, Andreu Balius, Alex Trochut, and more. Exhibit opening Tue 11/14, 6 PM. Through 1/20: Mon-Thu 9 AM-7 PM, Fri 9 AM-5 PM, Sat 9 AM-1 PM. Instituto Cervantes, 31 W. Ohio, 312-335-1996, chicago.cervantes.es.

MOVIES More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS All the Queen’s Horses Dixon, Illinois— the hometown of Ronald Reagan—got an unexpected lesson in government waste, fraud, and abuse in 2012 when Rita Crundwell, its treasurer and comptroller,

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Lady Bird Greta Gerwig got her R start as a tall, blond “it” girl for such indie heroes as Joe Swanberg,

Noah Baumbach, and Whit Stillman, quietly racking up screenwriting credits on some of their projects. Now, with her solo writing and directing debut, she leaves all three of them in the dust, delivering one of the freshest, funniest American comedies in years. Set in her native Sacramento, the film concerns a 17-year-old misfit (Saoirse Ronan of Brooklyn) stoically enduring her last year of captivity at a Catholic girls’ school and in her parents’ home. Gerwig shares with her male mentors a smart, subversive sense of humor, but she also brings to the table an enormous (and enormously mature) generosity toward all the characters, including the heroine’s wise, straight-talking teachers and loving, stressed-out parents. The movie µ

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LIT & LECTURES Risk! Kevin Allison, formerly of absurdist sketch-comedy troupe the State, hosts a podcast in

was charged with having embezzled $53 million over 20 years. This Kartemquin documentary by Kelly Richmond Pope frames municipal fraud as a global problem, noting on a world map the various millions that have been stolen from taxpayers in the U.S. and abroad. Despite this high-minded approach, however, the documentary’s best moments are pure tabloid (as interview subjects recall Crundwell’s arrest by the FBI, the camera traces her steps through city hall into the room where agents lay in wait). The perpetrator was a trusted figure in town (“She looks after every tax dollar as if it were her own,” said one commissioner), and her thriving side business as a horse breeder enabled her to launder large amounts of money. The city later sued its outside auditor and Fifth Third Bank, winning a $40 million settlement, and the people of Dixon voted to institute a more progressive city government with a nonpartisan manager. —J.R. JONES 71 min. Fri 11/10, 2 and 8 PM; Sat 11/11, 5 PM; Sun 11/12, 3 PM; Mon 11/13, 8 PM; Tue 11/14, 6 PM; Wed 11/15, 6 PM; and Thu 11/16, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

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Lady Bird

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BUS/TROLLEY TOURS

AGENDA to bump into the wall and come back. As someone who’s watched more bad movies than you can imagine, I’m mostly immune to the so-bad-it’s-good aesthetic, though I can see how, viewed in a theater at midnight after a few drinks, this might conjure up its own hilariously demented reality. Poignantly, Wiseau has now repositioned the movie as a “black comedy.” —J.R. JONES R, 99 min. 35mm. Fri 11/10Sat 11/11, midnight, Music Box. The Wizard of Oz Thanks R to innumerable childhood viewings, this 1939 film is too firmly

The Square

HOLIDAY LIGHTS, CITY LIGHTS Fridays & Saturdays at 4:15 and 6:15pm starting Nov. 24

Don’t let the cold weather deter you from admiring Chicago’s stunning architecture! Hop aboard Big Bus Chicago and hear the stories of great architects and leaders who shaped the city while taking in twinkling holiday and building lights.

SKYLINE VISTAS Fridays at 1pm & Saturdays at 11:30am See Chicago’s expansive downtown parks, emerging residential neighborhoods, and commercial developments.

ART DECO Fridays at 10:30am & Saturdays at 1:45pm Ride the trolley to the Chicago River, then step off to tour the lobbies of six opulent Art Deco skyscrapers.

224 S. Michigan Ave. | 312.922.3432 | architecture.org 6 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 9, 2017

B has a slightly scattershot quality, as if Gerwig were emptying out a fat notebook of funny ideas saved up for years. But those ideas never miss. With Laurie Metcalf and Tracy Letts. —J.R. JONES R, 93 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21.

Last Flag Flying Having no desire to revisit the macho-military high jinks of The Last Detail (1973) or read the Darryl Ponicsan novel on which it was based, I had some forebodings about this screen adaptation of Ponicsan’s 2005 sequel, even though the movie was cowritten and directed by the smart and resourceful Richard Linklater. Fortunately this belongs mainly to its fine lead actors—Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence Fishburne—playing buddies from the Vietnam war who reunite for a funeral in 2003 after one of them loses a son in Iraq. The movie asks whether Americans unable to share a country or a conviction can at least agree to share a symbol (whether it’s the Stars and Stripes or an unmerited military funeral), and even Linklater and Ponicsan seem divided and uncertain on the question. This has its moments, but it ends, like its characters, in sentimental confusion. —JONATHAN ROSENBAUM R, 124 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21.

Requiem for a Running Back This documentary about brain trauma in the NFL is largely anecdotal, but therein lies its power. Rebecca Carpenter set out to make the movie after her father, longtime running back and coach Lew Carpenter, died in 2010 and neurologists examining his brain tissue reported that he’d suffered for years from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

When a researcher shows Rebecca slides of her father’s brain, she can’t help but cry, and she begins to track down his old gridiron friends in search of answers. She presents a solid indictment of the league for its record of denial and delay, yet her movie is primarily the story of a grown child gaining a new

perspective on her late father and their rocky relationship. Near the end, the medical issue lands on her doorstep a second time when her teenage nephew, who idolized his grandfather, sets out to win a football scholarship to college and follow him into the big leagues.

—J.R. JONES 89 min. Fri 11/10, 6 PM; Sat 11/11, 7:30 PM; Sun 11/12, 5:15 PM; Mon 11/13, 8 PM; Tue 11/14, 7:45 PM; Wed 11/15, 8:15 PM; and Thu 11/16, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

The Square “Do you want R to save a human life?” asks a woman distributing flyers

outside a museum of modern art in Stockholm; the unvarying reply from people on the street is “No.” Welcome to the world of Swedish writer-director Ruben Östlund, who takes some wicked pot shots at the business of art but more broadly ponders the breakdown of the social contract among all people. The Square is an art installation outside the museum, a little zone in which “we all share equal rights and obligations,” and that concept informs much of the film’s satire—most provocatively, an art lecture continually interrupted by a man with Tourette’s syndrome, who barks obscenities at the museum staffers even as they defend his right to stay. Östlund’s breakout film, Force Majeure (2014), lampooned the privilege of wealth; this story turns more on cultural privilege, embodied by the museum’s handsome but fatuous curator (Claes Bang). With Elisabeth Moss and Dominic West. —J.R. JONES R, 142 min. Fri 11/10-Thu 11/16, 2, 5, and 8 PM. Music Box

REVIVALS The Room Written, produced, and directed by Tommy Wiseau, this inept 2003 melodrama has become a Rocky Horror-style cult favorite. Wiseau stars as an eerily placid and good-natured banker whose live-in girlfriend is secretly getting it on with his best friend, though the filmmaker often strikes out in different directions, only

planted in my (pre)consciousness for me to find the proper critical distance. In many ways, it’s stiff, ersatz, and anonymous in the usual MGM house style of the 30s (though King Vidor, one of several directors who worked on the project, does manage some graceful camera movement in the Munchkin scenes), but frankly I don’t care.

Those talking trees were a staple of my nightmares for years, and Margaret Hamilton is still my prime mental image of absolute evil. I don’t find the film light or joyful in the least—an air of primal menace hangs about it, which may be why I love it. With Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, and Billie Burke; Victor Fleming took the final directing credit. —DAVE KEHR 101 min. Tue 11/14, 2 and 7 PM. Pickwick.

SPECIAL EVENTS Adventure Film Festival A touring program of award-winning short films. 120 min. Sun 11/12, 4 PM. Music Box. Chicago International Movies & Music Festival This year’s edition of the annual festival includes a tribute to director Penelope Spheeris, including her Decline of Western Civilization trilogy and rare screenings of her early shorts. See page 23 for our festival roundup.

Thu 11/9-Sun 11/12. Davis; Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music.

Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation Based in Los Angeles, the traveling Eyeworks Festival collects “works by made by individual artists, drawing on the lineage of avant-garde cinema as well as the tradition of classic character animation and cartooning.” See page 20 for J.R. Jones’s roundup. Sat 11/11, 1 PM (program one) and 3:30 PM (program two).

Northwestern University Block Museum of Art. F Polish Film Festival in America The 29th annual festival continues.

See page 20 for Ben Sachs’s review of Rage, screening Friday, November 10, at Facets; for a full schedule visit pffamerica.com. Fri 11/10-Sun 11/19, Facets Cinematheque, Society for Arts. v

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STEP OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE, CHICAGO. Who doesn t love doing something new and unexpected, especially in Chicago? That s why AARP is hosting tons of fun and exciting events for Chicagoans. Join us at an informational tech class where you ll learn about the latest trends and updates, or grab some popcorn and relax with us at a free movie screening. You can even meet new and interesting people at any of our volunteer opportunities across town. Events like these are just some of the ways we re connecting with you and helping to make Chicago an even better place to live, work and play.

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NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE Chicagoans

The metal detectorist

ò ISA GIALLORENZO

Jim Evans, 76

Street View

Feelin’ groovy

“THERE WAS THIS sense of freedom and youthfulness that was clearly reflected in the aesthetic of those times,” Ana Custodio says of the 1970s, the LA transplant’s favorite decade for fashion. “People often say that less is more, but the 70s show that if done right, sometimes more is better.”

—ISA GIALLORENZO See more Chicago street style on Giallorenzo’s blog chicagolooks.blogspot.com.

I GET PAID TO FIND people’s jewelry. I got a call to look for a guy’s high school ring that he lost 42 years ago in his grandfather’s backyard. He told me, “I can remember the day like it was yesterday. I had just bought my first brand-new car, a green Pinto, and I was washing it. I got soap on my hand, and I flipped my hand, and the ring went sailing. I looked for that ring for three days and couldn’t find it.” The grandfather’s house ended up being sold, and the new owner wouldn’t allow him to look. Forty-two years later, the house comes up for sale again. He calls the new owner. She gives him permission. I found it for him in 15 minutes. It was about six inches down in the soil, and there was a little root starting to grow on it.

Seventy percent of my calls are what I refer to as “ring tosses.” That’s where the spouse throws a ring in anger. It’s amazing to me. Why not throw a plate? Why a ring? I never ask why the ring was tossed.

It might be adultery. I don’t know, and I don’t really care.

Sometimes they lie about it. I had a lady call me and say, “I dropped my ring on my porch.” Well, I found her ring 35 feet off the porch, so it must have been a little windy when she dropped it. Another lady called me a couple of weeks ago saying, “I lost my diamond stud earring.” I told her, “Bring me the other one, ’cause I’m gonna need to figure out if my detector can even pick it

“Seventy percent of my calls are what I refer to as ‘ring tosses.’ That’s where the spouse throws a ring in anger,” Evans says. “Why not throw a plate?” ò MATTHEW AVIGNONE

up, since there’s not much metal on it.” She said, “Actually, I threw that one too.”

Fall is a prime season, because people will be raking leaves, throwing leaves.

Winter, when there’s snow, that becomes busy. Guys wiping snow off their car, their fingers shrink, they lose their rings. And then in the summertime, people go to the beach and lose their rings. They go in the water, their fingers shrink. Or they put the ring in their shoe, and it starts to rain, and they grab their stuff and start running, and they drop the ring.

If you know where you lost something, the odds are probably 85 percent or better that I’ll find it. But time is of the essence.

If you lose it along a sidewalk, someone else may pick it up. Or at the beach. There

are a lot of guys with metal detectors out there, plus the beach gets raked every day in the summer. I had a guy the other night who called me from Oak Street Beach. He was wiping sand off his arm and lost his diamond wedding band. He googled “how to find ring in the sand,” and he found me on Ringfinders.com and called me. I found his ring for him in 30 seconds, because he had not left.

I charge a show-up fee of $25 to $100, depending on how far I have to travel. That’s all they owe me unless I find their item. And after I find their item, when they’re on an emotional high, they determine the reward.

I make sometimes $500 for ten minutes.

And if it’s a ring toss, it’s almost guaranteed it’s in cash. —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD

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

SURE THINGS THURSDAY 9

FRIDAY 10

SATURDAY 11

SUNDAY 12

MONDAY 13

TUESDAY 14

WEDNESDAY 15

| Andrew D iamond Chicago on the Make: Power and Inequality in a Modern City, the historian’s new book, follows the politics, policies, and neighborhood development of Chicago from its rusty roots to its current state. 7 PM, Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark, 312642-4600. F

J St rip Jo ker This comedy showcase promotes body positivity with standups telling awkward stories about nudity while in varying degrees of undress. 8 PM, Uptown Underground, 4707 N. Broadway, 773-867-1946, uptownunderground.net, $20.

Ô Pa ragon Festival Otherworld Theatre, a company specializing in sci-fi and fantasy-based work, hosts 40 plays over the course of this weekend-long festival.

The full schedule is at otherworldtheatre.org/paragon2017.

11 AM-5:30 PM, Public House Theatre, 3914 N. Clark, pubhousetheatre.com, $10 per play, $20 day pass, $30 festival pass.

× Th e S i oux Chef ’s Indigenous Ki tchen Author Sean Sherman discusses and signs his new book, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, which explores the evolution of Native American cuisine (and includes recipes). 3-5 PM, American Indian Center, 1630 W. Wilson, 773-275-5871, aic-chicago.org. F

ã Kn ox Fo rtune Last week’s issue covered the producer and vocalist’s leap from hip-hop to pop music. Tonight he’ll celebrate the release of his solo debut album, Paradise. The bill also includes Lido, Peter Cottontale, and Grapetooth. 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, 773-5252501, sold out.

Th e Shining Fo rwa rds and Backwards Heeeeeere’s Johnny! John Fell Ryan, who was featured in the Shining documentary Room 237, screens a project he concocted in which he superimposes the 1980 Stanley Kubrick classic with itself running backward. 8 PM, Digital Art Demo Space, 2515 S. Archer. F

M Ke llye Howa rd Howard is a high-energy stand-up who chronicles what it’s like living in the suburbs as a black woman from the city. She records her first album at the Comedians You Should Know showcase.

7 and 9:30 PM, Timothy O’Toole’s, 622 N. Fairbanks, comediansyoushouldknow. com/chicago, $5 in advance, $10 at the door.

8 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 9, 2017

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

CITY LIFE

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In 1973, Mayor Richard J. Daley laid out Chicago 21, a plan crafted by political and corporate chieftains to concentrate development downtown and lure the middle class back to the city.

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POLITICS

The Chicago 21 plan is alive in the city’s Amazon bid The rich-get-richer scheme of downtown-centric development continues to guide Chicago’s leaders more than 40 years after its conception.

By BEN JORAVSKY

T

hirty-six years ago, when I moved to Chicago, the old lefties used to tell me the political and corporate chieftains were like a secret cartel that had crafted a rich-get-richer scheme of development that would shape the city for years to come.

They were talking specifically about Chicago 21, a plan put together in 1973 by a consortium of movers and shakers including Mayor Richard J. Daley and various honchos from big oil, banking, and utility concerns. Their plan was to concentrate development downtown and in such outlying communities as the South Loop, Chinatown, and the near west and near north sides so that the middle class would be lured back to town.

Those old lefties had a point. For better or worse, the Chicago 21 plan is still very much alive, as evidenced by the city’s Amazon bid, in which Mayor Emanuel and Governor Rauner have teamed up to offer CEO Jeff Bezos, one of the world’s wealthiest people, a $2.25 billion incentive package to build a second headquarters, aka HQ2, in one of ten locations in Chicago and the suburbs, including eight sites in and around downtown.

Even though there are hundreds of vacant lots all over Chicago’s south and west sides, the city’s leaders are again concentrating development on the same central communities, with maybe a crumb or two falling to the rest of us who help foot the bill. Call it trickle-down development.

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I’ll give old man Daley and his pals this: They were reacting to demographic challenges far greater than those Rahm or Rauner must confront. In the early 1970s, the middle class was picking up and fleeing to the suburbs as the city’s industrial base was crumbling.

Chicago’s on firmer ground today. Still, the mayor and governor are offering billions to get one of the world’s richest companies to move to the richest part of town. It’s like affirmative action for people who never needed it in the first place.

I was thinking about this as I found an old photocopy of the Chicago 21 plan in a folder at the back of my file cabinet. The section on Cabrini-Green is particularly revealing. Back then, the Chicago Housing Authority project around Division and Orleans was packed with thousands of residents. The Chicago 21 planners realized upscale development in the area would be hampered by a complex of governmentsubsidized residences. Yet they were astute enough to realize they couldn’t call for its demolition without setting off a firestorm of protest.

So they assured Cabrini-Green residents that “in no case should [development] result in displacement of existing residents for financial or other reasons.”

Obviously, the city broke that promise years ago, when it demolished the project’s highrises and scattered most of the residents to the wind. I suspect Rahm and Rauner will be much more accommodating when it comes to keeping whatever promises they make to Amazon. Tearing down Cabrini-Green ignited a real estate boom that’s turned that area into one of the most expensive in Chicago.

Not surprisingly, Chicago’s HQ2 bid offers Amazon two sites not far from the former housing development. There’s the Lincoln Yards site, largely owned by the Sterling Bay development firm, on the banks of the Chicago River between North and roughly Fullerton.

And there’s the so-called River District, a large swath of industrial land at Chicago and Halsted that includes the Freedom Center, the Tribune’s printing plant.

Each site in Chicago’s Amazon bid tells a story about the wheeling and dealing of powerful people. And the River District gives me an opportunity to shed a little light on the recent history of the outfit formerly known as the Tribune Company—a tale almost as convoluted as a TIF deal.

In 2014, the Tribune Company split into two parts: Tribune Media owns the TV stations,

WGN radio, and real estate holdings; Tribune Publishing owns the newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.

In May, Sinclair Broadcasting Group agreed to buy Tribune Media for $3.9 billion (the deal hinges on federal approval). Sinclair’s a proTrump operation that uses its 191 television stations to broadcast a message that’s a little to the right of, oh, Mussolini. I jest—sort of. The point is Sinclair is known for slipping “hardline political content between local weather, high school sports, and city council reporting,” as Mother Jones recently put it.

The mayor and governor are offering billions to get one of the world’s richest companies to move to the richest part of town. It’s like affirmative action for people who never needed it in the first place.

If the deal goes through, Sinclair would own the land in the River District. So when you think of all the crummy things that could come from Amazon taking Rahm and Rauner’s offer—such as billions being diverted from schools and police, property taxes rising, and the city becoming even more expensive—consider this: Your tax dollars may give Sinclair even more money to amplify its pro-Trump gospel. Just in time for the 2020 presidential election.

Wait, there’s more! My old boss, Michael Ferro—once the chairman of Wrapports, the previous owner of the Reader and SunTimes—has a controlling stake in Tribune Publishing, which he last year renamed Tronc.

Tronc has a long-term lease with Tribune Media to use the printing plant. So Sinclair or Tribune Media can’t sell to Bezos without making Ferro whole on that lease arrangement.

So, yes, folks, your tax dollars may wind up going to Bezos, Sinclair, and Ferro. As much as those lefties loved to bash Chicago 21, I don’t think old man Daley and his corporate pals ever envisioned things working out quite like this. v

v @joravben

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CITY LIFE TRANSPORTATION

The A.V. club

New guidelines seek to ensure autonomous vehicles do more good than harm for cities. What does this mean for Chicago?

By JOHN GREENFIELD Rendering of a city street with driverless vehicles from “Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism”

T

he National Association of City Transportation Officials held its annual conference in the Loop October 30 through November 2, drawing some 800 leaders, planners, and advocates. Workshop topics included “Designing streets for kids,” “Breaking barriers to cycling,” “Introducing empathy into the public process,” and “Bringing racial and social equity into transportation planning.”

During one of the breakout sessions, NACTO released its “Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism,” a guide to ensuring that self-driving vehicles do more good than harm. It’s a crucial issue, because experts say the future of cities such as Chicago will depend on leaders being proactive about regulating the technology, rather than letting automobile companies and tech entrepreneurs disrupt the current transportation system at will.

In an oft-cited 2014 CityLab article, Zipcar founder Robin Chase laid out the potential outcomes of the rise of autonomous vehicle technology. In the best-case scenario, self-driving cars, taxis, and buses will help make Chicago’s streets and regional transportation system safer, more efficient, and more equitable. We won’t have to worry about autonomous vehicles speeding, blowing reds, or failing to yield to pedestrians, as is often the case with human-driven automobiles.

Microtransit vehicles with a handful of seats, at various price points and luxury levels, will be an option for door-to-door trips, greatly reducing the demand for private cars and parking spaces. The el and Metra will still be popular ways to get around, but a greatly reduced need for curbside parking will make way for car-free lanes for driverless buses, shortening travel times and boosting rider-

ò NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CITY TRANSPORTATION

ship. There will also be more room for wider sidewalks and protected bike lanes, plus additional plazas and parks.

On the other hand, if market forces are given unfettered authority to shape the rollout of autonomous vehicles in Chicago, the city could wind up with a dystopian landscape straight out of a Blade Runner film. Since the owners of driverless cars won’t have to worry about finding or paying for parking at their destinations, those who previously commuted by rail or bus might not think twice about taking a private vehicle to their Loop offices or nightlife districts where on-street spaces can be hard to find. It will also be tempting to have unmanned vehicles circle the block while we shop. The result will be streets and highways that are even more clogged with cars, while transit ridership and revenue falls and service deteriorates for those who can’t afford the new technology. Moreover, if it’s possible to sleep or watch a movie while your autonomous vehicle carries you directly from your home to your workplace, a twohour-plus car commute might not seem so onerous, which could push suburban sprawl far beyond the Fox River.

“Blueprint for Autonomous Urbanism” outlines strategies to prevent the latter outcome.

“As cities guide the autonomous revolution, we want technology to solve our mobility challenges; not settle for more of the same,” NACTO president Seleta Reynolds said in a statement accompanying the document.

“This blueprint will help cities everywhere lay the foundation for 21st century streets designed to serve people first and foremost, no matter how they travel.”

The guide notes that safety should be the top priority when determining policies governing driverless vehicles, with self-driving

cars being programmed to yield to people on foot and bikes. It asserts that, contrary to what might be most convenient for car manufacturers, vulnerable road users shouldn’t be required to carry sensors or signals to avoid being struck. Speed limits, it says, should be set at 20 mph, 25 in limited circumstances, with lower speeds in dense central business districts and on residential streets.

NACTO states that fixed-route transit should continue to serve as the backbone of city transportation, while autonomous cars can provide first- and last-mile connections to get residents to and from stations. Instead of widening roads to make way for singleoccupancy autonomous vehicles, more room should be given to space-efficient modes such as driverless buses, streetcars, and trains.

The blueprint notes that cities will receive the greatest benefits from autonomous vehicle technology if they’re able to access data from the cars. This could allow them to collect tax revenue based on miles driven, which will become increasingly important as more vehicles run on electricity, and provide financial disincentives for single-occupant or zero-occupant robocar trips. The data could also be used to minimize the number of vehicles needed to move people and freight and maximize efficient routing.

As on-street parking becomes less necessary, NACTO recommends doing away with most curbs and making sidewalks flush with the street, separating pedestrian and vehicle lanes with bollards and color-coded pavement.

This would eliminate the need for wheelchair ramps at corners and give sidewalk users more options for crossing the street. CDOT recently piloted this strategy by turning Uptown’s “Asia on Argyle” commercial district into a mostly curbless “shared street.”

NACTO also recommends that cities get re ready for a future in which there’s much lowe lower demand for car parking by reducing or ab abolishing parking-space minimums for new co construction and requiring that garages be de designed so that they can easily be retrofitted fo for other uses such as housing. Chicago’s rece cently enacted transit-oriented development or ordinance, which waives the car-parking requ quirement for projects near transit stations, is a step in the right direction.

The main takeaway from the NACTO bluepr print is that municipalities such as Chicago ca can’t afford to be passive as the predicted auto tonomous vehicle revolution unfolds. Portland Bu Bureau of Traffic policy specialist Art Pearce hammered home that point during a November 2 panel discussion on driverless cars hosted by Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council. “The first key thing that every city should be doing is explicitly saying, ‘Here are the outcomes that we want to see happen and here are the ways that we think autonomous vehicles can fit into that future vision,’” he said. “The cities that are saying ‘We’re going to wait and see for the next ten years and then join the evolution’ are really going to suffer.”

CDOT spokesman Mike Claffey promises that Chicago won’t make that mistake. “As the NACTO report makes clear, [autonomous vehicle] technology is coming, and it has tremendous potential for improving safety and mobility,” he says. “NACTO has performed a service in laying out the issues that will have to be addressed to ensure that the technology helps us achieve the potential benefits.”

Active Transportation Alliance director Ron Burke echoes Pearce’s advice that the time to take action on regulating driverless cars is now. “Today, policies are largely missing, but we see some troubling ideas emerging such as proposed federal legislation that would restrict local governments’ control of their own streets, ostensibly to accommodate [autonomous vehicles],” he says.

“It will be important for Chicago to develop a comprehensive approach that moves us in the right direction, and for active transportation advocates to not cede the agenda solely to the mobility industry and academia.”

In other words, Washington politicians, Detroit automakers, and Silicon Valley tech companies shouldn’t be behind the wheel of our city’s driverless future. v

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

NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 11

CITY LIFE CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Outof hand A masturbation epidemic in Cook County court lockups raises questions about jail conditions, county budget, and defendants’ rights.

By MAYA DUKMASOVA

I

n an October 31 letter directed to felony trial attorneys, a supervisor in Cook County public defender Amy Campanelli’s office forbade staff from entering courtroom lockup areas at the criminal court building at 26th and California “until further notice.” The reason? Public defenders are being sexually harassed and even assaulted while visiting their clients in lockups. One of the most common forms of assault cited is male defendants masturbating in front of female public defenders.

“The Public Defender has been extremely concerned about the security of our personnel,” supervising attorney Marc Stahl wrote.

“Assistant Public Defenders have been spat on, grabbed, and even physically attacked by inmates. In addition, our female attorneys have been subjected to repeated acts of public indecency.” The public defender’s office pointed the finger at the sheriff’s office, saying the incidents have multiplied since deputies were removed from security duty in lockup areas.

Stahl’s letter shines a spotlight on the consequences of Cook County’s fiscal crisis,

12 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 9, 2017

ò AP PHOTO/CHARLES REX ARBOGAST

recently exacerbated by the repeal of the soda tax, and raises questions about the root cause of the apparent uptick of indecent behavior among defendants. Some criminal justice advocates are worried that the response from Campanelli’s office, while understandable, might jeopardize defendants’ constitutional rights. Others say the situation is a perfect example of the negative consequences of punitive pretrial detention policies.

Reached over the phone, Campanelli clarifies that “these incidents generally are not happening between a lawyer and that lawyer’s client. The incidents are happening when I’m speaking to my client and someone else in the lockup is exposing himself, touching himself.”

Such incidents weren’t unheard of in Campanelli’s decades of criminal defense experience within and outside the public defender’s office, but the frequency has dramatically increased, she says, since the Cook County sheriff’s office scaled back guard staffing in holding areas located outside of felony courtrooms.

Sheriff’s spokeswoman Cara Smith confirms her office has had to scale back the presence of

deputies in lockups over the last six weeks due to what she describes as untenable overtime costs of approximately $40,000 per week. “It’s not a normal assignment to have deputies in lockups,” she says. “We had some deputies assigned in those areas for a little while. Due to the county’s budget crisis we could not afford to have those additional posts.”

Smith says incidents of indecent exposure do happen in lockups, but that these behaviors are most typical of defendants in pretrial detention at the jail’s maximum security divisions. More than half of those defendants are clients of assistant public defenders from Campanelli’s office. According to Smith, Campanelli “unfairly places the blame for the behavior of their own clients at the feet of our office and takes no responsibility for all the other factors that contribute to this problem occurring.” She points to the extended length of pretrial incarceration caused, in part, by continuances filed by public defenders.

“Eighty-five percent of the people we transport to court every single day stand before the court for a matter of seconds before their case

is continued,” Smith says. “The public defender’s office should be moving their cases more quickly.” Smith also endorsed a punitive solution to the behavior, saying the sheriff’s office supported legislation last year that would’ve lowered the bar for felony charges related to repeated incidents of indecent exposure—legislation that Campanelli opposed.

Campanelli says she’d rather not push for harsher charges against people who might be her own clients in order to achieve safer working conditions for her staff. She balks at the accusation that her lawyers are contributing to the problem with court delays. “Most if not all continuances in a case are agreed upon between the prosecutor and public defender,” she says.

“Serious cases take a lot of work and they’re extremely complex. When a case comes to us we have to start from ground zero investigating.”

That puts her staff at a disadvantage compared to the state’s attorneys, whose investigative legwork is often done by police departments.

“No lawyer should ever go to trial or have a motion heard without being prepared. These clients’ lives are at stake,” she says. “And if I don’t have the money I need in my budget my work loads are gonna increase.” As a Reader investigation revealed last year, the causes for pretrial delays also frequently involve noshow cops and retaliatory tactics by judges.

Campanelli believes the best solution to the problem of public defenders being sexually harassed in lockup is a return to prior sheriff’s deputy staffing levels—something that seems to have deterred such behavior in the past.

She’d like to see defendants who already have indecent exposure charges brought to court in handcuffs so they’re unable to reoffend.

She’s also advising staff to request one-on-one meetings with a client before court hearings, away from the lockup areas, since these incidents rarely occur between a lawyer and her client in private settings. As much as a defendant’s constitutional rights to an attorney may be infringed upon if his lawyer can’t meet before a hearing, these same rights “are thwarted by someone else exposing themselves,” she says. “I’m not having a conversation with my client, if I’m having [to deal with] that. I’m not concentrating, they’re throwing me off.”

Smith says that in the last two weeks overtime-exempt male sheriff’s office staff such as supervisors and project managers have been assigned to watch over lockups. But Campanelli doesn’t feel that the problem has been adequately addressed. She plans to enlist the help of chief judge Timothy Evans to issue an order compelling the sheriff to provide more

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CITY LIFE “We dehumanize people when we put them into prisons and jails, we artificially isolate them from any legitimate sexual outlet, and it therefore causes people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do.”

—Alan Mills, civil rights attorney

regular staff. It’s unclear how that would solve the problem of the county not having enough money in the coffer to pay them.

Watching from the sidelines, legal advocates are pointing out that the real problem driving deviant behavior in lockups is pretrial incarceration itself and the consistent underfunding of the county’s criminal justice system at all levels. Some defendants engaging in inappropriate behavior could have been mentally impaired before they got locked up, experts say, but the experience of incarceration can drive even healthy people to lash out in all kinds of ways.

“I think the issue is intimately connected to the violence of incarceration,” says Sharlyn Grace, an attorney and policy analyst at the Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice who’s been at the forefront of the push to abolish money bail in Illinois. She adds that charging people with new crimes for indecent exposure in lockups, especially if they’re mentally impaired, is not only unlikely to deter the behavior but carries additional harmful ramifications. “We cannot look to just charging people with new crimes, especially crimes that are potentially going to punish them for life if they end up on the [sex offender] registry,” Grace says. “If our goal is to stop the behavior, this is not a solution.”

Grace agrees that case-processing times are a huge problem, but they don’t hinge on the public defenders alone. She thinks the more likely root cause of inmates’ inappropriate behavior is the conditions of incarceration.

“Sexuality is a human right and when we treat people poorly there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot going into indecent exposure, but I do think the conditions of jail are creating this problem,” she says. “It’s about the lack of control and lack of power people feel.” Though sheriff Tom Dart has ended the practices of strip

searches and solitary confinement in Cook County Jail (degrading experiences imposed by authorities that contribute to aggressive behavior by inmates), incarceration continues to expose inmates to violence, fear, intimidation, and a basic lack of loving human contact, as one 2015 study frames the problem.

Jason Lydon, founder of Black and Pink, a national organization focused on supporting LGBTQ and HIV-positive inmates and lead author of the prison survey “Coming Out of Concrete Closets” says that oftentimes behaviors like the ones described in the public defender’s letter are about “reclaiming power. It’s a form of humiliating someone else, making someone else uncomfortable by feeling powerful for oneself.” Lydon adds that the occurrence of these behaviors, while inexcusable, should prompt the public to consider how the structure and operations of jails and prisons may be prompting the incidents, rather than how the people who engage in such behaviors could be further punished or pathologized.

“We dehumanize people when we put them into prisons and jails, we artificially isolate them from any legitimate sexual outlet, and it therefore causes people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do,” says Alan Mills, a civil rights attorney who’s represented incarcerated Illinoisans in a variety of lawsuits.

Mills lays the blame for escalating incidents of inappropriate behavior partially on the lax implementation of the chief judge’s recent order not to set bail amounts that defendants can’t afford and partially on the budgetary constraints of the public defender’s office. If the jail population was adequately reduced, he says, the people deemed to be dangerous to public safety could receive more attention and programming from the sheriff’s office.

That could in turn reduce instances of aggressive and inappropriate behavior. If the public defender’s office was properly funded, he adds, lawyers would have more manageable caseloads and the time they need to build personal relationships with their clients that would deter disrespectful behavior and allow for more effective legal advocacy.

With cuts to the county budget looming, the situation is unlikely to get easier for either Dart’s or Campanelli’s staff. Or for the lowincome defendants of color who overwhelmingly make up the jail population.

“I think masturbation is a distraction,” Mills says. “It’s not the real problem—it’s just the symptom of the problem.” v

v @mdoukmas

POLICE REFORM

Are there

alternatives

to calling

A workshop prompts attendees to examine the cop within.

By MAYA DOUKMASOVA

I

911?

n this day and age, police violence—particularly against African-Americans, LGBTQ people, youth, people with mental illness, and undocumented immigrants—is impossible to ignore. As even those who have little personal experience with these tragedies become conscious of the frequency and pervasiveness of assaults and killings by law enforcement officers, some are starting to wonder: In an emergency, are there alternatives to calling the police?

On the evening of October 25, about 20 people (mostly white women and a couple of men) gathered at the Nightingale Cinema in Noble Square for a workshop that explored this question. Hosted by Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), the workshop was the group’s latest in a series of events devoted to exploring the history of policing and police abolition.

It’s part of a growing movement of grassroots organizations training people wary of police to do everything from cop watching to providing emergency first aid to gunshot victims.

The event prompted attendees to examine the notions of justice and punishment that shape their thinking about police and revealed the degree to which state services seem inextricably intertwined with law enforcement.

SURJ is a nationwide network whose history dates back to the early years of the Obama presidency, when its founders wanted to mobilize against the racist backlash they witnessed in the wake of the 2008 election. As incidents of racist violence and vandalism have

increased after Trump’s election, SURJ has grown and been emboldened; the October 25 workshop could accommodate only a couple dozen people, but more than 2,500 Facebook users had clicked “interested” on the event page. The group’s Chicago chapter supports local social and racial justice campaigns led by people of color such as #NoCopAcademy, and it frequently organizes other trainings aimed at educating white people about structural racism and state violence. Leaders of SURJ believe that teaching whites about oppressive social relations and institutions shouldn’t be the burden of organizers of color.

The workshop began, as all SURJ events do, with an explanation of the organization’s mission and the code of conduct known as the “brave space agreement”: participants verbally agree for the duration of the event to love and respect themselves and others, to be accountable for their own words and actions, and to struggle against “harmful systems” of thought and behavior such as racism, homophobia—and calling the police.

“The content here can really push us and our boundaries, and our understanding of safety, and therefore it can lead us to some difficult conversations,” Steph, one of the workshop leaders who didn’t want to be identified by her last name, told the group. “The idea of a brave space is we need to move beyond ideas of staying safe, because when we are safe we do not push ourselves to grow and change.

Oftentimes in ‘safe spaces’ . . . we confuse J

NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 13

CITY LIFE continued from 13

feelings of discomfort for feelings of being unsafe, and that can keep us from growing.”

Following this orientation, participants were asked to split into groups and contemplate a series of open-ended questions: What was our first memory or experience with police? What shaped our perspective of the police? What do we think is the purpose of the police department?

Some people emerged with recollections of grade school D.A.R.E. programs and parents advising them at a young age to talk to a police officer if lost. Others recalled never meeting a cop until they received a driver’s license and were pulled over. Most remembered being raised with notions of the police as relatively benevolent. As for the institution’s purpose, answers ranged from protecting children to protecting wealth and property.

Steph and cofacilitator Kim (who also didn’t want to share her full name) used the groups’ thoughts as a segue to discuss in broad strokes the history of policing, speaking of southern slave patrols and the use of metropolitan police forces in northern cities to suppress workers. They noted Chicago spends roughly $4 million per day on the police department and that the DOJ report laid bare CPD’s “culture that facilitates unreasonable force and corrodes community trust.”

They then asked participants to close their eyes and visualize answers to another series of questions: What does justice mean? Does justice always have to mean punishment? They instructed the attendees to think of a time in their personal lives when they might have caused harm to someone but then made it up to the person without punishment. Could this sort of justice be scaled? Once assembled again in the small groups, attendees discussed whether they’d ever called the police and why. If so, what was gained? Did the caller know the result for the other people involved in the situation?

Most people had either never called the police or called in situations such as automobile accidents when it seemed impossible not to dial 911. Others recalled phoning when they saw distressed motorists on the highway or heard what seemed like domestic violence in their neighbors’ homes. “I was socialized to call the police if there were three teenagers hanging out anywhere,” one woman volunteered.

The facilitators posed another question: Did you have second thoughts about dialing 911?

A few people responded that they felt that the cops weren’t all that helpful. A woman who was mugged said she never got her stuff back. A

14 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 9, 2017

ò BRIAN JACKSON/CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

man who’d been assaulted on the street didn’t feel like the cops changed anything about how badly he felt afterward. They’d called the police in the first place because it didn’t seem like there was anything else they could do in those moments of fear and vulnerability. No one who volunteered to share stories knew what happened to the other parties involved.

Having arrived at this stage, the workshop turned finally to the subject of options other than calling the cops. But as the conversation continued it became increasingly clear that access to alternatives is deeply structured by one’s privilege.

Kim and Steph asked attendees to think about the possible consequences of calling the police and what could be done instead if someone had a noise complaint or witnessed loitering, graffiti, a traffic accident, or reckless driving. Most seemed to agree that some of these situations simply may not need police intervention. People admitted that in some cases they feel tempted to involve the cops because they’re irritated with someone else’s annoying but essentially harmless behavior.

Perhaps we should just let the loitering and graffiti be and accept them as daily realities of living in a large city. One man in the audience was particularly keen on figuring out how to address loud teenagers who congregate outside his house and ignore his requests to keep it down. Other workshop attendees suggested he confer with neighbors to see if they’re bothered too; together they could figure out a response to the teens that reflected the sentiments of the wider community but didn’t engage law enforcement. Or he could just suck it up and deal with the noise.

But when it came to traffic accidents—for which insurance companies often require

police reports—or witnessing drunk or reckless driving, imagining alternatives became considerably more difficult. Kim and Steph presented a set of even more challenging situations: running across an incapacitated stranger, witnessing a mental health crisis or escalating violence. If calling the cops might get someone killed, are we supposed to stand by and let someone actually get killed? People puzzled over the potential implementation of neighborhood phone trees and exchanged information about mental health crisis resources. They talked about restorative justice organizations that seek to help victims of crime heal in a way that makes sense to them rather than indiscriminately punish the perpetrators.

“The idea of a brave space is we need to move beyond ideas of staying safe, because when we are safe we do not push ourselves to grow and change.

Oftentimes in ‘safe spaces’ we confuse feelings of discomfort for feelings of being unsafe, and that can keep us from growing.”

—Steph, a leader of the workshop Alternatives to Calling the Police

Increasingly people discussed the frustrations of having to think around the state to address problems the state is supposed to be there to handle. Rather than not calling for professional help when we witness some sort of crisis, can’t we just have an assurance that the help won’t arrive armed and dangerous?

And what do you do if there are no alternative services and agencies in your neighborhood? In an interview with the Reader last year, Pat Hill—a former police officer and head of the African-American Police League, who passed away in September—noted how Chicago’s black community came to rely on the police for all sorts of social services as black neighborhoods became increasingly impoverished in the 1970s and ’80s. With the disappearance of jobs and opportunities, and with them a neighborhood safety net of institutions, it seemed to Hill that people had no alternatives other than calling the cops. And the police, increasingly the only city institution left to serve poor neighborhoods, have never been adequately trained to answer the social service calls they’re increasingly tasked with. Instead, as the DOJ notes in its investigation and reporters have steadily documented for decades, CPD is plagued by a culture that allows officers to consider themselves at war with the community rather than existing to protect and serve.

“We have to recognize that there are times when you are going to have to call the police,” Kim said. “That doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person.”

Some incidents of police violence could be prevented if people reconsidered the kneejerk response of dialing 911 whenever they feel uncomfortable. But that wouldn’t save victims like Philando Castile or Walter Scott or Eric Garner or Tamir Rice, who were simply going about their lives when they encountered deadly state violence. And Quintonio LeGrier was calling 911 during a mental health emergency.

Instead of trained medical professionals, a couple of cops showed up at his door, shot him and neighbor Bettie Jones first, and asked questions later.

Having prompted people to think critically about the cop within themselves, SURJ’s future workshops will educate attendees about how to transform the cops patrolling their communities. The group’s next event will focus on the Chicago police union’s contract as a barrier to CPD reform, and what could be done to change it. v

v @mdoukmas

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ARTS & CULTURE

Andy Dick ò FRAZER HARRISON

COMEDY & MOVIES

Chicago Comedy Film Festival pulls Dick

By DEANNA ISAACS

L

ast week, in the midst of news that wheelchair-bound nonagenarian George H.W. Bush pats women on the rear and tells dirty jokes and that Brandeis University is canceling a play about Lenny Bruce because it’s offensive, came the announcement that the Chicago Comedy Film Festival has pulled its November 11 showing of a documentary about comedian Andy Dick.

This is a guy widely known to have built a three-decade show business career on outrageously living up to his name, which, as he points out in the very funny film in question, happens to be A. Dick.

On November 2, two days after published reports that Dick had been fired from a small role in an upcoming film for sexual harassment and misconduct on the set, CCFF artistic director Jessica Hardy issued a statement that the documentary Everybody Has an Andy Dick Story had been dropped from the festival, which runs this weekend. Hardy says this is the first time in CCFF’s seven-year history that it’s pulled a film for content.

The accusations against Dick—a former Chicagoan who during the 1980s studied at the University of Illinois, Columbia College, and Second City—included making inappropriate and offensive remarks, propositioning people on the set, kissing and licking them, and groping them, all of which occurred while he appeared to be intoxicated. It was subsequently reported that he’d been fired from another film a few weeks earlier.

Dick has denied the groping charge, but none of the many people interviewed in the documentary would be surprised by any of it; like the millions who’ve watched this pansexual free spirit with an admitted sobriety problem on television, film, and the Internet, they’ve been mostly laughing at it for years.

As Kevin Farley puts it in Everybody Has an Andy Dick Story, “Pulling your pants down is still funny, Andy knows that.” On Dick’s purported rap sheet, read by him in a clip in the film, “public urination” is followed by “creating a disturbance at a Marie Callender’s.”

Hardy told me last week that the documentary had been accepted in August and that CCFF got a few e-mails about Dick’s sexual misconduct in public settings as soon as it was announced. “We decided to keep it, because we didn’t have any firsthand experience,” she said, but after the recent news broke, “we really got pushback, and then we felt it was important for us to say, ‘We don’t think sexual harassment is funny.’ Until this is investigated and cleared, we don’t want to be a part of it.

“We’ve been talking about this kind of thing in the industry for a long time; at some point we have to draw a line. Our first priority is to have a safe environment where men and women can attend and not feel uncomfortable.”

The film’s director, Cathy Carlson, has known Dick since they met in an improv class at the U. of I. in the early 1980s. She reconnected with him years later in Los Angeles, where, like numerous other people, she wound up living for a time in his house. “He lived upstairs with his son and ex-wife, and I lived downstairs with his girlfriend, who had a baby on the way, and their two-year-old son. I know it sounds crazy, but it was a shockingly functional household.” More recently, Dick’s been living in a shed.

Carlson worked on the movie, which she calls a new style of documentary (because it includes the reaction of the subject to the film), for seven years, interviewing legions of smitten friends, including Ben Stiller, Kathy Griffin, Margaret Cho, Sherri Shepherd, and Dr. Drew Pinsky, without Dick’s knowledge.

“Then I surprised him with it in a screening room and put his reactions in the film.”

CCFF “absolutely loved this movie,” she says. “They asked if it could be the Chicago premiere.” Until last week. Then, “I got an e-mail from them saying we pulled your film.

They were worried about people feeling safe.

I called them and said, ‘Hey, I can understand that you might not want Andy there [he was scheduled to appear], but I doubt if my film’s going to sexually assault anybody.

“There are plenty of people in my movie who say he did inappropriate things to them and

they thought it was funny,” Carlson adds. “He is a mad genius, provocateur, class clown—a brilliant comedic artist. Sometimes that goes the wrong way. This is a full depiction of who this guy is, good or bad. And it’s America, so I can find another venue.”

And she did. Everybody Has an Andy Dick Story will screen at Liar’s Club on the same date, November 11. Dick will be there, and will also perform at Zanies the next night. v CHICAGO COMEDY FILM FESTIVAL Thu 11/9-Sat

11/11, various times and venues, 312-344-3829, chicagocomedyfilmfestival.com. Visit website for ticket prices and availability.

EVERYBODY HAS AN ANDY DICK STORY Directed by Cathy Carlson. 73 min. Sat 11/11, 8:30 PM, Liar's Club, 1665 W. Fullerton, 773-665-1110. F ANDY DICK Sun 11/12, 6 PM, Zanies, 1548 N. Wells, 312-337-4027, zanies.com/chicago. $25 plus two-drink/food minimum.

v @DeannaIsaacs

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NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 15

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with Brittany Burch, Cliff Chamberlain, Danny McCarthy, Penny Slusher and Jeff Still

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ARTS & CULTURE

F

Taylor Blim, John Henry Roberts, and Casey Morris ò MICHAEL BROSILOW

THEATER

Best not come to Jesus

By TONY ADLER

I

f you want a sense of what Janine Nabers’s Welcome to Jesus aspires to be—its ideal Platonic form—take a look at the Jordan Peele movie Get Out. The two productions have an awful lot in common—except that, where Get Out is a nasty-great piece of satire, there’s not much reason to come to Jesus, running now at American Theater Company.

Both Get Out and Jesus are the work of African-American artists interested in the weird doubleness of white racist attitudes toward black people—a profound, often murderous contempt coupled with a superstitious awe of their presumed physical or spiritual gifts.

(It’s apparently part of the pathology. Jews get similar treatment from anti-Semites: we’re vermin to them, but smart vermin.)

Both shows, also, deploy horror-genre tropes to expose and ridicule those attitudes.

In Get Out, black photographer Chris Washington accompanies his rich white girlfriend, Rose Armitage, home to meet her family, only to find that the highly accomplished Armitages maintain a secret side trade in immortality, transferring the brains of dying friends and relatives into the healthy young bodies of Rose’s uniformly black lovers. Chris, of course, is in line to be the next body donor.

Jesus takes a different—though, really, not

that different—tack. Its white folks are rural Texans deeply immersed in the culture of football and fundamentalism (what Nabers, in her script and elsewhere, calls “Christian Supremacy”). No one in the small town of Hallelujah, Texas, is more saturated with said culture than Sheriff Paul Danver Sr. and his family. In fact, the younger of his two sons, Paul Jr., was a star quarterback until his recent death in a road accident. Now the Danvers are trying to weather not only the loss of their boy but the probable surrender of the state championship he was sure to bring them. Not to mention a third trauma: the Danver’s surviving son—a can’t-walkand-chew-gum would-be deputy sheriff all too aptly nicknamed Skip—was driving the pickup in which Junior was killed.

Out of the woods and into this misery walks Him (yes, that’s as much of a name as he gets), a mysterious black teen who, it happens, can throw a football hard, far, and accurately. Somehow all known league participation rules get waived, along with anything resembling official procedures they may have in Texas regarding the sudden appearance of nameless minors, and Him becomes the new Paul Jr. Him shows up at just about exactly the halfway mark in Welcome to Jesus, and

the scene in which he’s introduced neatly summarizes the fear/awe paradox of white racism: Surprised by Him in a dark clearing, Skip reacts hysterically at first, believing the hoodied figure is a “spook”—the double entendre very much in play. Yet as soon as Skip sees what the figure can do with a pigskin (never mind how), he stops cringing and turns positively reverential. Makes you wonder how George Zimmerman might’ve reacted if Trayvon Martin had only had the foresight to carry some sports equipment with him on February 28, 2012.

The entire play up to that point is an extended illustration of the dysfunction cum depravity wrought by what Nabers hopes we’ll see as the benighted ways of the citizens of Hallelujah. Ma Danver, dead Junior’s mom, has retreated into Jesus and hallucination. His teen sister, Dixie, attributes her baton-twirling slump to God’s punishment.

Sheriff Paul dismembers dead spooks when he isn’t berating Skip, whose comic incompetence knows no bounds. Even the local football coach has an episode of something resembling voodoo zombification. All of which leads to the prime reasons for Jesus’s failure: While Get Out gives us Chris Washington to identify with and lets us be charmed by the Armitages until their true, um, colors come out, Nabers treats all her white characters as symbols and her lone black one as a cypher, a trigger. Peele has a narrative with a point; Nabers has nothing but a point. Add to that lots of loose ends, opaque passages, and a Shirley Jacksonesque ending that even Shirley Jackson would find heavy-handed and you’ve got a very nearly insufferable evening in the theater.

Director Will Davis has done exciting work since taking over as artistic director at American Theater Company last year, including a beautifully stylized reimagining of William Inge’s Picnic. But here stylization only adds to the overall murk—literally as well as figuratively, insofar as a great deal of Jesus takes place in the dark. There’s some fun and a little horror in the play, but far from enough of either. v WELCOME TO JESUS Through 12/3: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron, 773-4094125, atcweb.org, $38.

v @taadler

Greg Hess, Mark Raterman, and Brendan Jennings ò COURTESY COOK COUNTY SOCIAL CLUB

COMEDY

County lines

ON THE FIRST-FLOOR stage of iO Theater eight years ago, the members of Cook County Social Club started performing scenes about fellatio. Why? It’s unclear. Cook County Social Club moves at lightning speed—troupe member Brendan Jennings got on his knees without hesitation, ready to perform stage fellatio on Mark Raterman, as per the scene’s needs, and Raterman immediately turned around and dropped trou.

Cook County Social Club consists of Jennings, Raterman, Bill Cochran, Greg Hess, and Tim Robinson (who was a cast member on Saturday Night Live for one season). But really it’s a shameless, fast-paced hive mind. Make no mistake: When Jennings says the word “fellatio” onstage he knows Raterman is going to take off his pants, not just mime it. And he knows he’ll have two seconds to prepare.

The group’s members come across as best friends. New jokes or scene concepts register as playful one-upmanship, trying to take someone else’s idea all the way to its absurd conclusion. Mundane details are never ignored, and often become through lines for an entire show. The crew don’t care who had the idea, so long as they can fuck with it.

Cook County Social Club performed every Tuesday night at iO’s old Wrigleyville location, where the Cook cult was strong. Shows routinely sold out, and the Reader awarded the quintet “Best improv group” in 2010. They even started offering improv classes independent of any one theater. Now, for a single evening, the new iO Theater hosts a Cook County Social Club reunion. Expect tickets, and the show, to go fast. —STEVE HEISLER R COOK COUNTY SOCIAL CLUB Fri 11/12, 8 and 10:30 PM, iO Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com, $20.

v @steveheisler NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 17

A “WARMHEARTED ROMANTIC COMEDY”

ARTS & CULTURE Alicia Ohs, Brandon Washington, Paul Singh, Laurel Snyder, and Sean Donovan ò JULIETA

–Chicago Tribune

CERVANTES

(OUT OF 5)

–Around the Town Chicago

“A BEAUTIFUL PLAY THAT NEEDS TO BE SEEN” –Chicago OnStage

DANCE

Footloose and fancy-free

By TAL ROSENBERG

S

YASMINA’S NECKLACE

BY ROHINA

MALIK

DIRECTED BY ANN

FILMER

Newly arrived in Chicago from her homeland, Iraqi artist Yasmina has hardened herself against the possibility of finding happiness. But when she meets Sam, a man with his own emotional setbacks, what had seemed unthinkable becomes tantalizingly real.

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18 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 9, 2017

THE POWER OF THEATER

ome people dance to the beat of a different drum, but choreographer and director Faye Driscoll beats the drum of a different dance. At first, her performances seem spasmodic or juvenile; the cast behave like kids in a kindergarten class after they’ve chased Pop Rocks with Pepsi. But Driscoll often addresses adult subject matter—most prominently, sex—and her pieces are so obviously structured that it’s impossible to accuse them of being thrown together. Her work is kind of like Merce Cunningham’s, albeit filtered through Saturday-morning cartoons.

Thank You for Coming: Play, originally created in 2016, is the second part of a proposed trilogy in which Driscoll, according to her website, “extends the sphere of influence of performance to create a communal space where the co-emergent social moment is questioned, heightened, and palpable,” a long-winded and jargon-heavy way of saying that the audience participates in the show.

When Driscoll brought the first installment of the series, Thank You for Coming: Attendance, to the MCA in early 2016, those who attended were instructed to sit on the floor, and some even took part in the event, whether as assistants or through contact with the performers.

Audience members were asked if they minded being part of the show, a gesture that might seem polite and tender but was really a sly commentary on the often awkward protocols of everyday social interaction. The dancers

indicated as much in some of the choreography, which involved over-the-top greetings followed by equally embellished demonstrations of disgust, an exaggeration of how most people act kindly when they first encounter someone they know, yet immediately talk unfavorably about that person behind their back.

In other words, contemporary dance is an approximation of the phoniness of modern-day social behavior.

Thank You for Coming: Play ran late last year at BAM Fisher in Brooklyn, and a New York Times review advised that audiences should once again expect to be included in the performance. Yet whereas Attendance was focused on social politics, Play looks to be more pointedly political. Misogyny and white supremacy are explicitly mentioned; a president-elect’s name is alluded to, though never stated. Driscoll takes care to prevent publicists or critics from spoiling too much— the unexpected nature of the show is part of the thrill—but the Times review also revealed that children’s games figure heavily. The takeaway is that you can expect to have fun. For anyone who assumes that dance is stuffy or overly formal, Driscoll’s work is a welcome flip of the bird. v THANK YOU FOR COMING: PLAY 11/9-11/12: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660, mcachicago.org, $30, $10 students.

v @talrosenberg

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ARTS & CULTURE

Vladimir Stenberg and Georgii Stenberg, The Mirror of Soviet Society, cover for Red Field magazine, 1928; Valentina Kulagina, International Working Women’s Day Is the Fighting Day of the Proletariat, 1931 ò COURTESY ART INSTITUTE CHICAGO; SMART MUSEUM OF ART/THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

VISUAL ART

The revolution should not be lionized

By DMITRY SAMAROV

O

ne hundred years after the 1917 Soviet revolution in Russia, two baffling museum exhibitions attempt to recast one of the bloodiest regimes in human history in a positive light.

“Revolution Every Day” at the Smart Museum and “Revolutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test” at the Art Institute take different approaches to their subject, but neither pays much more than lip service to the millions of victims of the historical period these shows celebrate.

“Revolution Every Day,” according to the introductory text in its brochure, “undermines our readymade responses to the Russian Revolution and makes it possible for Western audiences to experience Soviet visual art anew.”

The show consists of Soviet propaganda posters, film clips, and photos from the 1920s and ’30s—many made by female artists—and attempts to relate all the material to more contemporary art, such as Olga Chernysheva’s

videos of post-USSR parades and portraits by exhibit cocurator Zachary Cahill.

Wandering through the galleries I saw familiar Soviet slogans exhorting the proletariat to pull together toward a bright future but little acknowledgement of the grim reality of life in Russia during the early- to mid-20th century. In a blog entry on the exhibit’s site, Cahill seems to defend those who overthrew the Czarist regime, then circuitously ties that time period to our present political moment.

I’m horrified by the current state of American life, but looking to Lenin and company for a way forward is dangerous and foolish. By even the most generous accounts, the father of the Soviet Revolution was a ruthless dictator who crushed anyone who dared oppose him, be they the old-guard Whites—who wanted to restore the monarchy—or the Mensheviks, competing socialists who championed alternate approaches of governing to Lenin’s Bolsheviks.

“Revolutsiia! Demonstratsiia!” doesn’t try to associate the early days of the Soviet era with the present, but instead attempts to exhibit the arts and crafts of that time on their own terms. It’s a sprawling show spread across several interconnected galleries.

Each room addresses an aspect of Soviet life, such as home, school, and work. There are re-creations of a period exhibition space, a workers’ clubhouse, and numerous examples of artists’ designs for everyday objects, from chess pieces to dishware to furniture.

Exhibit organizers Devin Fore and Matthew Witkovsky quote Walter Benjamin in their introduction to the exhibit catalogue, saying that the Soviet Revolution was “one of the most grandiose mass-psychological experiments ever undertaken in the gigantic laboratory that Russia has become.” But almost nowhere throughout this encyclopedic ode to the era is there acknowledgement of the many victims of that experiment. The curators’ aim

is stated thus: “Permitted to inhabit its own artifactual temporality, the artwork drifts out of phase with the historical parameter of political exigency and enables alternative accounts of Soviet culture on this centenary occasion and into the future.” The trouble is that no amount of theorizing can wash away the blood of the millions murdered by that “culture.”

By conservative estimates, the Red Terror that took place between 1918 and 1920, which Lenin initiated to squelch opposition, accounted for 100,000 deaths; that doesn’t include casualties of the concurrent civil war. The Bolsheviks fought a sociological and cultural battle as well—the “New Man” the Soviets sought to create would soon enough turn on artists who thrived during the first decade of the USSR. But the Art Institute doesn’t stray too far into the 30s, when Stalin extinguished most attempts at individual expression.

In the catalog forward, Art Institute president James Rondeau describes “Revolutsiia!

Demonstratsiia!” as “panoptic,” which immediately made me think of 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon prison.

Bentham described it as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example” and as “a mill for grinding rogues honest.” Those are much more accurate descriptions of the Soviet enterprise than anything one will find in the halls of the Smart Museum or the Art Institute at present.

On my way out of “Revolutsiia!” I looked into a vitrine filled with children’s drawings.

I was momentarily charmed, until I read the explanatory text identifying the doodles as belonging to Stalin’s daughter. In a little girl’s scrawl she commands her father to spend more time with her, using the cold and bureaucratic language of the Bolsheviks, an impersonal style you might find in legal documents, in which requirements are made to one party.

This was the New Man being created in Russia—unbending, authoritarian, savage, and certainly nothing to be inspired by, no matter how dark our own times have become. v “REVOLUTION EVERY DAY” Through 1/14/18.

Tue-Sun 10 AM-5 PM (Thu till 8 PM), Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood, 773-702-0200, smartmuseum.uchicago.edu. F “REVOLUTSIIA! DEMONSTRATSIIA! SOVIET ART PUT TO THE TEST” Through 1/15/2018. Sun– Wed and Fri-Sat 10:30 AM–5 PM, Thu 10:30 AM–8 PM, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, 312443-3600, aic.edu. $25, $19 students, seniors ($5 discount for Chicago residents), free kids under 14; free for Illinois residents Thursdays 5-8 PM.

NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 19

Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

ARTS & CULTURE Rage

MOVIES

MOVIES

Managing the news

By BEN SACHS

R

age, a new thriller playing at this year’s Polish Film Festival in America, feels like a throwback to the cinema of moral anxiety, a movement of the late 1970s and early ’80s that used interpersonal stories to examine social codes and political forces inside Communist Poland. The film centers on an amoral journalist for an ultraconservative cable news network who suffers an attack of conscience over various personal and professional concerns, and Michał Węgrzyn, directing a script he wrote with Marcin Roykiewicz, shows how the journalist’s treatment of people at home and at work mirrors his engagement with the public. He and his coworkers are cynical, greedy, and contemptuous of their viewers; the protagonist is also a philanderer and a liar, and he’s mean to his mother. His behavior represents an internalization of his employer’s worldview.

The movie’s social outlook may recall such moral anxiety classics as Krzysztof Zanussi’s Camouflage (1977) and Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Camera Buff (1979), yet Rage feels like a Hollywood action movie in its fast pace and consistent suspense. Węgrzyn and Roykiewicz devote little time to introducing the protagonist, Adam (Jakub Świderski), before putting him into an intense situation. On work nights, Adam leaves his wife and kids to work out at the gym, where he hooks up with his mistress.

His wife, Edyta (Paulina Chapko), learns of his infidelity and calls Adam to confront him ssss EXCELLENT

sss GOOD

as he’s leaving the gym to run home. In a rage, she threatens to murder their children if he doesn’t get his mistress to apologize to her within the hour. Adam resolves to run home—a distance of 12 kilometers—before the situation gets any worse. Between frantic calls to his wife and mistress, he also contends with a breaking story at work, a news source demanding a payment, and sobbing confessions from his mother.

Węgrzyn deftly juggles the various forces in Adam’s life while maintaining a strong sense of forward motion. He also makes impressive use of Warsaw’s streets and expressways, conjuring up a dark and dangerous environment as a physical analogue to Adam’s anxiety. Given the suspenseful premise, you can’t help but sympathize with Adam—you want to know whether he’ll resolve his various crises, learn from the experience, and change his ways. In learning to be honest with his wife, will he also stop deceiving the nation with biased reporting? Rage makes this question feel like a matter of life and death, cannily employing a race-against-time narrative to convey the urgency of Adam’s moral reckoning. v RAGE sss Directed by Michał Węgrzyn. 83 min. Fri 11/10, 8:45 PM, Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton, and Sun 11/19, 3 PM, Society for Arts, 1112 N. Milwaukee, 773-486-9612, pffamerica.com, $16.

v @1bsachs

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s POOR

Try these eyes on for size

By J.R. JONES

I

n a sense, all animation is experimental, because an artist can’t really see how his images will move until he throws them up onto a screen. But don’t tell that to the filmmakers featured in the traveling Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, who’ve rejected the corporate world of commercials and children’s entertainment to pursue their own visions. Based in Los Angeles, the festival favors “works made by individual artists, drawing on the lineage of avant -garde cinema as well as the tradition of classic character animation and cartooning,” with two free programs on Saturday at Block Museum of Art. The programs include dazzling abstract works that exploit the tension between geometry and the variegated forms of the natural world. In Johan Rijpma’s black-andwhite Extrapolate (program one), an artist’s

hand draws a diagonal line across a grid and slides off the page into space, the hand and pen breaking up into their constituent parts, until this image is crumpled up by another pair of hands; wads of paper explode and recombine, dotted lines tracing their movement. The conflict between uniformity and individuality is even more pronounced in Robert Darroll’s psychedelic Feng-Huang (1988, program one), its severe grids, mandalas, and polka-dot patterns disrupted by floating silhouettes of ducks and fish and by ragged, undulating forms.

The programmers always toss a few classics into the mix, and the two oldest entries this year prove that the friction between pattern and chaos is nothing new. Filmstudie (1926, one), by the German dadaist Hans Richter, considers a variety of geometrical forms but opens and closes most powerfully

Filmstudie •

WORTHLESS

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ARTS & CULTURE 78/52

In the Eyeworks Festival of Experimental Animation, dazzling abstract works exploit the tension between geometry and the variegated forms of the natural world.

MOVIES

The director’s cuts

By LEAH PICKETT with a lazy dance of circles and spheres that range from the colliding white and black disks of a solar eclipse to a sea of gently rolling eyeballs. A Game With Stones (1965, one), by the Czech surrealist Jan Švankmajer, begins with images of a wind-up clock, its steady ticktock dominating the soundtrack, before a turned water faucet disgorges a flood of uniquely shaped white and black pebbles, which are herded into grid-shaped patterns before bursting out of their captivity.

Of the narrative shorts, the two most striking explore female sexual need and are frank to the point of crudity. In Ruth Lingford’s What She Wants (1994, one) a lonely middle-aged woman wanders through cold city streets, the mouth of her purse turning into a bright red vulva; as she rides the subway, sexual images corrode into scenes of atrocity (a woman fellating a penis morphs into Goya’s image of Saturn devouring his young). And Barbara Hammer’s witty No No Nooky T.V. (1987, program two) turns a carefully planned lesbian seduction into a primitive video game. The title suggests what all the festival contributors have no doubt learned: if you want art that really speaks to you, you may have to create it yourself. v EYEWORKS FESTIVAL OF EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION Sat 11/11, 1 PM (program one) and 3:30 PM (program two), Northwestern Univ. Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston, 847-491-4000, blockmuseum.northwestern.edu. F

v @JR_Jones

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8/52, which dissects and decodes the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), has received mostly glowing reviews from critics—which makes sense, given that it both validates cineastes’ obsessions and constitutes a fine piece of film criticism itself. Named for the 78 camera setups and 52 splices that Hitchcock employed for a sequence running about three minutes, the documentary feels like an Intro to Cinema Studies class taught by an engaging professor, both wonky and accessible.

Shooting in black and white, with the interview subjects superimposed over spooky images of the Bates Motel, director Alexandre O. Philippe (The People vs. George Lucas) interviews 39 directors, authors, editors, actors, and other interested parties about the iconic scene (including Hitchcock’s granddaughter, Tere Carruba; Anthony Perkins’s grandson, Osgood Perkins; and Janet Leigh’s daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis). Philippe also culls audio from François Truffaut’s 1962 interview with Hitchcock and visuals from an array of sources: Hitchcock’s films and TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the German expressionist films that inspired Hitchcock, and the raft of movies influenced by Psycho’s taboo-breaking merger of sex, voyeurism, and violence.

The result is a semester or two’s worth of film theory packed into an hour and a half of expertly paired imagery and insights. However, like the praise heaped on this easily digested documentary, the interviewees’ adulation for Psycho and its most famous scene borders on hyperbole. No one dares to dispute the

film’s greatness and impact, and only one lobs a complaint: the killer’s head, bewigged and shadowed during the slashing, looks too much like a mushroom.

Nevertheless, Philippe’s geekiness is infectious. His passion for film shines through most when he invites some of his interviewees—like horror nerd Elijah Wood and his friends—to watch the film on camera and comment on its foreshadowing and subtle motifs. Even those who’ve viewed and analyzed Psycho ad nauseam are likely to learn something new here, be it the symbolism of the painting Norman Bates removes from a wall to spy on Marion Crane

through a hidden peephole or the fact that Hitchcock’s Foley artists chopped up several varieties of melon to find the proper sound for a knife ripping through flesh (they ultimately settled on casaba).

As many have observed, the prolonged, bloody murder of Psycho’s ostensible protagonist, Marion—likable, repentant, and, most egregiously, nude—marked a turning point for the horror genre, for filmmaking, and for the American psyche at the uneasy dawn of a new decade. But like any good professor, Philippe encourages a multiplicity of interpretations.

Deconstructing the scene, South African filmmaker Richard Stanley focuses on its spiritual element—how Marion’s blood swirling down the drain represents “the pointless spiraling of the universe” to which we will all succumb.

Director Karyn Kusama (Girlfight) describes the scene as “the first modern expression of the female body under assault.” Peter Bogdanovich, disturbed as much by the film’s voyeurism as by its violence, recalls stumbling out onto the bright street after watching Psycho in 1960: “I felt like I’d been raped.” With commentary such as this, Philippe proves that one of the most scrutinized films of all time still possesses that rare ability to surprise. v 78/52 sss Directed by Alexandre O. Philippe. 91 min. Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6604, musicboxtheatre.com, $11.

v @leahkpickett 164 North State Street

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A still from It Must Make Peace, a documentary on traditional Malian music

The Chicago International Movies & Music Festival makes its November debut with feature films about David Bowie, queer punk, New Orleans piano, gospel quartets, Ozzfest, Malian traditional music, and lots more.

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he annual Chicago International Movies & Music Festival has moved from April to November for its ninth iteration—though this week’s big event shares a calendar year with an abbreviated April program called “CIMMFest Spring Fling Thing.” CIMMFest proper opens Thursday, November 9, and closes Sunday, November 12, and in those four days will screen almost three dozen feature films (plus a generous selection of music videos and shorts), including a wide-ranging retrospective devoted to director Penelope Spheeris. She’ll appear Saturday morning at Gideon Welles as part of the festival’s CIMMcon convention, whose panels include filmmakers, musicians, and critics; she’ll also participate in a Q&A that afternoon at the Davis Theater after a screening of We Sold Our Souls for Rock ’n’ Roll. CIMMfest also includes live music, of course, though at press time little of that lineup had been settled.

My Reader colleagues and I have reviewed 13 movies we either thought sounded interesting or already knew were worthwhile. You won’t see anything about 2350 Last Call: The Neo Story (a documentary about the beloved alternative dance club, which premieres Sunday at GMan Tavern) or David Bowie: The Last Five Years (which screens Sunday at Comfort Station), but that’s only because we couldn’t watch either in advance. Unless otherwise noted, screenings are at the Davis Theater, 4614 N. Lincoln. Further details, including information about festival passes, can be found at cimmfest.org. —LEOR GALIL J

NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 23

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Horn From the Heart: The Paul Butterfield Story

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CASSETTE: A DOCUMENTARY MIXTAPE The compact cassette played a key role in the 1979 Iranian revolution, but you wouldn’t know that from watching Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape. Zack Taylor and Georg Petzold’s meandering tribute leaves out many such important facts, largely dispensing with historical context (it doesn’t even mention tape trading in the early metal scene) in favor of poetic reminiscences about the outmoded format and artful shots of cassette hardware and innards. Cassette basically rehashes every 2010s think piece on the resurgence of tapes, and most of the musicians who appear are white men—the film’s brief interludes about hip-hop aren’t enough to address the bias. If you’re familiar with this kind of retro-obsessed music documentary, you’re likely tired of hearing from, say, Henry Rollins; if you don’t already know why Taylor and Petzold think you should find Rollins’s opinion worthwhile, though, good luck figuring it out, because they don’t bother explaining. The highlight is Dutch engineer Lou Ottens, now 91, who invented the compact cassette; the directors give him the space to show us his everyday life instead of simply having him repeat platitudes about his work. In English and subtitled Dutch. —LEOR GALIL 92 minutes. Sat 11/11, 12 PM, $12, $10 in advance. Screening with the short documentary Bill’s Records.

The Decline of Western Civilization Part III

THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION Eugene, the bitter little skinhead whose interview opens this still potent 1981 documentary about Los Angeles punk rock, declares that he likes the music because “there’s no rock stars.” Director Penelope Spheeris doesn’t seem to agree—she shoots the fan interviews in black and white, while the bands and music people (including Slash Records founder Robert Biggs) comment and perform in color. LA punk lacked the politics of its British and the brains of its New York predecessors, and its proximity to the epicenter of celebrity culture fueled a violent strain of Carter-era nihilism. The live sets by X, Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, the Germs, and Fear, recorded between December 1979 and May 1980, still thunder after all these years; unfortunately so do the scene’s racism, queer baiting, and utter despair. —J.R. JONES 100 min. Thu 11/9, 7:15 PM, $12, $10 in advance. Screening with the Penelope Spheeris short Synthesis.

THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION PART II: THE METAL YEARS This 1988 sequel to the classic 1981 LA punk documentary focuses on the kind of extravagance that the kids in the first film were rebelling against, at least insofar as it manifested itself in stadium-ready rock ’n’ roll and its brand-new baby brother, hair metal. In between the unforgettably ridiculous interviews—Ozzy discussing the mundanity of sobriety while cooking breakfast, Steven Tyler bragging about putting millions of dollars up his nose, Chris Holmes of W.A.S.P. chugging messily from a bottle of vodka in his pool while his mom looks on—we get to meet the fans and scene regulars, who cake on makeup, tease their hair into towering styles, and quit their

jobs because they’re so sure their dreams of rock stardom will come true. —LUCA CIMARUSTI 93 min. Thu 11/9, 9:30 PM, $12, $10 in advance. Screening with the unfinished Penelope Spheeris short Shit.

THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION PART III The third installment of Penelope Spheeris’s documentary series on subversive musical movements, released in 1998, is by far the darkest—it looks into the lives of nihilistic Los Angeles gutter punks in the 90s. They’re Spheeris’s most tragic subjects: misunderstood, rejected by society, and often fleeing from abuse, the punks in this chapter of Decline can’t stand living in the world but have at least managed to find one another. For these kids, surviving on the street usually involves self-medicating with drugs and alcohol—and many of them seem to realize that they won’t make it to 30 this way.

The bands Spheeris films appear to lead equally bleak existences, but they use their musical platforms to preach openmindedness and acceptance. —LUCA CIMARUSTI 86 min. Fri 11/10, 7:30 PM, $12, $10 in advance. Screening with the Penelope Spheeris short The National Rehabilitation Center.

HORN FROM THE HEART: THE PAUL BUTTERFIELD STORY

A native of Hyde Park, Paul Butterfield graduated from the University of Chicago Lab School in the late 50s but got his musical education at blues clubs on the south and west sides, where as a white teen he had the nerve to jam on harmonica with the likes of Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. Poaching two of Wolf’s sidemen, Butterfield formed his own interracial group in the mid-60s, just as electrified blues was feeding into the rock revolution, and the Butterfield Blues Band cut six albums for Elektra before splitting up in 1971. Documentary maker John Anderson divides Butterfield’s life into three chapters, tracking his apprenticeship in the first and his rock stardom in the second; the third recounts a painfully familiar slide into obscurity, addiction, and death (from an accidental overdose, in 1987). Butterfield comes off as a white, middle-class musician who mastered all the licks but couldn’t persuade himself he was a real bluesman until he’d made himself miserable. —J.R. JONES 96 min. Sun 11/12, 7:30 PM, $12, $10 in advance. Includes a Q&A with director John Anderson, producer Sandra Warren, and special guests.

J

NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 25

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Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution

Scream for Me Sarajevo

Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape

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HOW THEY GOT OVER This lively, no-frills 2017 documentary explores the evolution of black gospel quartet music and its contributions to the emergence of rock ’n’ roll, starting with the ensembleoriented harmony singing of the jubilee style in the 1930s and leading into the harder sound of the ’40s, when charismatic lead singers turned in passionate, virtuoso performances with call-and-response patterns and plush backing vocals.

Veteran performers and historians explain the hardships visited upon the musicians by racism, their struggles to stay on the road when gigs offered only bare subsistence, and the way evolving public tastes lured some of the greatest voices, such as Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls, to switch to secular music.

Director Robert Clem generously incorporates uninterrupted vintage performance footage by the likes of the Fairfield Four, the Highway QCs, and the Blind Boys of Alabama. —PETER MARGASAK 87 min. Sat 11/11, 11:30 AM, $12, $10 in advance.

IT MUST MAKE PEACE Paul R. Chandler made this 2016 documentary about traditional Malian music over the course of three years, examining how Western-style rap and fundamentalist Islam have encroached upon or even extinguished its ancient practices.

Copious performance footage, much of it staged specifically for the filmmakers, serves as the background for commentary by musicians such as Afel Bocoum and Toumani Diabate that provides cultural context for various modes of music making.

The music is lovely and the footage is beautifully shot, but Chandler can’t seem to decide if he wants his film to be an ethnographic document or an investigation into the effects of modernity on oral culture, and this absence of unifying vision leaves the work adrift. —PETER MARGASAK 82 min. Sun 11/12, 2:15 PM, $12, $10 in advance. Screening with the music video for Tiffany Ayalik’s “Hila.”

PIANO PLAYERS RARELY EVER PLAY TOGETHER This 1982 documentary begins with an auspicious proposal: assembling legendary New Orleans pianists Isidore “Tuts” Washington, Henry “Professor Longhair” Byrd, and Allen Toussaint for a joint performance, the first time all three would’ve ever appeared onstage together. Yet the story turned unexpectedly poignant when Byrd died during filming.

Director Stevenson J. Palfi shot everything on videotape, and 35 years later this choice gives the movie a raw immediacy.

He got incredible footage of Byrd’s funeral, with the people of New Orleans crowding the streets. The highlight, though,

is watching the musicians at work as their hands dance and cascade along the keyboards. What Palfi captured isn’t just a unique moment in time but also the historical continuity of New Orleans music—it passes through generations of entertainers, supported along the way by local audiences, and reverberates through concert halls, bars, parades, and radios.

—TAL ROSENBERG 76 min. Sun 11/12, 12 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, $12, $10 in advance.

THE PUBLIC IMAGE IS ROTTEN

John Lydon relives his journey from public enemy to commercial pitchman in this 2017 documentary by Tabbert Fiiller.

As usual with Lydon, you’re never quite sure whether what you’re hearing is candor or a masterful imitation of it—the swindle continues!—but he gives a disarming account of his chaotic post-Sex Pistols career with Public Image Ltd, whose original run lasted from 1978 till 1992 (the band re-formed in 2009). The founding lineup—including guitarist Keith Levene, bassist Jah Wobble, and drummer Jim Walker, all of whom are interviewed—crafted a weird mix of punk, dub, and Krautrock, but as the players left one by one, frustrated with Lydon’s ego and the band’s precarious finances, the resulting revolving-door lineup settled into conventional dance rock.

Archival footage of Lydon in the bracing hostility of his youth contrasts dramatically with present-day interviews showing him domesticated, compromised, and happy in the wisdom that most of us learn to accept as compensation. —J.R. JONES 105 min. Thu 11/9, 9:15 PM, $12, $10 in advance. Includes a Q&A with director Tabbert Fiiller and former PiL drummer Martin Atkins. J

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QUEERCORE: HOW TO PUNK A REVOLUTION

Chicago native Yony Leyser attempts to capture three decades of queer punk history in this compact but lopsided 2017 documentary. Queercore excels during the community’s beginnings in the 80s, when Toronto directors and artists Bruce LaBruce and G.B. Jones, who rejected mainstream gay culture and heteronormative punk culture alike, provided a point around which a queer punk scene could coalesce. In their short-lived zine J.D.s they coined the term “homocore,” which punk misfits Tom Jennings and Deke Nihilson used as the title for another zine in late-80s San Francisco. The scene continued to snowball into the 90s, when it influenced the riot grrrl movement. Leyser seems to take the side of homocore’s 80s originators, some of whom reacted to the growth and diversification of queer punk in the 90s—which included an uptick in macho fare—by dismissing it and declaring the scene dead. Leyser condenses the late 90s and early 2000s (an active period in queer punk) into a brief montage narrated by voice-over, and treats new developments since then almost as hastily. But the film’s tilt toward the scene’s early days speaks to the endurance of LaBruce and Jones’s original concept: they built it, and the punks haven’t stopped coming. —LEOR GALIL 83 min. Fri 11/10, 9:30 PM, $12, $10 in advance.

SCREAM FOR ME SARAJEVO If you didn’t know this 2016 film was a documentary, it’d be easy to read its synopsis and come away expecting a satire like M*A*S*H or Spinal Tap. In December 1994, Iron Maiden front man Bruce Dickinson and the backing band for his solo project performed in Sarajevo, which was largely cut off from the outside world by the Bosnian Serb military—their siege

of the city would ultimately last 1,425 days and cause tens of thousands of casualties. Dickinson and his band came knowing that Sarajevo was in peril, but it wasn’t till they arrived that they really grasped the severity of the situation—or that rock-star status wouldn’t protect them from snipers. Though the concert (and the musicians’ life-altering journey to play it) provided the catalyst for the film, it provides a portal into a broader and even more compelling story—about the fans who endured the siege, and who’d cultivated a thriving underground arts community in Sarajevo despite constant danger, grief, and loss. —JAMIE LUDWIG 94 min. Sat 11/11, 2 PM, $12, $10 in advance.

TOM RUSH: NO REGRETS Folk singer-songwriter Tom Rush is most famous for his 1968 album The Circle Game, which was many people’s first introduction to Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor, all of whom provided material for the LP. This 2013 documentary tries to make the case that Rush deserves to be recognized alongside the artists he helped to launch, but directors Rob Stegman and Todd Kwait aren’t very convincing. At times their movie unfortunately recalls Christopher Guest’s 2003 folk-music mockumentary A Mighty Wind—it’s hard to reconcile their framing of Rush’s significance with his actual contributions to popular music. Stegman and Kwait spend too much time exploring uninteresting particulars of Rush’s life—his high school experience, his brief tenure as a farmer, his love for New England—all of which lead to dull

digressions and tangents. This material merely distracts from the failures and successes of Rush’s musical career, a far more interesting subject. —TAL ROSENBERG 85 min. Sun 11/12, 2 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, $12, $10 in advance. Includes a Q&A with Tom Rush, who plays a separately ticketed show at 7 PM.

WE SOLD OUR SOULS FOR ROCK ’N’ ROLL Director Penelope Spheeris (Wayne’s World, The Decline of Western Civilization) hits the road with Ozzfest, the touring heavy-metal festival organized by Black Sabbath vocalist Ozzy Osbourne and his wife, Sharon. Spheeris’s documentary followed the traveling extravaganza for its 1999 run, when it covered 26 cities and featured 16 acts (including Primus, Rob Zombie, Fear Factory, Slayer, and Sabbath, the forefathers of the genre, who closed the show). Her take is both wry and affectionate, and her backstage footage proves that there’s no need for Spinal Tap when you’ve got the real thing: Ozzy, age 50, reads his lyrics off two huge teleprompters and hobbles offstage between numbers to suck down herbal power shakes and take hits from an oxygen tank, while Sabbath’s drummer, Bill Ward, discusses the scars he’s collected from the band’s various attempts to set him on fire. Far more depressing are the legion of drunken fans, who seem as clueless to the music’s self-parody as the religious protesters shadowing the tour. At least the eighth-graders who encounter the masked members of Slipknot on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial seem to get it. —REECE PENDLETON 90 min. Sat 11/11, 4 PM, free. Includes a Q&A with director Penelope Spheeris. v

Tom Rush: No Regrets

The Public Image Is Rotten

28 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 9, 2017

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NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 29

MUSIC

Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of November 9 b

ALL AGES

F

THURSDAY9 Jessica Lea Mayfield Blank Range and Bunny open. 9PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $15. 21+

PICK OF THE WEEK

Polystylistic French-Cuban duo Ibeyi yearns for a just world

Ohio-bred singer-songwriter Jessica Lea Mayfield has made it hard to know just who she is musically. Over the course of four albums she’s reinvented her sound, stumbling between country, soul, hard rock, and boilerplate indie rock. Her diminutive voice—a small, fragile warble—has been the consistent element, but it exhibits a chameleonic effect that seems defined by the musical arrangements.

Mayfield’s album Sorry Is Gone (ATO) doesn’t demonstrably alter that pattern, but it reveals a strong, compelling perspective. Its 11 songs detail domestic abuse she endured over several years with harrowing directness—a mixture of resigned exhaustion and steely resistance. The title track is a declaration of independence streaked with bit of reticence as she laughs off, “It’s nice to have a guy around / For lifting heavy things and opening jars,” but revelations in other songs make clear that there’s nothing funny about her suffering. In “Meadow” her mistrust is debilitating, with lyrics that speak to her sense of isolation, while in “Maybe Whatever” she nonchalantly drawls, “The shotgun’s under the futon / This is not my idea of fun.” The record features top-shelf musicians including former Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and Grails/ Om drummer Emil Amos on bass, who help Mayfield craft a flinty, compact attack of hypnotically tuneful shapes and corrosive atmospherics that generously cradle her voice. Here’s hoping that this is the real Jessica Lea Mayfield. —PETER MARGASAK

Susanne Sundfør 8:30 PM, 1st Ward, 2033 W. North, $18, $15 in advance. 18+ Norwegian singer Susanne Sundfør found international success with her 2015 album Ten

ò AMBER MAHONEY

IBEYI, THEMIND, KODA

Fri 11/10, 9:30 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $15. 18+

FRENCH-CUBAN TWINS Lisa-Kainde and Naomi Diaz, also known as polystylistic R&B duo Ibeyi, masterfully transform firsthand experiences and thoughts into something universal on their ravishing second album, Ash (XL). The former wrote the song “I Wanna Be Like You” with the latter in mind. Though the lyrics recall her early memories of dreaming she possessed the qualities of her sibling, as the sisters sing, “I’m often down, often down / I often cry, often cry,” they come off as a powerful yearning for childlike optimism and hope. “Deathless” is based on an experience Lisa-Kainde had when she was 16, where she was wrongly accused and humiliated by a French policeman, who dumped the contents of her purse on the street. Over the imploring tenor saxophone of guest Kamasi Washington the twins chant, “We are deathless” with a determination that can’t quite overcome the

30 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 9, 2017

scarring caused by the encounter. In “Away Away” they long for a calmer, less frantic world over shimmering beats and a deftly deployed effect that recalls the damped guitar tones in the Ann Peebles classic “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” As on the duo’s superb eponymous debut, Ash collides subtle inflections of Afro-Cuban rhythms with sultry, contemporary R&B; Ibeyi trust in the gentle shapes of their songs, and their lovely harmonies and simmering grooves get the job done. The most stunning song on the album, “Transmission/Michaelion” (which features bassist Meshell Ndegeocello), is a two-part marval that unfolds with prayerlike solemnity, only breaking into beats in its second half. Only “No Man is Big Enough for My Arms,” which relies too heavily on sampled speech by Michelle Obama to convey its feminist message, falls short. —PETER MARGASAK

Susanne Sundfør ò RAPHAEL CHATELAIN

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FOREST SWORDS

NOV 15

CIRCUIT DES YEUX

NOV 18

RACHEL PLATTEN

NOV 20

MAXIMO PARK

NOV 24

CAYE

BUSTY AND THE BASS

DEC 01

THE DUSTBOWL REVIVAL

DEC 03

NEW

MUSIC

SAMANTHA FISH

JAN 31

NEW

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

BIG WRECK

FEB 02

KA BAIRD

RECORD RELEASE

ACTIVE BIRD COMMUNITY

TICKETS AT WWW.LH-ST.COM

Jessica Lee Mayfield ò EBRU YILDIZ

FRIDAY10 CARL BROEMEL OF MY MORNING JACKET

NOV 16

DAVID RAMIREZ WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE TOUR

DEC 02

THE SCORE

DEC 13

SPORTS

DEC 18

NEW

JORDAN DEPAUL

MEGAN DAVIES

JAN 26

NEW

BRUNO MAJOR

FEB 27

NEW

Ibeyi See Pick of the Week. Themind and Koda open. 9:30 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $15. 18+

SUPERORGANISM

MAR 28

NEW

Love Songs (Sonnet Sounds), a slick recording that situated her opulent folk-derived melodies within fizzy arrangements propelled by EDM-style production. Her soaring vocals shine in such jacked-up surroundings, but the album’s treacly synthesizers and four-on-the-floor grooves tended to flatten the refined beauty of her tunes into lowest-commondenominator pop. Still, that formula led to heavy international touring and a growing profile, which makes it remarkable that on her recent follow-up, Music for People in Trouble (Bella Union), Sundfør utterly turns the table in favor of delicate intimacy. The oozingly slow opening track features her crystalline voice accompanied only by acoustic guitar and—as the song winds down—a sensual pedal steel. The peal of church bells segues into the dropdead gorgeous “Reincarnation,” a ballad that melds the mannered aura of an old madrigal with a rustic country lament, but the album takes with more contemporary vibes on songs like the piano-based “Good Luck Bad Luck.” The jazzy tenor saxophone soliloquy that precedes “The Sound of War” (and the needling electronic drone that follows it), as well as abstract splice-and-dice spoken-word experimentation on the title track add welcome surprise, but ultimately Sundfør’s honeyed, sterling voice gives the album its riveting center. Even when she pushes toward more commercial territory, as on the soulful ballad “Undercover,” her voice transcends the backing choir and sugary blend of piano, guitar, and pedal steel. She’s largely performing solo on this tour, though multi-instrumentalist Jesse Chandler from BNQT will join her on some songs. I can’t think of a better setting for her lovely, memorable songs. —PETER MARGASAK

PUBLIC ACCESS T.V.

APR 02

Kamasi Washington 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, $35. b Los Angeles saxophonist and bandleader Kamasi Washington has achieved remarkable heights since dropping his triple CD debut, The Epic (Brainfeeder), in 2015. The lavish, often overstuffed album worked the early 70s spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders into ambitious, meticulously crafted new shapes, giving it a crossover appeal it hadn’t enjoyed in decades. Washington, who began paving his way by making cameo appearances on tracks by Flying Lotus and Kendrick Lamar, recorded the three-hour-long record as part of a month-long, group-funded communal session that according to a New York Times article from 2015 yielded seven albums among ten players. While I salute his drive and the grandiloquent spectacle of his debut, his local premiere at Bottom Lounge in 2015 left me cold; it was an over-thetop, airless onslaught that left no room for breath, let alone contemplation. I’m clearly in the minority, though—his audience is now sizable enough to secure the 2,500-capacity Riviera. Earlier this year he dropped Harmony of Difference (Young Turks), which is dramatically scaled down compared to The Epic, both in terms of length (31 minutes) and scale (six tracks, mostly without the strings and chorus of his debut). That’s not to say it is less

STEELISM

MOLLY PARDEN

CASTLECOMER

SOFT GLAS + DREAM VERSION

J

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MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

Mndsgn ò CHRISTOPH THORWARTL

continued from 31

ambitious; it was written for a multimedia piece celebrating American diversity that debuted at this year’s Whitney Biennial. As he told the New York Times in March, “I thought it was ironic that we look at it as this problem that we have to solve, when it’s really a gift.” The briskly paced recording effectively recycles a number of melodic themes through a prismatic lens, forging a dynamic composite meant to complement the visual element of the Whitney installation. Improvisations arrive in judicious bite-size pieces, enhancing arrangements that deftly recontextualize themes within musical landscapes that shift from soul-jazz to samba.

Though the record shows another notable side of the saxophonist and he’s continued to make his mark as a conceptualist, I’m waiting for him to discover a wholly original voice as an instrumentalist.

—PETER MARGASAK

mndsgn Liv.e opens. 7 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, $15, $12 in advance. 18+ “It’s so hard to read anything you’re expressing / It’s so vague / We need just a little clarity,” Mndsgn croons woozily on his 2016 album Body Wash (Stones Throw Records). The line is funny because it’s so baldly inapplicable; everything about hiphop producer Mndsgn’s music, from his consonantclotted name (pronounced “mind design”) to his bubbling lounge funk, is obscure and wavering.

Each of his three albums finds a staggering, mellow groove and sticks with it—tossing in bass burps, easy-listening keyboard flourishes, and jazzy riffs that head for outer space before shrugging and curling up under the cocktail bar. His most recent production, “Popeye,” for Quelle Chris, is typical of his approach—a looped pleasingly/annoyingly slowed-down, out-of-tune vocal chorus laps under the rapper’s flow like a haze of suds steaming up from

32 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 9, 2017

a bath. The music seems to come so deeply from within Mndsgn’s mind that seeing him live with bass, a second keyboardist, and a horn section is both jarring and exhilarating—it’s as if you’re watching the thoughts jump out of his hea d and boogie in bliss. “Lather me out of this world,” Mndsgn. moans around the key on “Lather.” That’s both a comeon and statement of intent. —NOAH BERLATSKY

Black Heart Procession Sam Coomes opens. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $15. 21+ Have you ever been to San Diego?! It’s not remotely macabre, not a lick. Yet somehow America’s Finest City birthed the Black Heart Procession, an eclectic, mutating orchestra of woe whose solemn, gently writhing indie rock (complete with rapt saw playing) has led to a modestly successful decade-plus career. Forged by Pall Jenkins and Tobias Nathaniel in 1997, the Black Heart Procession eventually blossomed with 2002’s Amore del Tropico and 2006’s The Spell, both of which feel and sound theatrical and thematic in their sinister yarns, but their stark early records—including their 1998 debut, 1, 1999’s 2, and 2000’s Three—still carry weight. On a track such as 1’s, “The Old Kind of Summer,” for example, Jenkins creates a crackling tension from his aching croaks and wails alone, even while jaunty indie-rock melodies saunter along in a manner that makes them sound is soaked with the feel of the French Riviera. The band went on hiatus in 2013 following a move by Nathaniel to Serbia, but they reunited in 2016 and toured Europe last spring playing 1 in its entirety. They’ll do the same tonight, commemorating a plodding and sometimes chilling record that’s an amalgam of eclectic lullabies, bowed indie-rock waltzes, and has a semblance of circus music slowed to 16 revolutions per minute. —KEVIN WARWICK J

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MUSIC

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(773) 486-9862 Come enjoy one of Chicago’s finest beer gardens!

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NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 33

4544 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG • 773.728.6000

JUST ADDED • ON SALE THIS FRIDAY! 1/14 2/2 2/9 2/17

Kaumakaiwa Kanaka'ole with Shawn Pimental The Bad Plus featuring Reid Anderson, Orrin Evans and David King Tom Paxton with special guest The DonJuans Ladysmith Black Mambazo

MUSIC Black Heart Procession ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

FOR TICKETS, VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9 7PM

Old Town School presents

Love, Chicago: A Benefit Concert for Puerto Rico & Mexico THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9 8PM

Liz Vice

In Szold Hall

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 5 & 8PM

Dar Williams

In concert including a reading and discussion from her new book, What I found In A Thousand Towns

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11 8PM

Lera Lynn

In Szold Hall

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12 7PM

Peter Himmelman with special guest Heather Stryka

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 12 7PM

Tom Rush

In Szold Hall

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18 8PM

Ronstadt Brothers In Szold Hall SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19 7PM

The Slide Guitar Masters of Old Town School featuring Donna Herula, Jon Spiegel, Chris Walz

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24 8PM

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

11/10 11/17

Global Dance Party: Carpacho y su Super Combo Global Dance Party: La Escuelita Bombera de Corazón

WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE

11/15

Élage Diouf

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG 34 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 9, 2017

continued from 33

SUNDAY12 Ted Leo & the Pharmacists. Ian Sweet opens. 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $20$25, $18 in advance, 17+ For much of the aughts Ted Leo & the Pharmacists found themselves in the unusual position of being beloved avatars of the indie-rock scene. The group wasn’t as commercially successful as other acts that emerged from this broad milieu, but their sophisticated, punk-driven, oft-political songs had a scrappiness to them that spoke to the genre’s underdog spirit, and had an unexpected crossover appeal.

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists’ bold and refined 2010 album, The Brutalist Bricks, which came out on the indie juggernaut Matador, appeared to be a culmination of their artistic expression and commercial growth over the previous decade. But, financial success appeared to evade them as they played to smaller crowds than in previous years. A European tour in support of the album left Leo in dire financial straits, and as recent detailed in an in-depth Stereogum profile, that was just the beginning a lengthy difficult period in which, among other things, Leo and his wife, Jodi (of severely underappreciated indie-pop duo Secret Stars), lost their daughter to a late-term miscarriage. Leo confronts that loss on his Kickstarter-funded self-released solo album The Hanged Man, an accomplished melange that further colors his power-pop sensibilities and gift for multidimensional songwriting. He’s got the magnetism and force of will to bring together a ragged, sparse ballad (“Lonsdale Avenue”) and a relatively quiet political fable filled out by a string section (“William Weld in the 21st Century”), a frictionless, feisty power-pop tune (“Anthems of None”), and a dreamy pop-rock track that dissolves into a collage of his own overdubbed vocal melodies (“Used to Believe”). What’s more, Leo infuses the album with a sense of intimacy that makes it

befit the quiet moments of your day—or, really, any moment. —LEOR GALIL

MONDAY13 MusicNow: Vijay Iyer 7 PM, Harris Theatre, 205 E. Randolph, $28. b Earlier this year pianist and composer Vijay Iyer released Far From Over (ECM), a sextet recording whose sturdy but flexible originals reaffirm his jazz bona fides while Tyshawn Sorey’s explosive drumming fractures their swing. Iyer’s arrangements extract an orchestral splendor from the group he assembled for the album—Sorey, saxophonists Steve Lehman and Mark Shim, cornetist Graham Haynes, and bassist Stephan Crump—and his probing, corkscrewing melodies demonstrate the influence of his mentor Andrew Hill, albeit processed into his own language. As exhilarating as Far From Over is, though—as good as anything in the pianist’s rapidly expanding discography— Iyer’s appearance tonight in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow series instead showcases two works that have little in common with the music on the album. Iyer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith will give the local debut of their stunning duo, performing A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke, the centerpiece of their 2016 album of the same name. This shape-shifting seven-movement suite responds to an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi, who often blends abstraction and architectural precision in line-based drawings; Iyer’s performance combines two elements that recur throughout his work as he shifts between lyrical meditation and voluble, brittle interaction with Smith.

The concert will also feature the local premiere of “Time, Place, Action,” a limber chamber piece for piano and string quartet whose springy interplay and spry lyricism sometimes give way to brooding rumination—but even at those most introspective

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bottom lounge Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

ON SALE FRIDAY 11.10

moments, Iyer drives it forward with his irrepressible rhythmic thrust. —PETER MARGASAK

ON SALE NOW

TUESDAY14 White Reaper Post Animal opens. 7 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $20, $16 in advance. b In April, downstate-Illinois indie label Polyvinyl released the second album from Louisville power-pop act White Reaper, The World’s Best American Band. Regardless of whether or not there will ever be a clear consensus that any group is worthy of such a title (probably not), White Reaper certainly play like they believe they’re the greatest band from these 50 states. Their frictionless melodies, muscular riffs, and triple-horsepower propulsion could pass for the type of heartland 70s rock ‘n’ roll that still pumps blood into otherwise listless Clear Channel “classic rock” stations. But White Reaper carry themselves with a je ne sais quoi that’s thoroughly modern—Tony Esposito’s sweetened snarl sounds as much like a reaction to a youth spent in dingy DIY spaces as it does a deep affection for Cheap Trick’s restorative sense of triumph.

White Reaper know how to weld together power-pop’s past, punk might, and whiplash-smart songwriting, and they do so with precision. If they could bottle up and sell the brief synth-washed bridge on outstanding single “Judy French” to other bands, rock just might feel new again. —LEOR GALIL

WEDNESDAY15 Ghostemane Chxpa, Wavy Jones, and Nedarb open. 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $20, $15 in advance. b Ghostemane is a white rapper from Florida who was reared on punk, metalcore, and other strains of aggressive music that had some modicum of accessibility and a fragment of crossover success. In a June interview with taste-making rap podcast No Jumper, he said, “The fans of my stuff now would have been fans of the Devil Wears Prada or Bring Me the Horizon—Myspace shit back in the day—it’s like the same audience.” Ghostemane has emerged as part of the ambiguous grassroots “Soundcloud rap” scene, a hodgepodge of MCs who favor angst and the streaming platform that gifted them this definitive-if-unhelpful tag. Of the rag-tag bunch, Ghostemane is among the most amenable to bringing the music of his youth to the forefront. “Axis,” off 2016’s Plagues, liberally samples “When World’s Collide,” the breakout 1999 single by interstellar nu-metal outfit Powerman 5000, and on the lo-fi “DROwn” and chugging “Rake,” off September’s self-released Hexada, sound eager to show how much hip-hop’s subterranean past has in common with punk and metal aesthetics. But the crux of Hexada rests on a dark sound indebted to Memphis’s 90s rap scene that’s been blossoming in Florida’s underground—an atmospheric burgoo of bonedry percussion, hazy synths, and rapid-fire vocals that sound like they’re emerging from deep within an MC’s belly. —LEOR GALIL v

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UPCOMING SHOWS

11.12 TALK TO YOU NEVER

THE HOMECOMING / EVERYONE SAYS BAD PLANNING / CALIFORNIA KILLERS SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS

11.15 SLOW MAGIC

POINT POINT / QRION REACT PRESENTS

11.16 BLEEP BLOOP

UM.. / SUMTHIN’ SUMTHIN’

11.22 OCEANS ATE ALASKA

DAYSEEKER / AFTERLIFE / TANZEN

11.24 FACE THE FIRE

SKY MACHINE / ONE STEEL WOUND 9TH STREET MEMORY RIOT FEST PRESENTS

11.25 BEACH SLANG

DAVE HAUSE & THE MERMAID SEE THROUGH DRESSES SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS

11.29 EKALI

MEDASIN / JUDGE

12.01 MEST

Never miss a show again.

MR. T EXPERIENCE

93XRT PRESENTS

12.07 BLACK PISTOL FIRE COBI

STAND TOGETHER 2017 - NIGHT ONE

12.09 EL FAMOUS

DEADSHIPS / RYNO / VCTMS / SKYLINES STAND TOGETHER 2017 - NIGHT TWO

12.10 EL FAMOUS

DAVLIN / SPIT / ERABELLA RIOT FEST PRESENTS

12.15 THE LAWRENCE ARMS

3RD ANNUAL WAR ON X-MAS “MIDNIGHT MASS” TEENAGE BOTTLEROCKET BLOOD PEOPLE RIOT FEST PRESENTS

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

12.16 THE LAWRENCE ARMS

3RD ANNUAL WAR ON X-MAS “SEXY XMAS” NOTHINGTON SASS DRAGONS

“SO MUCH BEWTEEN US” 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

12.23 INEPT 12.31 MURDER BY DEATH THE LIFE AND TIMES

01.17 ANTI-FLAG

STRAY FROM THE PATH

THE WHITE NOISE / SHARPTOOTH

02.02 AVATAR

THE BRAINS / HELLZAPOPPIN

03.17 CLAN OF XYMOX www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 35

FOOD & DRINK

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

The best thing on the Delta’s menu is a sleeper: grilled catfish smothered in a beurre monte sauce. ò NICK MURWAY

RESTAURANT REVIEW

The Delta meets Chicago

Mississippi red hot tamales are the link between north and south at the new Wicker Park barstaurant.

By MIKE SULA

C

hicago is kin to the south. No other U.S. city has more ties to the lower half of the country, specifically the Mississippi Delta, aka the Most Southern Place on Earth. All you have to do is spend ten minutes in the presence of Yoland Cannon to understand this. On the 900 block of North Laramie Avenue, Cannon is the Tamale Guy. No one talks about Claudio.

Most afternoons, weather permitting, he sells Mississippi Delta-style tamales from a yellow cart parked on the sidewalk: ground-beefstuffed cornmeal magic wrapped in husks and simmered in an oily, peppery brew that delivers the same immediate sensory impact as a

36 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 9, 2017

shot of whiskey. Many of his customers grew up eating them in Mississippi towns such as Greenville, Leland, and Vicksburg.

Eldridge Williams also comes from the Delta—the very tip of it, actually, in Memphis.

He’s opened a small Wicker Park barstaurant in tribute to the region called, appropriately enough, the Delta. Williams, a front-of-house veteran (formerly of Girl & the Goat and numerous other spots), is very likely Cannon’s only local competition. He and chef Adam Wendt, late of Dusek’s, Salero, and Bangers & Lace, are offering a menu that centers on the Mississippi Delta red hot tamale. (Not “tamal.”

This isn’t Spanish.)

Wendt has fairly faithfully re-created and upgraded the iconic original snack using ground beef brisket enrobed in soft “cush,” aka cornmeal grits, saturated with a simmered tomato brew spiked with chile and garlic. These come in bundles of three, with saltines on the side to take advantage of their spreadability. If Williams and Wendt had stopped right there, they’d have sold me. But a young restaurant doesn’t grow on nostalgia alone. There are also a series of cheffed-up variations on the Delta tamale, from vegan red hots made with mushrooms to braised chicken thigh tamales dribbled with off-the-cob elotes and grilled shishito peppers to a Mediterranean-tinged

tamale with lamb merguez overwhelmed by feta cheese, pickled onions, spicy green harissa sauce, and crispy fried chickpeas. (Is that a tamale or an international incident?)

Actually, there are two tamale constructions on Wendt’s menu that are even more controversial, with the potential to raise the hackles of aficionados of the endemic foods of the south—south side, that is. The tenuous connection between Delta tamales and mass-produced local commercial brands such as Tom Tom is best illustrated with the infamous mother-in-law sandwich, commonly a Chicago-style tamale (likely a Tom Tom) cradled in a hot dog bun smothered in chili, as executed by Bridgeport’s Johnnie O’s, the mother-in-law’s ambassador to the world thanks to an appearance on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. The law of the mother-in-law allows for slight variations, yet I think Wendt’s decision to entomb a deep-fried tamale in a blimpy Mexican bolillo under an avalanche of Chicago dog toppings seriously violates it.

Along with the absence of the critical lubricative properties of chili, this dense, dry carb bomb is tough to swallow.

On the other hand, his version of the Jim Shoe—the slightly more obscure south-side sub-shop specialty involving a chopped and griddled hash of corned and roast beef, gyro meat, onions, and cheese plastered into a sub roll with iceberg lettuce and pink tomato, then pumped with “GUY-ro” sauce and mayo or mustard—is a redemption of something that very frequently manifests as a sloppy disaster of a sandwich. Wendt uses an improbable combination of lamb and beef tamales as the platform, piling them with smoky caramelized chunks of house-made pastrami, provolone, lettuce, tomato, giardiniera, piquillo peppers, and “d.a.f.” (“Delta as fuck”) sauce, a house blend of Thousand Island and spicy remoulade.

It’s a mess, but a delicious and beautiful one.

The remainder of the menu dabbles in generalized southern standards, many of them deep-fried. During my visits the small, open kitchen near the rear of the dining room wasn’t on its best fry game. Hush puppies, served with a Pepto-pink red-onion aioli, were sodden with oil though crunchy and scarfable.

The breaded armor on fried green tomatoes shattered at a touch. A fried half chicken arrived at the table one evening bleeding raw batter under its crispy skin. The house remedied this situation with a freshly fried bird, but the amount of frying medium that left the kitchen that evening required a thorough post prandial hosing off.

l

l

THE DELTA | $$ 1745 W. North R 773-360-1793 thedeltachicago.com

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The Delta’s take on the mother-in-law sandwich is a deep-fried tamale in a Mexican bolillo under an avalanche of Chicago dog toppings. ò NICK MURWAY

On the other hand, fried chicken-liver rice with mushroom and bacon is less a tribute to southern-style dirty rice than it is to Chinese fried rice, but either way, you’ll want it. Vinegary braised greens stand out with a dose of nduja, and paprika-caramel-glazed baby back ribs are a diverting but enjoyable mandibular exercise. The best thing on the Delta’s menu is a sleeper: a whole grilled catfish smothered in a rich-bodied beurre monte sauce powered with lemon and chicken stock and seasoned with chiles and coriander, all of which marries perfectly with the fatty white flesh.

Beignets and a cumulus banana pudding, short on banana and containing enough undissolved granulated white sugar to embarrass Paula Deen, made up the limited dessert menu (the latter has since been 86’d). There’s also a potent rum-amaretto-orgeat liquid finish by beverage director Adam Kamin, who’s also responsible for a lineup of icy smashes that are complex and restrained in sweetness, such as the herbaceous Fernet Me Now and the intoxicating Lorraine, with absinthe and sherry.

Chicago’s affinity for the south results in a restaurant scene awash in (with notable exceptions) kitschy, unconvincing adaptations of regionally unspecific food. I won’t say the Delta is any more faithful to its inspiration, but the cozy space has a vibe: a young, diverse staff and crowd that keeps things as loose as the menu. While it needs some executional adjustments, the Delta’s a fun interpretation of the food of Chicago’s southern cousins. v

v @MikeSula

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NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 37

JOBS

opportunity listed above, please e-mail your resume to us at rober tp@hullinvestmentsllc.com and reference FE0917.

EARN EXTRA CASH FOR THE HOLIDAYS!! Looking for a few old pros. Start today! Felons

LYST (Chicago, Illinois) Collect and analyze data on commercial projectscustomer demographics, preferences, needs and buying habits to identify potential company clients for distributor of marble, granite, and stone products; Gather data on competitors and analyze their pricing, sales and methods of marketing and distribution;Monitor industry statistics and follow trends in the natural stone industry;Forecast and track marketing and sales trends, analyzing collected data. Measure the effectiveness of marketing, advertising and communications programs and strategies;Conduct Market Research for new products and programs and the annual Dealer Survey;Assist in planning and executing Events Requirements: BS or BA in Marketing or Business Administration; two years exp in field. All exp must be with international stone and marble trade.

Send resume and letter of interest in duplicate to: Sandya Dandamudi Stone Shield •2223 West Charleston Street Chicago, IL 60647

SALES & MARKETING need not apply per Attorney General Regulations. Call 312-256-5035 ask for Cash.

General DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH & ANALYTICS sought by VSA Partners, Inc. in Chicago, IL 40 hrs/ wk. Duties: Identify & use appropriate data sources & manipulate data to carry out in-depth quantitative analyses of clients’ existing data sets. Conduct & interpret primary quantitative rsrch, e.g. surveys, segmentations, & market structure studies and/or supervise vendors doing this type of work.

Determine meaningful insights from survey & other mrktng rsrch data, & provide recommendations to improve client’s strategy. Employ appropriate methodologies (encompassing type of data, time frame, calculations or statistical techniques, appropriate comparisons) to answer client business questions. Eval the quality & accuracy of existing analyses & provide /receive feedback. Communicate clearly w/ Data Science Team, client project leaders, & other analysts to thoroughly understand client’s needs, analyze data appropriately & deliver the work products to client’s satisfaction. Dsgn & create metric reports & mngmnt dashboards, incl data visualization.

Eval impact of prgrms thru use of test dsgn & analysis of prgrms & target audiences. Present findings verbally w/ clarity to internal & client audiences. Some evenings & weekend work may occasionally be necessary.

Reqs: Min Req. Master’s deg in Economics, Marketing, Stats or a quantitative field, & 8 yrs of rel’d exp in marketing analytics, statistics or quantitative economics.

SPECIFIC SKILLS OR OTHER RQMNTS: 3 yrs of mngmnt consulting exp. 2 yrs of exp in media buying environment. 1 yr new business dvlpmnt exp. 1 yr of client facing project exp. 3 yrs of exp w/ predictive analytics. 2 yrs of exp w / optimizing advertising Marketing Mix & return on marketing investment. 1 yr of conjoint or mrkt basket analysis. 3 yrs of exp w/ Statistical Analysis Systm & AgentBased Simulation (Thru the use of sophisticated statistical modeling techniques combined w/ precise consulting to provide actionable results). Knwldg of add’l statistical programming language such as Python or R. Please reply w/ resume to: Mary Latimer. 600 West Chicago Avenue, Suite 250, Chicago, IL 60654.

Financial Engineer Hull Investments LLC Chicago, IL Develop portfolio analytics and integrating new data and models into a low-frequency trading system. Review financial reports, financial statements and related financial documentation to assist in creating portfolio analytics.

Perform statistical analyses to verify and optimize innovations and enhancements to portfolio models. Define and implement data collection and data acquisition methods. Develop software using Linux and R and participates in software testing to ensure successful implementation of functional requirements. Monitor trading performance and devises improvements. Propose portfolio strategies and algorithm enhancements.

Requires a Master’s degree in Financial Mathematics, Financial Engineering or a related field.

One (1) year of experience as an auditor or consultant. Also, must have one (1) year of experience in analyzing financial statements, financial reporting and audit procedures.

We offer a competitive salary and benefits package. If you are interested in applying for the career

38 CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 9, 2017

MARKET

RESEARCH

ANA-

GRANT THORNTON LLP is seeking an Audit Manager in Chicago, IL with the following requirements: Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration (Commerce), Accounting or related field or foreign academic equivalent plus 5 years of related experience. Will accept any level of experience in the following skills: supervise and review a portfolio of audit engagements and evaluate audit files and financial statements in compliance with professional audit and accounting standards; manage and train audit teams on a portfolio of audit engagements; plan and track audit engagements according to the budget and plan, assess financial performance and personnel achievements accordingly; develop and direct managerial projects that align with the firm’s objectives and vision. U.S. or foreign CPA license or certification (e.g.

CPA or Chartered Accountant) required. Please apply at www.gt. com by clicking on the Careers link.

COMPUTER SYSTEMS ANALYSTS ZENSAR TECHNOLOGIES, INC. has openings in Oak Brook, IL.

All positions may be assigned to various, unanticipated sites throughout the US. Job Code: USOBIL145 Computer Systems Analyst (FSD/Cross-Flow): impact analysis, estimation & scope docs. Job Code: US-OBIL146 Computer Systems Analyst (Planning/Analysis): analysis, development & support. Job Code: US-OBIL148 Computer Systems Analyst (BFDs/Models): business req’s, apps & servers. Job Code: USOBIL152: Computer Systems Analyst (BI/Development): analysis & development for business continuity.

Mail resume to: Prasun Maharatna, 2107 North First St, Ste 100, San Jose, CA 95131. Include job code/s & full job title/s of interest + recruitment source in cover letter.

EOE

CHINA INITIATIVE EDUCATION PROGRAM COORDINATOR, Erikson Institute in Chicago, IL. Teach courses in early childhood education & child development graduate programs. Advise & provide support to early childhood professionals in China participating in China initiative program. Direct & coordinate the production of training materials & the delivery of training programs in both English & Chinese languages.

Req: Ph.D. in Early Childhood Education, Child Development, or related field + exp teaching at college level for min. of 3 months. Must be fluent in Chinese. Details at h ttp ://w w w .e rik so n. edu/ab out/em ploym ent/.

Resume to jobs@erikson.edu.

COMPUTER/IT: The Options Clearing Corporation (Chicago, IL) seeks Sr. Business Analyst with a master’s degree in comp. sci., business, info. sys. or related plus one yr. exp. as a business analyst in financial industry (or BS+5). Must have some experience with the following: 1) Creating data warehouses for transactional data sets (terabyte+) to develop multidimensional reports using Essbase; 2) Performing data analytics and developing business models using R to translate and implement long-term business strategy across all organizational levels; and 3) Using discounted cash-flow models to analyze financial market data and calculate firm-based and industry-based risk. Apply online at www.theocc.com

OPENING FOR FRONT-END SOFTWARE DEVELOPER in

Chicago, IL at Geneva Trading USA LLC, responsible for front-end solutions for discretionary and algorithmic trading strategies.

Requires: Master’s degree in Computer Science or rel. field 2 years of exp. in each of the following: developing software for a financial trading firm; architecting market data solutions; programming algo and discretionary trading strategies; working with SQL and Q(KDB) inside Windows. 3 years of experience using each of the following: .NET, C#, WPF, and WinForm Send resume to Geneva Trading USA LLC, 190 SOUTH LASALLE STREET, SUITE 1800 CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60603.

COMPUTER/IT: MORNINGSTAR,

INC. (Chicago, IL) seeks Sr. Software Dev. With BS in comp. science, info systems or related + 3 yrs. software dev exp. Must have some work experience in each of the following: 1) Debug and troubleshoot live production systems and high-traffic APIs (5 million+ transactions per day); 2) Financial market security, compliance and reporting mandates including XBRL and NRSRO; 3) Objectoriented programming including C# and ORM; and 4) Web development using MVC, Knockout.js, RESTful web services, WCF. Apply at: http:// corporate1.morningstar.com TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECTURE DELIVERY SENIOR MANAGER

(Multiple Positions) (Accenture LLP; Chicago, IL): Drive and develop technology vision, innovation, and expertise, and establish Accenture as a technology thought leaders in the industry. Must have willingness and ability to travel domestically approximately 80% of the time to meet client needs. For complete job description, list of requirements, and to apply, go to: www.accenture.com/ us-en/careers (Job# 00525826).

Groupon, Inc. is seeking multiple Software Development Engineers (SDE), SDE IIs, SDE IIIs & SDE IVs in Chicago, IL w/ the following responsibilities: dvlp, construct & implement the next generation of company products & features for Groupon’s web & mobile apps; design highperformance RESTful serviceoriented architectures & s/ware is fast & efficient for millions EXP U.S. SERVICES Inc. is seek- that of users. Send resumes to apply ing a Water Resource Engineer in @groupon.com and reference Chicago, IL, with the following re- SDECH. quirements: BS in Civil Engineering or Transportation Engineering and 3 years related PROJECT MANAGER experience. Prior exp. must include: INFOR (US), INC . has an opening Perform hydrologic and hydraulic for a Project Manager in Chicago, IL. analyses utilizing HEC-HMS and HECCoordinate & monitor billable projs RAS software (6 months); design and from initiation through delivery. develop roadway drainage systems Travel & work at client sites as using Geopak Road, GeoPak Drainge, assigned. Telecommuting permitted GeoPak Cross Section, GeoPak Pro- up to 50% of the time. How to apply: file (5 months); perform roadway deMail resume, ref. IN96, incl. job sign using MICROSTATION and Archistory, to: Infor (US), Inc. GIS (6 months); estimate highway Attn: Cheryl Sanocki, traffic capacity using HCS and 1351 South County Trail, Building 3, SYNCHRO modeling systems (6 East Greenwich, RI 02818. EOE. months). Please apply on-line at www.exp.com/careers

BIN INSURANCE HOLDINGS, CONSULTANT (SOFTWARE DEVELOPER, APPLICATIONS) for Systegration, Inc., Glenview, IL. Engage in software app. des. & dev for clients located throughout the U.S. Work with Java & SQLite.

Dev. custom-view& animation.

Use multithreading with mob dev.

Use Android SDK. Use Gradle, Fabric, Atlassian & GIT. B.S. in Comp. Sci., math, bus, or eng & 3yrs. of IT exp, including the skill sets listed above. Must be willing to trav el/relocate.Resumes & cover letter to: consultin g06@systegration.com.

EVP, Global Client Dvlpmnt: Lead Global Client practice for global media agency group in Data Strategy, Platform Selection & Partnerships. Serve as exec-level bridge b/t Digital, Technology & Innovation (DTI) division, media agencies & global client senior exec mgmt. Resp for driving commercial app of platforms & capabilities. Serve as face of DTI prod ucts/capabilities to Agency Brands, clients & the market. Chicago, IL location. Req’s 10 yrs exp in sr mgmt at ad, media or paid search agency. Send resume to: Publicis Media, Inc., 35 West Wacker Dr, Chicago, IL 60601, Attn: P. Vamvakaris.

ANN & ROBERT H. LURIE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL of

Chicago seeks Systems Reporting Specialists for Chicago, IL location to analyze & assess hospital reporting needs. Bachelor’s in Info Tech/any Eng. field +2yrs exp req’d. Skills req’d- 2 yrs w/ ea: write, tune, manage BI reports; SQL; Crystal Reports; Power Query; SSIS automation; Stored Procedures; scheduling & admin using BOE; user facing role; helpdesk system mgmt; multi DB & platform env’t. Health screen, drug test, & background check req’d. Apply at https://luriechildrensjobs.silkroad. com/Tracking code: 7498-177

LLC d/b/a INSUREON in Chicago, IL seeks Business Intelligence Developer w/B.S. in CS or Inf Systems & 4 yrs exp in job offered. Must have exp in design & development of data warehouse project using SQL & SSIS. Business Intelligence Certification reqrd. Send res: Meghan.barlow@ insureon.com.

ROLAND BERGER LLC in Chica-

go, IL seeks Project Mgr. MBA req’d.

Mgmt consulting for auto industry.

RFPS & proj. roadmaps. 70% dom. & int’l travel to various client sites.

Send resume: careers@rolandberger .com & ref. job title & job code “CD2017” in subject line.

NXP USA, Inc. seeks Design Engineer IV to work in Hoffman Estates, IL. Multiple openings. Related degree and/or experience an d/or skills req’d for all positions. E EO/M/F/D/V. For more info & to apply online, visit http://www.nxp. com & click on “Careers.”

Innovative Consulting Solutions LLC seeks Programmers/ Analysts, Software Engineers, DBAs. Primary worksite is Schaumburg, IL, but relocation is possible. Apply jobs@icscorpusa. com

REAL ESTATE RENTALS

STUDIO $500-$599 CHICAGO, BEVERLY/CAL Par k/Blue Island: Studio $625 & up; 1BR $700 & up; 2BR $885 & up.

Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Parking. Call 708-3880170 1BR, 7910 S. Ridgeland,

$600$850. Section 8 welcome. 2BR, 1633 E. 83rd St., $800. 312-493-2344

STUDIO $600-$699 CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone /cable, switchboard, fridge, priv bath, lndry, $165/wk, $350/bi-wk or $650/mo. Call 773-493-3500

STUDIO $700-$899 HYDE PARK

Large Studio $785.

Newly decorated, carpeted, appliances, all utilities included, Elevator, laundry facilities, free credit check, no application fee 773-493-2401 or 312-802-7301 ALL UTILITIES FREE

Large Studio. $725.

Newly decorated, carpeted, appliances, Elevator, laundry room, Free Credit check, no application fee.

773-919-7102 or 312-802-7301 LARGE STUDIO APARTMENT

near Warren Park, 6802 N. Wolcott.

Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. Available 12/1. $725/month. 773-761-4318

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

Studio, 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5BR Apts and Homes. Newly Rehabbed Sect 8 Welcome 773-812-4399

CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

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

Ashland Hotel nice clean rms.

24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air.

Low rates daily/weekly/monthly.

South Side. Call 773-376-5200

1 BR UNDER $700 FALL

SAVINGS!

NEWLY

Remod. 1 BR Apts $650 w/gas incl.

2-5BR start at $650 & up. Sec 8 Welc. Rental Assistance Prog. for Qualified Applicants offer up to $200 /month for 1 yr. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty

7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impeccably Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park.

Laundry & Security on Premises.

Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030 FALL SPECIAL: Studios starting at $499 incls utilities, 1BR $550, 2BR $599, 2BR $699, With approved credit. No Security Deposit for Sec 8 Tenants. South Shore & Southside.

312-656-5066 or 773-287-9999

MIDWAY

AREA/63RD

KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol) FALL SPECIAL - Chicago South

Side Beautiful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. $500 gift cert. for Sec 8 tenants. Also Homes for rent available. 773-287-9999. Westside Locations 773-287-4500

FALL SPECIAL $500 Toward Rent Beautiful Studios 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR

Sect. 8 Welc. Westside Loc, Must qualify. Also Homes for Rent available . 773-287-4500 www.wjmngmt.com

CHICAGO - HYDE PARK 5401 S. Ellis.

Studio/1BR Apartments.

1 BR $700-$799

$475-$570/mo.

Call 773-955-5106

CHATHAM CHARMER! S u n n y 1BR, 4 rms, 2nd flr, Heat incl & dbl door sec. $735/mo NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios 708-524-0428. stevensonap starting at $580. No sec dep, move artments.com in fee or app fee. Free heat/hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., LARGE 1 BR hdwd floors, up773-619-0204 dated kitchen, ceiling fan, secure bldg, heat & hot water incl $795 Newly updated, clean furnished /mo + move in fee 773-233-6673 rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212

1 BR $800-$899

LAWNDALE AREA - 1BR, 1BA apt. $525/mo + move-in fee. Utils 2 MONTHS FREE 6600 S. Ingleside, 1 & 2 Bedrooms, $850-$1000 not incl. Call Terry, 773-486-1838.

M-F 9-5:30pm. Saturday, 9-1:30pm. Free heat and Laundry Room, Sec 8 NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $133/wk & up. 773-275-4442 BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

CHICAGO 70TH & King Dr, 1BR, clean, quiet, well maintained bldg, Lndry, Heat incl. Sec. 8 Ok Starting at $720/mo 773-510-9290 7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2

BR $735, Includes Free heat & appliances & cooking gas. (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt 6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200

1 MONTH FREE South Shore Studios $600-$750 Free Heat, Fitness Ctr, Lndry rm. Niki 773.808.

2043 www.livenovo.com

OK. Niki 773.808-2043. www.livenovo.com

1 BR $900-$1099 HOMEWOOD- 1BR new kitchen, new appls, oak flrs, ac, lndry/ stor., $950/mo incls ht/prkg, near Metra. 773.743.4141 Urban Equit ies.com ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT near Loyola Park, 1329 W. Estes.

Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. $925/ month. Available 12/1. 773-761-4318.

ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT near Warren Park. 1902 W. Pratt.

Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Heat included. Laundry in building. Available 12/1. $900/month. 773-761-4318.

E ROGERS PARK: 1800 SF. 3BR / 2BA + den, new kitchen, SS appliances, FDR, $1900/heated, walk to Red Line & Beach 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities.com EDGEWATER 900SFT 1BR, new kit, sunny FDR, vintage builtins, oak flrs, Red Line, $1095/mo heated www.urbanequities.com 773-743-4141

{ { û NO SEC DEP û 6829 S. Perry.

Studio/1BR. $465-$525.

HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

R U O Y AD E R E H REACH OVER

1 MILLION PEOPLE MONTHLY IN PRINT & DIGITAL.

232 E 121ST Pl.

BACK TO SCHOOL SPECIAL - $300 Move in Fee - Nice lrg 1BR $565; 2BR $650 & 1 3BR $800, balcony. Sec 8 Welc.

773-995-6950

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

773-637-5957 7520 S. COLES - 1 BR $520, 2 BR $645, Includes appliances & AC, Near transp., No utilities included (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt

CONTACT US TODAY!

312-222-6920 l

l

NO. SOUTHPORT 1500SF 2BR: new kit w/deck, SS appl, oak flrs, cent heat/AC, lndry $1595+util pkg avail 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities.com E Rogers Park: Deluxe 1BR + den, new kitc., FDR, oak flrs close to beach. $950-1050/heated, 773743-4141 ww.urbanequities.com

1 BR $1100 AND OVER HEART OF RAVENSWOOD

4883 N Paulina, Large 1BR 650SF completely remodeled apartment, brand-new kitchen/bath, new appliances, separate dining-room, ample closet space, floors sanded, painted throughout, mint condition, heat/ cooking gas included. Cable, storage locker, on-site laundry. Near transportation. Must be seen. Available immediately. $1200/mo. First Month Free! No security deposit. Call/text 773-230-3116 or call 773-477-9251, email: herbmalkind@comcast.net

EDGEWATER 1000SF 1BR: new kit, SS appls, quartz ctrs, built-ins, oak flrs, lndry, $1050/ heated 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com

EDGEWATER 2 1/2 RM STUDIO: Full Kit, new appl, dinette, oak flrs, walk-n closets, $850/mo incls ht/gas. Call 773-743-4141 or visit www.urbanequities.com

1 BR OTHER SINGLE ROOM OCCUPANCY

Apartments that offer short-tomedium term affordable housing are available at Casa del Sol, 2008 S. Blue Island Ave. Chicago, IL. We also have Workforce Housing Apartments which offer rents below market rate and affordable to community residents.

Contact the Resurrection Project’s Property Management office at 312-248-8355 or at pm@ resurrectionproject.org to inquire about IMMEDIATE OCCUPANCY!

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. Hot Summer Is Here Cool Off In The Pool OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $795.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000**

APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. SUMMER IS HERE!!

Most units Include..

HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $475.00 1Bdr From $550.00 2Bdr From $745.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000**

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled.

Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. NO MOVE-IN FEE. 1, 2 & 3BR APTS. 917-809-9545

MOST BEAUT. APTS! 6748 Crandon, 2BR, $875. 7727 Colfax, 2BR, $875.

6220 Eberhart, 2 & 3BR, $850-$1150.

7527 Essex, 2BR, $950 773-9478572 / 312-613-4424

1BR $675-700 & 2 BR $775900. Heat included. Move-in fee special. 773-251-6652

RIVERDALE New decor, 1BR, appls, new crpt, heated, A/C, lndry, prkng, no pets, nr Metra. Sec 8 ok. $700. 630480-0638

DON’T MISS OUT on this BEAU-

F PALOS HILLS -REALLY NICE! E 1 bedroom, Heat/water included. Laundry facility. Close to 294 & Rt. 83. Call 708-9744493 CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/ C, laundry, near transportation, $680-$1020/mo. Call 773-2334939 CHICAGO 5301 W POTOMAC 1BR Apartment for rent, Tenant pays heat & gas, newly decorated, Call 773-848-8667

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

NO SECURITY DEPOSIT NO MOVE IN FEE 1, 2, 3 BEDROOM APTS (773) 874-1122 ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

2 BR $1100-$1299 TIFUL Newly remodeled 3BR located in the North Lawndale area. This apartment has ALL the Amenities you NEED: Appliances, Washer Dryer Hook-Up In-Unit, ADT, Parking, Wood Floors, Storage, Secure Parking and Back Yard.

BEAUTIFUL REMODELED 1, 2 & 3BR Apts, hdwd flrs, custom cabinets, avail now. $1000-$1200 /mo + sec. 773-905-8487. Section 8 Ok EVANSTON 2BR, BEAUT. new kit, SS appl, granite, oak flrs, spac.

BRs, OS lndry/storage $1295/incl heat 773-743-4141 urbanequities. com CALUMET PARK, 2BR House, completely remodeled, $1100/mo + security. Tenants pay own utils.

Section 8 ok. 708-388-5701 WEST ROGERS PARK: 2BR, new kit. FDR, new windows, $1295 /heated, 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities.com ELMHURST: Dlx 2BR, n e w appls & carpet, a/c, balcony, $1195 /mo. incl heat, prkg. OS lndry, 773743-4141 www.urbanequities.com

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

$400 Cash Move-In Bonus, No Dep.

BRIDGEPORT MINI LOFT. Two

bedrooms, parking, track lighting, beamed ceiling, exposed brick, tub and shower, close to Red Line. Only $850/ month. video@bestrents.net 773-373-7368.

CHICAGO 7600 S Essex FALL SPECIAL 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! Also Homes for rent available. Call 773-287-9999 Westside Locations 773-287-4500

225 W 108th Pl, 2BR/1BA . 7134 S. Normal, 4BR/2BA. ceiling fans, Ht & appls incl 312-683-5174

HOMEWOOD. 2BR, 1.5BA, Living Room, Dining Room, Kitchen, Finished Basement, 1 Car Garage. Call 708-602-0389 88TH/DAUPHIN. Bright, spa-

cious 2BR & 74th/King. 1BR. Great trans, laundry on site, security camera. 312-341-1950

NEAR BEVERLY Huge 2BR on 1st floor. Sect 8 welcome. Call 312.806.1080.

Chicago, King & 73rd St. , Beautiful 2BR Apt. Newer rehab, new cabinets, $750/mo + heat.

MUST SEE! Call Irma, 847-987-4850 8324 S INGLESIDE 2BR, newly remodeled, laundry, hardwood floors, cable, Sec 8 welcome. $780 /mo. 708-308-1509 or 773-4933500 Chicago, 9121 S. Cottage Grove, 2BR apt. $1250/mo Newly remod, appls, mini blinds, ceiling fans, pkng Sec 8 OK. Free Heat 312-915-0100

7410 S EVANS, 2 BR, 2nd fl, Newly remodeled, must see!

New everything! $950 plus 1 mo sec deposit. 708-474-6520

2 BR $900-$1099 DLX 1ST FLR, 2.5BR, hdwd flrs, ceiling fans, lg LR/DR & ktchen, 3 car gar. 83rd & Maryland. $900, Free heat & appl incl. Sec 8 welc.

773-412-0541 CHICAGO, 74TH & EMERALD, 2nd floor, 2BR Apt, dining room, stove & fridge, enclosed porch w/ closet space. $900/mo. 773-848-1858 2BR nr 83rd/Jeffrey, heat incl, decor FP, hdwd flrs, lots of storage, formal DR, intercom, newly remod kit/ba. $1000. Missy 773-241-9139

NEAR 115TH & HALSTED. 3BR, full fin. bsmt, lndry fac., alarm system ready, private patio, near transp/shops, Sec. 8 welcome. $1400/mo negotiable.

773-678-8654

BRONZEVILLE, 4542 S King Dr. 2nd flr, 3BR, 2BA, hdwd flrs, kitchen, pantry, LR & DR, lots of closets, sun porch, ten pays gas & heat.$1100 +$1200 sec. 773965-1584 aftr 6pm

LINCOLN & BRYN MAWR .

3.5BR, 2nd floor, CAC, new kitchen cabinets & ceramic countertops, hdwd flrs. $1250/mo. water incl.

312-730-0053

CALUMET CITY 3BR, 1.5BA, 3rd flr, crpt, appls, wndw a/c, heat + cooking gas incl, $110 0/mo+$1100 sec. $25 crdt chk fee. 708-955-2122 ALSIP, IL 3 BR/1.5 BA 2 story townhouse for rent. $1100/mo without appliances. $2200 due upon signing. Call Verdell, 219-888-8600 for more info.

BRONZEVILLE 41st/Wabash 3BR, Tenant pays all utils. $1050/mo.

No Pets, sec 8 welcome. $350 non-refundable fee. 312-859-3666

TWO APTS, 7 rms, 3BRs each.

2015 E. 74th St. Heat incl, no pets. $1150/mo.

773-955-3954 700 N. RIDGEWAY. 4BR, hdwd

flrs, new remod, sec 8 OK. $1150/mo.

No Dep for Sec 8. Accept 2 & 3BR vouchers. 773-895-9495

ROBBINS 3 lrg bdrm, 2nd flr Apt for rent. Very quiet area, laundry rm, Senior Discount. $850 + utils.

Section 8 accepted. 708-299-0055 BRONZEVILLE - Lg 3BR, 2BA,

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar

SECTION 8 WELCOME

2 BR UNDER $900

11740 S. LASALLE, 3BR, 1st floor of 2 flat, hdwd flrs, stove, fridge, W/D, Newly remod. $1200 /mo. No Sec Dep. FREE heat.

Will accept 2BR Voucher. Call 773-221-0061

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 SECTION 8 WELCOME Newly Decorated - Heat Incl

77th/Ridgeland. 3BR. $850.

74th/East End. 2BR. $775.

773-874-9637 or 773-493-5359

ADULT SERVICES

wood & crpt flooring , laundry, intercom, heated. 48th/Michigan. $1025 $1050/ mo Call 773-259-5512

BRONZEVILLE: SECTION 8 WELCOME. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. 4841 S Michigan, 3BR apt, appls incl’d, $1200/mo. 708-288-4510.

SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 7721 S Peoria, 3BR apt, appls incl. $1050/mo.

708-288-4510 12415 NORMAL. 4BR w/appls,

11339 S. CALUMET. 3BR, 2nd flr,

fully carpeted, brand new ceramic tile bath, new kit w/tile & counter, elec incl. $1200/mo. 773-519-7011

BUDLONG WOODS, 5500N/ 2600W. Three bedrooms plus, two

levels, DR, spacious LR, 1.5 baths plus, many closets, first floor, near transportation. $1600 includes heat.

Available now. Marty, 773-784-0763.

BEVERLY/MORGAN PARK. 3BR brick ranch house. C/A, $1,500/ mo + 1.5 mo sec dep req. No pets/ smoking, 3BR Voucher Pref.

708-647-9737

WRIGLEYVILLE 1800 SF 3BR, Sun-

ny New Kit, SS appl, deck, close to be ach/ Cubs park, Ldry/storage, One Month Free! $1995/heated 773-7434141 urbanequities.com

W.HUMBOLDT PK 1500W remod spac. 1BR, new kitc/appls, OS lndry, storage. $825-$975 + util NO DEP 773-743-4141 www. urbanequities.com ALBANY PK 3100W 3BR, gran. ctrs, SS appls, wood flrs, OS ldry/ stor. $1495-$1575 + utils NO DEP. 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities. com Wrigleyville 1800 S.F. 3BR, new kit, private deck & yard, FDR, oak floors, sunroom, One Month Free! $1950/ heated 773-743-4141 urbanequities. com

BUDLONG WOODS, 5500

North. 2600 West, 3BR+, dining room,living room, 1.5BA +. $1600/mo incl heat. 773-784-0763

11748 S. BISHOP. 3BR, 2BA, full finished bsmt, 20x20 covered deck, 2.5 car gar, sect 8 welc. $1500 / mo.

708-889-9749 or 708-256-0742

MAYFAIR 1600 SF 3BR, new kit, SS appl, granite, oak flrs, onsite lndy, prkg, $1495/+ util. 773743-4141 www.urbanequities.com

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

ALB PK 1600SF 3BR + den, new kit, SS appl, granite, oak flrs, onsite lndy, $1495/+ util. 773-7434141 www.urbanequities.com

bathroom apartment on the 1 st floor of a classic Chicago Graystone just East of Hyde Park. Hardwood floors throughout apartment with carpeting in bedrooms (no cold feet getting out of bed). Flexible move-in anytime after November 1st . All kitchen appliances included. Washer, dryer, and alarm system is in unit. Back porch for relaxing. Parking in rear or on the street. $1,200/month.

312-420-4136

ADULT SERVICES

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499

1301 W. 71ST PL. 5BR, 1.5BA, fin bsmt, alarm system, appls incl, near schools and trans, no dogs.

Sec 8 OK. Call Roy 312-405-2178

3 BR OR MORE $2500 AND OVER

SOUTH SHORE 6724 S. Chappel

GARY NSA ACCEPTING applications for SECTION 8 STUDIO & 2BR UNITS ONLY. Apply Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10am to 2pm ONLY at 1735 W 5th Ave. Applications are to be filled out on site.

Adult applicants must provide a current picture ID and SS card.

non-residential

Ave. Studio, 1 and 2BRs. Heat incl, nr park and great trans. $525-$875.

708-473-7129

HEALTH & WELLNESS FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90

special. Russian, Polish, Ukrainain girls. Northbrook and Schaumburg locations. 10% discount for new customers. Please call 773-407-7025

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

units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue.

773-685-6868.

South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

CHICAGO, BUSY 110TH & Mich-

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799

bsmt w/ laundry. $1300/mo. 69th/ Wabash. 2BR, bsmt w/laundry. $950. No Sec Dep. 773.568-0053

AMAZING 3 BEDROOM , 1.5

OLYMPIA FIELDS Newly remodeled 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house, full basement. Beautiful area. 708-935-7557.

igan Retail 525-1500 SqFt / $12 SqFt & office suites from $275. Move In Ready. Call Kamm, 773-520-0369

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

SEC 8 OK. 6120 S. Justine, 3BR. $700. 1 mo sec dep. 5045 W. Erie. 2BR Apt, $800. Ten pay utils. 773-220-7070.

Please Leave msg.

roommates SOUTH SHORE, Senior Discount. Male preferred.

Furnished rooms, shared kitchen & bath, $545/mo. & up. Utilities included. 773-710-5431

ROBBINS - 3BR HOUSE, Crestwood Schools. Hdwd flrs,

private fenced bckyrd w/shed, front parking, $1250/mo. Sect 8 Welc 773-895-9495

CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent.

Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail.

Call 708-752-3812 for Westside locations 773-287-4500

CHICAGO HEIGHTS, 4BR, 1BA, NEWLY REMODELED,

APPLS INCL , SECTION 8 OK. NO SEC. DEPOSIT. 708-822-4450

RICHTON PARK 3 - 4BR Ranch.

Sect 8 OK. Call 708-625-7355 for info.

HUMBOLDT PARK -

Huge immaculate 3BR, 1BA close to trans & shops newly remodeled, Sec 8 Welcome 312-519-9771 Markham HOMES FOR RENT

3-5BR. Section 8 preferred.

Call 708-296-6222

GENERAL PARK PLACE APARTMENTS

Located in the West Eldon neighborhood is opening the waiting list for one, two and three bedroom apartment homes. The date of opening is November 14 through November 16th from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm. If you are interested in filing out a pre-application and rental criteria form, please visit our management office at 3630 W. 51st Street, Chicago, IL 60632.

Phone #773-767-7260.

LARGE 3 BEDROOM apartment near Wrigley Field. 3820 N. Fremont.

Two bathrooms. Hardwood Floors.

Cats OK. $2175/month. Special!

Sign a lease starting by December 1, get January rent free! Available 12/1. 773-761-4318.

CHICAGO SOUTH - YOU’VE tried the rest, we are the best.

Apartments & Homes for rent, city & suburb. No credit checks.

773-221-7490, 773-221-7493

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

SEEKING WOMEN WHO HAVE HAD DIABETES DURING PREGNANCY (18-45 years old) Investigators are conducting a research study on improving health outcomes through exercise in women who have had gestational diabetes. For further information about this study, please call or email: Laurie Quinn PhD, RN (312-996-7906 or lquinn1@uic.edu); College of Nursing – University of Illinois at Chicago

MARKETPLACE

GOODS

CLASSICS WANTED ANY CLASSIC CARS IN ANY CONDITION. ’20S, ’30S, ’40S, ’50S, ’60S & ’70S. HOTRODS & EXOTICS! TOP DOLLAR PAID! COLLECTOR. CALL JAMES, 630-201-8122 APARTMENT SALE: Nov. 10, 11, 12, 10am-3pm, 4504 N. Kildare Ave., 2nd Flr, Chicago. Great Deals: Vintage/Collectibles, too much to list! No clothing/toys.

Collectors welcome.

FREON 12 WANTED: Certfied buyers pick up and pay cash for R-12; 312-291-9169; refrigerantfinders.com

legal notices

STATE OF ILLINOIS County of Cook In The Circuit Court For Cook County, Illinois. In the Matter of the Petition of Cheryl Marie Malden, Case# 001077 For Change of Name. Notice of Publication Public Notice is hereby given that on December 18, 2017 at 2:00 PM being one of the return days in the Circuit Court of the County of Cook, I will file my petition in said court praying for the change of my name from CHERYL MARIE MALDEN to that of Cheryl Marie Malden, pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided. Dated at Chicago, Illinois, October 19, 2017, Signature of Petitioner Cheryl Marie Malden

HEALTH & WELLNESS STATE OF ILLINOIS County of

LOOKING FOR PEOPLE WITH

TYPE 1 DIABETES (18-40 years old) Investigators are conducting a research study in people with type 1 diabetes who use insulin pumps to understand how glucose, physical activity and insulin affect each other to help in developing an artificial pancreas. Subjects will be reimbursed for time and travel. For further information about this study, please call or email: Laurie Quinn PhD, RN (312-996-7906 / lquinn1@ uic.edu), UIC-College of Nursing

ADULT SERVICES

Cook In The Circuit Court For Cook County, Illinois. In the Matter of the Petition of JEFFREY RAYNARD SANDERS, Case# 001129 For Change of Name. Notice of Publication Public Notice is hereby given that on December 29 2017 at 10:00 AM being one of the return days in the Circuit Court of the County of Cook, I will file my petition in said court praying for the change of my name from JEFFREY RAYNARD SANDERS to that of Jeffrey Raynard Sanders, pursuant to the statute in such case made and provided. Dated at Chicago, Illinois, October 31, 2017, Signature of Petitioner Jeffrey Raynard Sanders

ADULT SERVICES

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

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NOVEMBER 9, 2017 | CHICAGO READER 39

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STRAIGHT DOPE

By Cecil Adams Q : Do supergeniuses still exist? The

world has more people, so there should be more Newtons and Einsteins than ever, but I can’t think of many today like that. —WESLEY CLARK, VIA THE STRAIGHT

SLUG SIGNORINO

WIN F R E E E TS TICK

DOPE MESSAGE BOARD

A : Wesley, honestly. Have you never heard of Stephen Hawking? He’d rank high on any list of supergeniuses. And of course there can be only one superdupergenius, namely me.

Still, times being what they are, I can appreciate wanting more depth on the supergenius bench. To understand why the breed is rare, let’s look at supergeniuses of the past.

Newton and Einstein were geniuses pretty much by acclaim, up there with other favorites like Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Galileo, Mozart, and Beethoven. And how about Charles Darwin? He basically created our modern understanding of evolution—giving us, in natural selection, a sui generis theory that could only have issued from a singular mind. Right?

Well, no. Another guy, biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, came up with roughly the same idea independently of Darwin around the same time; the two subsequently copublished a paper. But despite some latter-day attempts to correct the historical record, few today have heard of poor Wallace. Darwin, moreover, was by his own account no great thinker.

What I’m getting at is that whatever we’re calling “genius” is a blurry concept that comprises not just smarts but creativity, timing, and star-making PR. In its original formulation, genius was thought by the ancient Romans to be a unique talent everyone was born with.

More recently, IQ testing has led it to be associated with quantifiable intelligence, though of course one doesn’t guarantee the other.

Just ask William James Sidis, a child prodigy once considered by some the smartest man ever. (I wasn’t born yet.) Sidis, who went to Harvard at age 11, produced no great work that we know of and died in obscurity in 1944, at 46.

Einstein was the complete package: a highIQ fellow who was exceptionally creative and productive—famously, in a single year he produced four papers that changed physics forever. You’ve stumbled, actually, on a point of some anxiety in the sciences today, where future Einsteins aren’t assured. Why not? A few ideas: The disciplines are settled. The supergeniuses we recognize today created their fields

(Galileo) or revolutionized them (Einstein).

Psychologist Dean Keith Simonton argues that for a century no disciplines have been created wholesale; rather, they have combined with existing fields into hybrid forms: astrophysics, biochemistry. “It is difficult to imagine that scientists have overlooked some phenomenon worthy of its own discipline,” Simonton writes.

“Future advances are likely to build on what is already known rather than alter the foundations of knowledge.”

It takes more work to do that building. The lower-hanging fruit having been picked, would-be supergeniuses now must spend more time acquiring the background knowledge needed to make higher-order discoveries. A 2005 study of noted inventors and Nobel laureates found the mean age for making significant discoveries had increased six years over a century.

The implications of today’s discoveries are more abstruse and so get less public exposure.

Einstein’s work led to the atom bomb. Today, consider the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle”—key to understanding the universe.

Incredible stuff? Yes. Immediately consequential? No. Science today demands teamwork. One guy theorized the existence of the Higgs, but it took thousands of very smart people—not to mention a series of increasingly enormous particle accelerators—nearly five decades to prove it. As our pursuits get more complex, that’s increasingly what discovery looks like: teams of experts searching doggedly for answers, rather than one big brain flying solo.

So as much as the singular genius has given us, he’s increasingly anachronistic—but we’ll make do without. In fact, the towering intellects of legend may not be particularly well suited to the present day.

Most, anyways. I’ve got no plans to retire. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.

l

l

SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

Daddy issues

Can a two-daddy poly relationship work? Plus: Don’t call me Dad! Q : I’m a 40-year-old bi man.

I’ve been with my 33-yearold bi wife for three years and married for one. When we first met, she made it clear that she was in a longterm “Daddy” relationship with an older man. I figured out six months later that her “Daddy” was her boss and business partner. He is married, and his wife does not know. I struggled with their relationship, since I identify as open but not poly. Eight months later, she ended things with him because it was “logically right” for us (her words).

But she cheated with him four times over the course of two years.

In all other aspects, our relationship is the greatest one I’ve ever had. I do not doubt her love for me. My wife has met her biological father only a couple of times and her stepfather died when she was 16—the same year she went to work for her “Daddy.” Their nonwork relationship started ten years later, when she was 26.

It’s a complex relationship, and he isn’t going anywhere, as they now own a business together. While I don’t think cheating has to be a relationship ender, dishonesty always has been for me.

The final complication: I have a cuckold fetish. I believe it might be possible to meet everyone’s needs, so long as everyone is honest. I will admit that, in the heat of passion, my wife and I have talked about her having “two daddies.” Do I consider allowing this, so long as everyone is honest? Is mixing business and personal matters going to blow up in our faces? Do I ignore the part of my brain that wants this guy’s wife to know?

—DISTRESSED ABOUT DECEITFUL DYNAMICS INVOLVING ENTANGLED SPOUSE

A : You don’t need my

permission to consider this arrangement—you’re clearly already considering it. What you want, DADDIES, is my permission to do this.

Permission granted. Could it all come to shit? Anything and everything could come to shit. But your wife has been fucking this guy the entire time you’ve been together, and you nevertheless regard this relationship as the greatest you’ve ever had. It stands to reason that if things were great when she was honest with you about fucking her boss (at the start) and remained great despite being dishonest with you about fucking her boss (the last two years), you three are in a good position to make this work now that everything is out in the open.

As for your other concerns: Most of the poly people I know started out as either monogamous or “open but not poly” (people evolve), we find out about secret workplace romances only when they blow up (skewed samples make for skewed perceptions), and you need more info about the other man’s wife before you issue an ultimatum or pick up the phone yourself (their marriage could be companionate, they could have agreed to a DADT arrangement regarding affairs, etc etc). But again, DADDIES, what you’re basically asking is if something that seems to be working in practice might actually work in practice. And I’m thinking it could.

Q : I’m a 31-year-old gay

man who looks 45. Most men interested in me are surprisingly up-front about expressing their desire to include a father-son element.

Even men older than me call me “daddy” unprompted.

I try not to be judgmental,

but this repulses me. People with other kinks establish mutual interest and obtain consent in advance. Why aren’t I given the same consideration when it comes to incest role-play?

And where does this come from? Were all these men molested by their fathers?

—DESPERATELY AVOIDING DISCUSSING DISGUSTING INCEST

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A : Whoa, DADDI. Just as

gay men who call themselves or their partners “boy” don’t mean “minor” and aren’t fantasizing about child rape, gay men who call themselves or their partners “daddy” don’t mean “biological father” and aren’t fantasizing about father-son incest.

“Daddy” is an honorific that eroticizes a perceived age and/or experience gap.

If it bugs you, you should say so, and your partners should immediately knock that “daddy” shit off. But you shouldn’t assume every gay guy who calls you “daddy” is into incest and/or was molested by his bio dad.

Think about it this way, DADDI: When a straight woman calls her man “baby,” no one thinks, “OMG! She’s into raping babies!” When a straight guy says he picked up a “hot girl,” no one thinks he’s talking about a sexy fourth-grader. When Vice President Mike Pence calls his wife “mommy,” no one thinks . . . Well, Pence might be a bad example. (That man is clearly a freak.) But my point still stands: pet names—used casually or during sex—aren’t to be taken literally. v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. v @fakedansavage

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Godspeed You! Black Emperor 3/18-19, 8 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM, 18+ Noah Gundersen 1/27, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 11/10, 11 AM b Glen Hansard 3/18, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Amy Helm & the Handsome Strangers 1/27, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM b James Hill 2/3, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Cody Johnson 1/13, 8:30 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont Syleena Johnson 2/23, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/9, noon b Theo Katzman 3/10, 9 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM, 17+ Stephen Kellogg 3/15, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/9, noon b Dermot Kennedy 3/10, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM, 17+ Stacey Kent 2/10, 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM b Kodak Black 12/7, 7 PM, Portage Theater, 17+ Sonny Landreth 2/9, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM b Lucius, Ethan Gruska 3/13, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 11/10, noon b Bruno Major 2/27, 9 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM Tom Misch 4/26, 8 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM, 17+ Mustard Plug, Koffin Kats, Eclectics 11/29, 8 PM, Subterranean Carrie Newcomer 1/27, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b

42 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 9, 2017

Mark Olson 12/16, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Phillip Phillips 4/6, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM b Portugal. The Man 2/16, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Premiata Forneria Marconi 5/8, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Chase Rice, Walker Hayes 12/14, 8:15 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont Randy Rogers Band 2/2, 8:30 PM, Joe’s Bar Romantics, A Flock of Seagulls 12/13, 7:30 PM, Joe’s Bar Snail Mail 1/19, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Sons of the Silent Age 1/6, 8 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM, 18+ Mavis Staples 2/3, 8 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM, 18+ Superorganism 3/28, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Trippie Redd 11/22, 6 PM, Portage Theater b Umphrey’s McGee 1/14, 7 PM, Park West b Kate Voegele & Tyler Hilton 1/13, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM b J. Roddy Walston & the Business 2/2, 9 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 11/10, 9 AM, 18+ We Banjo 3, Talisk 3/14, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/9, noon b Weezer, Pixies, Wombats 7/7, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM Drake White & the Big Fire 12/8, 8:30 PM, Joe’s Bar Why? 3/3, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Marlon Williams 3/8, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 11/10, 10 AM

Asleep at the Wheel 12/1, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Jessica Aszodi 12/10, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Dan Auerbach & the Easy Eye Sound Revue, Shannon & the Clams 4/2, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Barely Alive, Virtual Riot 11/24, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Big Brave 12/11, 9 PM, Empty Bottle F Black Marble 12/12, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Broncho 12/2, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Cannibal Corpse, Power Trip, Gatecreeper 11/24, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Chikamorachi 12/13, 9 PM, Hideout Kelly Clarkson, Andy Grammer 12/5, 7:30 PM, Rosemont Theater, Rosemont b Clean Bandit 4/11, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Destroyer, Mega Bog 1/20, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Districts 12/9, 9 PM, Empty Bottle EMA 11/18, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Emancipator Ensemble 2/9, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Enslaved, Wolves in the Throne Room 2/23, 7 PM, Metro, 18+ Sam Feldt 12/2, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Flosstradamus 12/27, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Foster the People, Cold War Kids 12/1, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom b G Herbo 11/24, 6:30 PM, Portage Theater b Liam Gallagher 11/21, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Bebel Gilberto 12/19-20, 8 PM, City Winery b Hatebreed 12/3, 7 PM, Metro, 18+ Peter Hook & the Light 5/4, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Hotelier 11/16, 6 PM, Cobra Lounge b Igorrr 2/6, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Inquisition, Nader Sadek 12/9, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Jackopierce 11/19, 7 PM, City Winery b Jay-Z 12/5, 8 PM, United Center Killers 1/16, 7:30 PM, United Center Alex Lahey 11/24, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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Lorde 3/27, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Macabre 12/23, 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Majid Jordan 2/21, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Marked Men 12/8, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Mayday 11/27, 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre b Rhett Miller, Matthew Ryan 11/30, 8 PM, City Winery b Neck Deep 2/12, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Needtobreathe 12/9, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Nerves, Dishes 12/29, 9 PM, Empty Bottle No Age, Melkbelly, Little Junior 1/20, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Angel Olsen 12/9, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Orchestral Movements in the Dark 3/16, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ A Perfect Circle 11/24, 8 PM, UIC Pavilion Pink Spiders 12/15, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Rapsody 12/10, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Real Friends, Knuckle Puck 12/29, 6 PM, Metro b Ritual Howls 11/19, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Scarface 12/8, 8 PM, Portage Theater, 17+ Secret Sisters 12/4, 8 PM, City Winery b Sam Smith 8/15, 8 PM, United Center St. Vincent 1/12, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b They Might Be Giants 3/17, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 14+ Tune-Yards 3/3, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Chad VanGaalen 12/2, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Vinyl Theatre 11/29, 7 PM, Beat Kitchen b Wallows 2/22, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall b Wax Fang 12/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Weather Station 12/2, 9 PM, Hideout Wedding Present 3/26, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall White Buffalo 12/2, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ “Weird Al” Yankovic 4/6-7, 8 PM, the Vic b Yumi Zouma 1/17, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Yung Lean & Sad Boys 1/31, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Zombies 3/19-20, 8 PM, City Winery b v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene IF THERE’S anything Eternals front man Damon Locks isn’t good at, Gossip Wolf doesn’t know about it—dude is not only a great musician but also a fine visual artist, a fun dancer, an inspiring teaching artist, and a dependable dance-floor DJ! On Friday, November 10, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, he’ll craft a “sound essay” titled Right On, Be Free as part of the evolving installation Open 24 Hours

by Chicago artist Edra Soto. According to Locks, Right On, Be Free will “describe the American black experience through music across genres. It may sound a bit more sound collage-y, but you will still be able to enjoy the songs. I may incorporate samplers and drum machines too.” The event is free with museum admission.

Gossip Wolf dare not call it conspiracy, but on Saturday, November 11, local supergroup Masonic Wave make their live debut, opening for Cherubs at the Empty Bottle (along with Sweet Cobra and Rash). The band’s members all have long pedigrees in Chicago rock: vocalist Bruce Lamont (Bloodiest, Yakuza), bassist Arman Mabry (Rabid Rabbit, Buckingham Palace SVU), baritone guitarist Scott Spidale (My Cold Dead Hand), guitarist Sean Hulet (the Reputation), and drummer Clayton DeMuth (Sybris). Mabry says the band “blends elements of 90s noise and postrock with shoegaze. Things tend to get pretty heavy.” Let’s hope they take that heaviness to the 33rd degree!

Over the past couple years, Gossip Wolf has watched troubadour Deanna Belos, aka Sincere Engineer, rise through the ranks of the Chicago punk scene. Last month independent local punk label Red Scare Industries released her debut fulllength, Rhombithian, where she builds on her nervy acoustic sound with a full band.

Belos usually plays solo, but she’s rounded up some friends to back her for Sincere Engineer’s belated record-release show at Township on Friday, November 10; the Brokedowns, the Usuals, and Two Houses open. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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Bleachers THIS SUNDAY! NOVEMBER 12

NOV. 11 RIVIERA SHOW IS SOLD OUT!

SPECIAL GUEST:

WESLEY STACE

(John Wesley Harding)

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 25

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17

MAVIS S E L P A ST SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM! SPECIAL GUEST:

NICKI BLUHM FRIDAY & SATURDAY APRIL 13 & 14

ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM! JOHNNYSWIM – Friday, Nov. 10-SOLD OUT! • TURNPIKE TROUBADOURS – Saturday, Nov. 11 -SOLD OUT! • HOODIE ALLEN – Nov. 16 JOHN MCLAUGHLIN/JIMMY HERRING – Nov. 17-18 -SOLD OUT! • ILIZA SHLESINGER – Friday, Dec. 1 • DAMIEN ESCOBAR – Saturday, Dec 2 RHETT & LINK – Saturday, Dec. 9 -SOLD OUT! • THE IRREPLACEABLES TOUR –Dec. 17 • FELIPE ESPARZA –Friday, Jan. 12 BIG HEAD TODD & THE MONSTERS Jan. 19 & 20 • BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB – Saturday, Feb. 10 • VALERIE JUNE –Feb. 15 HIPPO CAMPUS – Friday, Feb. 16 • MAJID JORDAN – Feb. 21 • CELEBRATING DAVID BOWIE –Friday, Feb. 23 • BIANCA DEL RIO – Saturday, Feb. 24 OMD – Friday, Mar. 16 • THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS –Saturday, Mar. 17 • PUDDLES PITY PARTY –Friday, Mar. 23 • DIXIE DREGS –Saturday, Mar. 24 “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC – April 6 & 7 • CLEAN BANDIT – April 11 • STEVEN WILSON – May 1 & 2 • ANDREW W.K. –May 12 • THE KOOKS –May 30

GRACE VANDERWAAL – Nov. 15 - Sold Out! • TRAVELIN’ MCCOURYS-CHICAGO JAM –Nov. 19 RUGGEDLY JEWISH-BOB GARFIELD – Dec. 9 • BRENDAN & JAKE HOLIDAY SHOW – Friday, Dec. 15 - Sold Out! JON MCLAUGHLIN – Friday, Dec. 22 • LEFTOVER SALMON / INFAMOUS STRINGDUSTERS – Feb. 16 & 17 • THE DARKNESS – April 11

BUY TICKETS AT NOVEMBER 9, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 43

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THIS TUESDAY! NOVEMBER 14

SEVEN DAVIS JR. PBDY

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17

SPECIAL GUEST:

NOVEMBER 21 LIAMGALLAGHER.COM

HERON OBLIVION SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9

SPECIAL GUEST:

NOVEMBER 29

BLEACHERS –Saturday, Nov. 11-SOLD OUT! • MORRISSEY –Saturday, Nov. 25 • GREENSKY BLUEGRASS –Friday & Saturday, Dec. 29-30 & NEW YEAR’S EVE-Dec. 31 • STICK FIGURE –Friday, Jan. 19 • BLACK VEIL BRIDES / ASKING ALEXANDRIA –Jan. 20 • MILKY CHANCE –Jan. 26 BØRNS –Saturday, Jan. 27 -SOLD OUT! • MØ/CASHMERE CAT – Feb. 2 • MARILYN MANSON –Feb. 6 • JOE RUSSO’S ALMOST DEAD –Saturday, Feb. 17 • ROBERT PLANT AND THE SENSATIONAL SPACE SHIFTERS –Feb. 20-SOLD OUT! • GLEN HANSARD –Mar. 18 • DAN AUERBACH –April 2

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