Print Issue of November 16, 2017 (Volume 47, Number 7)

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 1 6 , 2 0 1 7

Dockless bike-share companies want to dock in Chicago. 9 Low-profile sushi spot Raisu raises the bar for raw fish. 30

A history of the bitter, nearly 200-year rivalry between Chicago and the rest of Illinois

By EDWARD MCCLELLAND 10

2 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 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 1 6 , 2 0 1 7 | V O L U M E 4 7, N U M B E R 7

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FEATURES

IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda The play Significant Other, stand-up James Adomian, the film Mudbound, and more recommended goings-on about town

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 ----------------------------------------------------------------

CITY LIFE

7 Shop Window Wear your art on your sleeve with the help of new Logan Square emporium Flair.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE 9 Transportation Dockless bike-share providers are courting Chicago, sparking concerns about street clutter, equity, and Divvy disruption.

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER BEST SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD

ARTS & CULTURE

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ON THE COVER: ILLUSTRATION BY JUSTIN SANTORA. FOR MORE OF HIS WORK, GO TO JUSTINSANTORA.COM.

22 Shows of note Circuit des Yeux, Aminé, Pere Ubu, and more of the week’s best 29 In Rotation Current musical obsessions include Godflesh, WVVX 103.1 FM, Car Bomb, and more

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20 Movies In Wonder, a deformed child isn’t the only flawed character.

21 Movies Frances McDormand channels God’s wrath in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

21 Movies A young Pole battles Nazis and madness in The Third Part of the Night.

POLITICS

Downstate hate

15 Theater Intersectionality meets the workplace comedy in Tanya Saracho’s Fade.

15 Dance Lose yourself in the Seldoms’ The Making.

16 Dance Orpheus meets Clue in Rooming House.

17 Lit & Performance Manual Cinema turns Gwendolyn Brooks into poetry magic.

A history of the bitter, nearly 200-year rivalry between Chicago and the rest of Illinois—and how it’s become so tilted in the city’s favor that some downstaters want to secede

BY EDWARD MCCLELLAND 10 18 Visual Art The radical nature of Faith Wilding’s fantastical watercolors

30 Restaurant review: Raisu The low-profile sushi spot in Irving Park might help you miss Katsu a little less.

33 Booze Rhine Hall releases beerbarreled bierschnaps distilled from Bourbon County Stout.

CLASSIFIEDS

34 Jobs 34 Apartments & Spaces 35 Marketplace 36 Straight Dope Is there a general consensus on aspartame’s health effects?

37 Savage Love How to help a woman who’s never had an orgasm 38 Early Warnings Jeff Lynne’s ELO, Screaming Females, U2, and more shows to know about in the weeks to come 38 Gossip Wolf Nebraska native Charlie Curtis-Beard drops his second full-length, Existentialism on Lake Shore Drive, and other music news.

NOVEMBER 16, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 3

AGENDA R

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F the curtain to observe the magic as it’s being conjured, enriching this portrait of the multifaceted Brooks: by allowing the puppeteers’, musicians’, and actors’ labors to be visible, it simultaneously demonstrates how a work of art is made while paying tribute to the woman who inspired the artists’ labors. By the end it becomes a portrait of Chicago as much as one of Gwendolyn Brooks. Not to be missed; admission is first come, first served. —DMITRY SAMAROV 11/1711/19: Fri-Sat 6:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Cindy Pritzker Auditorium, Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State, 312-7474300, manualcinema.com. F

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The Belle of Amherst Here’s the problem: the intense inner life suggested by Emily Dickinson’s poems makes her an intriguing subject for theatrical exploration, yet her nearly complete lack of an outer life renders her hard to dramatize.

In this 1976 solo piece, playwright William Luce tried to turn the problem itself into a source of momentum. We first meet Dickinson near the end of her 55 years, living in almost complete seclusion—but cheerful, even perky about it. She bakes, cultivates eccentricity, savors words, and utters stirring transcendentalist notions. The rest of the two hours is designed to keep us engaged by exposing the suffering beneath her bonhomie. Accordingly, Kate Fry’s Emily is charming at the start, lacerating at the end. But neither she nor director Sean Graney can move us reliably through the long middle.

The poet’s duality is most dynamically expressed, it turns out, by Arnel Sancianco’s set: a pristine bedroom surrounded by a ruined house. —TONY ADLER Through 12/3: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, 773-753-4472, courttheatre.org, $50-$68.

Breath, Boom Grimly authentic R performances fuel Eclipse Theatre’s potent production of Kia

Corthron’s bleak, sometimes brutal Breath, Boom. Written in an expressionist idiom that juxtaposes terse, fragmented dialogue with ecstatic monologues, the drama focuses on Prix, a black girl from a Bronx public housing project. Corthron chronicles her protagonist’s life from 1986, when she’s the ruthless and feared teenage leader of an all-female gang, to 2000, when she’s a 30-year-old ex-con, working as cook on the 5 AM shift at a Burger King and augmenting her minimum-wage income by peddling drugs and food stamps. Raped when she was five by her mother’s boyfriend—whose spirit continues to haunt Prix even after his death—Prix is a victim turned victimizer, whose anger and pain at her emotional core are in constant

dramatics to make things compelling— just an ensemble of actors who can sing and speak the truth. Director Ilesa Duncan assembles exactly the right cast for this thrilling Pegasus Theatre production (a revival of her 1998 Chicago premiere) and steers them through sagas both horrifying and heartwarming without a false moment. If it weren’t for the slapdash set, it would be a masterpiece. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 12/10: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM (no show Thu 11/23), Sun 3 PM, Pegasus in Residence at Chicago Dramatists, 773 N. Aberdeen, pegasustheatrechicago.org, $30, $25 seniors, $18 students.

conflict with the intelligence and fleeting joy she reveals as she describes her dream of creating the ultimate rainbow fireworks display. As Prix, Eclipse ensemble member BrittneyLove Smith is like a clenched fist primed to explode into violent force. The equally excellent supporting cast under Mignon McPherson Stewart’s direction includes Elana Elyce as Prix’s mother, aching for a reconnection with the estranged daughter she’s hurt. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 12/17: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM (no show Thu 11/23), Sun 2 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, eclipsetheatre. com, $35, $25 students and seniors.

Death and the Maiden (La R Muerte y la Doncella) Late at night, Gerardo gets a flat, and jovial Dr.

Miranda stops to assist. Gerardo invites him home, where his wife, Paulina, quickly becomes convinced the doctor oversaw her torture as a political prisoner years ago, although she never saw his face. Thus Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman launches his taut, harrowing, and intermittently contrived psychological thriller, with Paulina taking Miranda captive to try him for his crimes. Director Sándor Menéndez’s cast of Auguijón Theater regulars navigate Dorfman’s minefield with fiery precision, building exquisite tension that’s marred only occasionally by jarring lighting shifts.

While the English supertitles fell out of sync several times on opening night, you don’t need to know Spanish to appreciate the captivating nuance in Marcela Muñoz’s force-of-nature performance as Paulina. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 12/10: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 6 PM, Aguijón Theater, 2707 N. Laramie, 773-637-5899, aguijontheater.org, $24, $15 students and educators.

let-free” alternative to other Nutcrackers around town. With pointe shoes aside, it’s chock-full of drama and surprisingly dark, tracking Clara and her parents’ grieving process following the death of her brother Fritz, a soldier. Haley Seda shines as Clara, exploring and inhabiting a complicated range of emotions, from abject sadness to imaginative delight when her toys come to life to save Christmas. Under Chris Matthews’s direction, the lighthearted moments are equally compelling and heartwarming, including a Christmas cookie mess in the kitchen and the toys’ first experience of snow. And the fun isn’t just for the kids, with Uncle Drosselmeyer playing the pivotal role in ensuring Clara’s magical fantasy (or is it reality?) reaches its climactic moments with the evil Rat King.

—MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 12/30: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 and 7 PM, Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 773-769-3832, thehousetheatre. com, $30-$50.

R

Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery Dramatically, there’s not much to Shay Youngblood’s 1988 play. Twentysomething Daughter spends two hours remembering wise, loving, and harrowing stories told to her by the half-dozen black women who raised her in a small southern town in the 1960s, stories reenacted by those very women.

But with such carefully observed, artfully orchestrated tales of survival in Jim Crow America, Youngblood needs no

fascinating, complex comic hero, Jordan, a guy who at times comes off like a standard-issued lovable nebbish but at other times is so willfully blind and self-absorbed we want to give him a good hard pinch. That Alex Weisman is able to play all sides of Jordan, the comic and the tragic, as he slowly, painfully, but finally grows up, speaks volumes about his skills as an actor, and about the solidity of the cast director Keira Fromm has surrounded him with—there’s not a misstep or misplayed moment in the whole glorious production. Amanda Drinkall, in particular, kills us softly as the BFF who finds she must break free from the intensely needy Jordan to live her own life. —JACK HELBIG Through 12/9: Wed-Sat 7:30 PM (no shows Wed 11/22-Thu 11/23), Sun 3 PM; also Sat 11/25, 12/3, and 12/9, 3 PM; Sun 11/26, 3 PM; and Tue 12/5, 7:30 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, aboutfacetheatre. com, $28-$38. ’Twas the Night Before ChristR mas Truth be told, caffeinated and focused at 10 AM as I was, I’m not

sure I followed all the twists and turns in this 45-minute North Pole adventure from Emerald City Theatre, which features Jewish elves, mischievous mice, and villainous, rapier-wielding capitalist knights, with a couple of hip-hop numbers for good measure. But the youngest kids in attendance didn’t seem to mind the abstruse plotting; rather, they were captivated by the cartoonish,

No Blue Memories: The Life of R Gwendolyn Brooks The Poetry Foundation presents Eve L. Ewing and

Nate Marshall’s collaborative ode to the life of Chicago’s preeminent poet. A multimedia production that mixes Manual Cinema’s unique shadow puppetry with poetic recitations, storytelling, and original music composed by Jamila and Ayanna Woods, this is a tough show to describe but a very easy one to love.

The show lets the audience behind

’Twas the Night Before Christmas ò EMERALD CITY THEATRE

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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of November 16

For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda.

Stand Up Comedy Show at the Den Theatre The name says it all. Tonight this recurring showcase features Sydney Davis Jr., a comic whose Amazon Prime stand-up special Wasted (Potential) comes out later this month. Sat 11/18, 10 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, thedentheatre. com, $7.

friendly-faced, very watchable group of heroes (Kirra Silver, Alejandro Tey, Nora Lise Ulrey) bumbling their way through Santa’s workshop. Glimmers of holiday magic shine through the farce, directed by Jacqueline Stone, but parents should take note that the material skews toward the low end of the recommended age range of three to 13. —DAN JAKES Through 12/31: Wed 10 AM (no shows 11/29 and 12/13), Fri 10 AM (no shows 11/17 and 12/1), Sat-Sun 10 AM; also Tue 12/9 and 12/26, 10 AM, Broadway Playhouse, 175 E. Chestnut, 800-775-2000, broadwayinchicago. com, $16-$45.

Youth Group: A Skit Comedy Show Jonny Nelson draws on his own experience growing up in an evangelical community to inform this late-night satirical two-man sketch and improv set at iO’s cozy Chris Farley Cabaret. Directed by Jess Mitolo, Nelson and Eli Weatherby lampoon the innocuous-seeming candy trail laid down by cheerful youth pastors that leads to a rapturous, fear-inducing worldview. In impersonating a couple of overzealous young ministers, the duo here fall back on what NPR’s Stephen Thompson calls “loud grotesques,” delivering broad jokes and mookish, physical types. When things quiet down, though, the pair can get rivetingly weird, as they do in a short sketch about a kid hypnotized into a trance by his devilish TV set. —DAN JAKES Through 11/25: Sat 10:30 PM, iO Theater, the Mission Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com/chicago, $14.

DANCE

LIT & LECTURES

Rooming House This synthesis of theater and dance cocreated by Julia Rhoads (Lucky Plush Productions) and Leslie Buxbaum Danzig begins with an onstage conversation (in both Spanish and English), then spins out into a movement piece inspired by the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. See review, page 16. Through 11/18: Wed-Sat 8 PM, Steppenwolf Theatre, 1700 Theatre, 1700 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, luckyplush. com, $40, $30 seniors and military, $15 students.

Paula Carter No Relation, the new memoir by Carter, is a collection of essays about raising, then losing two sons she’s not biologically related to after she and their father separate.

Tonight is the book’s release event. Fri 11/17, 7 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299, womenandchildrenfirst.com.

James Adomian

COMEDY R

James Adomian This excellent impressionist and astute humorist brings a cast of characters and absurd jokes to the Lincoln Lodge. Local comic Terence Hartnett opens. 11/17-11/18: Fri 8 PM, Sat 8 and 10 PM, Lincoln Lodge, 956 W. Newport, 773-251-1539, thelincolnlodge.com, $20.

Stand By Your Band Stand-up comics Tom Thakker and Tommy McNamara fly in for the first-ever live taping of their podcast Stand By Your Band. In each episode, the duo are joined by a comic who defends the merit of an “uncool” band—they’ve tackled Coldplay and Limp Bizkit in the past. This live event features comedy, discussions about shameful songs the comics love, and a search for the worst song on Spotify.

Wed 11/22, 8 PM, Under the Gun Theater, 956 W. Newport, 773-270-3440, undertheguntheater.com, $10.

The Moth Mainstage StorytellR ing group the Moth are famous for inviting audience members to share real stories, usually for the first time publicly. This visit to Chicago will feature some of their best. Thu 11/16, 7:30 PM, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, 312-334-7777, harristheaterchicago.org, $35-$45.

BPM (Beats Per Minute) The R confrontational tactics of ACT UP Paris in the 1990s offer lessons for

Caroline Wells Chandler’s exhibit “Orange Sunshine” is on view at Andrew Rafacz Gallery ò BRIAN GRIFFIN

lery, 835 W. Washington, 312-404-9188, andrewrafacz.com.

MOVIES More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS Bitch Marianna Palka wrote, directed, and plays the title role in this horror satire about a selfish suburban family whose stay-at-home mom begins to take on the characteristics of a stray dog in the neighborhood, barking, growling, and leaving feces around the house. Regrettably the film is less about this character, who spends most of her screen time in a shadowy basement acting like Cujo, than about her philandering husband (Jason Ritter), so ill-equipped to parent their four children that he enlists his sister-in-law (Jaime King) to handle the situation. The father is unsympathetic, the kids are uninteresting, and the sister-in-law is unnecessary, so the mother’s absence from her own story becomes glaring. The tone oscillates between crude horror, mirthless black comedy, and unearned sentiment. —LEAH PICKETT 96 min. Fri 11/17-Wed 11/22. Facets Cinematheque.

Brimstone & Glory This lively, R colorful documentary surveys the National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico, a town supported by fireworks manufacturing and highly attuned to the power and danger of flame. As part of the festival, townsmen erect giant wooden towers festooned with fireworks, and no Hollywood action film could equal the excitement of the footage shot with GoPro camera helmets as they climb more than 100 feet up the towers, which are held in place only by ropes. Townspeople also construct papier-mache bulls the size of trucks, decorate them with fireworks, and parade them through the streets, dancing as close to the sparks and flame as they can stand. Fireworks production is a risky business—in one shot an old man fashions little spherical bombs, one of his hands a stump and the other missing its thumb—but still the craft is handed down over generations.

One boy confesses that he doesn’t µ

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On the Wall Karen Reimer’s installation piece reflects the history and architecture of the Bucktown and Wicker Park neighborhoods. This exhibit is part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Through 1/31/18.

Tue-Sat 11 AM-6 PM. Monique Meloche Gallery, 2154 W. Division, 773-252-0299, moniquemeloche.com.

Orange Sunshine Queer artist Caroline Wells Chandler’s crocheted wall hangings depict a range of gender-nonconforming figures subverting conventionally signified identities such as cowboy or athlete. Through 12/23. Tue-Fri 11 AM-6 PM, Sat 11 AM-5 PM. Andrew Rafacz Gal-

today’s nonviolent protesters and human rights strategists, though politics never eclipses eros in this vibrant French drama about love at the height of the AIDS pandemic. A seasoned radical with HIV (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) and a low-key activist in good health (Arnaud Valois) bond as the group battles homophobia, government indifference, religious conservatism, and Big Pharma.

Director Robin Campillo, a cowriter on Laurent Cantet’s social realist films The Class and Time Out, devotes significant screen time to philosophical debate but also appeals to the senses with graphic sex and a throbbing techno score by Arnaud Rebotini. In French with subtitles. —ANDREA GRONVALL 142 min. Fri 11/17-Tue 11/21, 1:45 and 7 PM; Wed 11/22, 1:45 PM; and Thu 11/23, 7 PM. Music Box.

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AGENDA make her rent in New York City takes a high-paying job to “look pretty” at a party that turns out to be a sinister underground game for the city’s haut monde. Asensio uses the film’s first half to generate empathy for her character and explain why this rational woman might show up to a mysterious and potentially dangerous job, but lengthy sequences of her babysitting two spoiled brats and getting lost on the way to the secret affair grow tedious. The second half is chilling and well directed, culminating in a high-wire act of a finale.

—LEAH PICKETT 80 min. Fri 11/17Wed 11/22. Facets Cinematheque.

November 17 - 22

Fri., 11/17 at 2 pm & 8:30 pm; Sat., 11/18 at 4:30 pm & 6:15 pm; Sun., 11/19 at 5:30 pm; Mon., 11/20 at 8 pm; Tue., 11/21 at 8:30 pm; Wed., 11/22 at 6 pm

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Mudbound B like the work, but his father keeps at him; near the end of the movie the boy turns up again, holding his palm above a sparkler. Viktor Jakovleski directed. In Spanish with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 67 min. Fri 11/17, 2 and 8:30 PM; Sat 11/18, 4:30 and 6:15 PM; Sun 11/19, 5:30 PM; Mon 11/20, 8 PM; Tue 11/21, 8:30 PM; and Wed 11/22, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

The Divine Order In Switzerland women were denied the vote until 1971, a situation dramatized in this cogent, earnest feature from writer-director Petra Volpe. A housewife and mother of two boys (Marie Leuenberger) joins a group of “women’s libbers” and catches on to the sexual revolution of the 60s that has mainly bypassed their conservative village, where a forceful anti-suffragist matron hosts meetings for piggish men and their silent wives and endorses “God’s plan” for women to stay at home. Volpe’s most effective scenes are those that expose the community’s hypocrisy (like the one in which the heroine discovers the dirty magazines of her misogynistic father-in-law). Despite some awkward attempts at broad comedy, the film works as an uncomplicated reminder of what can happen when disenfranchised women speak up. In English and subtitled Italian, German, and Swiss German.

—LEAH PICKETT 96 min. Fri 11/17, 2 and 6:15 PM; Sat 11/18, 4:30 and 8 PM; Sun 11/19, 3:15 PM; Mon 11/20, 6 PM; and Wed 11/22, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

Justice League Superman is dead and winged creeps from Krypton are invading earth, so Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck, looking less hungover than in the preceding Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) assembles a rapid-response team of superpowered combatants: Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher), and the Flash (an adenoidal Ezra Miller). Gadot, habitually dropping out of the sky into a crouch and fixing her opponents with a furious

glare, continues to be the biggest asset of the DC Comics franchise; aside from her the movie is a clumsy steamer trunk of continuing story lines and returning stars (Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Connie Nielsen as Queen Hippolyta, Jeremy Irons as Alfred the butler). The supervillain this time around is Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds), who’s supposedly part coyote but looks more like a ram wearing a gold lamé jumpsuit.

Zack Snyder directed. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 119 min. Block 37, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Davis, Ford City, Lake, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place.

The Man Who Invented Christmas This sentimental biopic, covering the period in Charles Dickens’s life when he wrote and published A Christmas Carol (1843), is most engaging when it dramatizes his writing process (collecting names for characters, drawing on personal experience to invent complications for his story). As the author, Dan Stevens hits the right note of wonderment to convey an artist in love with his work; less successful are the passages wherein Dickens has imaginary conversations with his characters and grudgingly hosts his layabout father. Screenwriter Susan Coyne, adapting a book by Les Standiford, plays these scenes for featherweight comedy and then for schmaltz, as Dickens realizes how much he adores all the people (real and fictional) in his life. Director Bharat Nalluri (Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day) maintains an oppressively cutesy tone—the film is as sweet and heavy as egg nog. With Simon Callow, Miriam Margolyes, Jonathan Pryce, and Christopher Plummer as Scrooge. —BEN SACHS PG, 104 min. River East 21.

Most Beautiful Island In this uneven psychological drama from first-time writer-director Ana Asensio, an undocumented Spanish immigrant (Asensio) struggling to

Mudbound In rural MissisR sippi, two poor families—one black and the other white—try to

absorb the social impact of World War II, whose common hardships on the battlefield called into question, as never before, the segregation of the races back home. Adapted from a novel by Hillary Jordan, the movie is dramatically stodgy but historically astute, showing how the black family (Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan), scraping by as tenant farmers for the white folks (Jason Clarke, Carey Mulligan), are pulled into a power relationship not far removed from the slavery of their ancestors. Each family sends a man into combat, and when these two return (Jason Mitchell, Garrett Hedlund), their friendship provokes the local Klan chapter; the climax is highly predictable but no less awful when it arrives. Dee Rees (Pariah) directed a script she cowrote with Virgil Williams; the players are uniformly excellent. —J.R. JONES R, 134 min.

Barrington; also available on Netflix.

Paradise Structured like a modernist novel, this World War II drama (a Russian-German coproduction) interweaves the perspectives of three different narrators: a police officer in Paris (Philippe Duquesne) who collaborates with the Gestapo, a well-to-do Russian emigre to France (Yuliya Vysotskaya) who briefly joins the resistance, and an ambitious German aristocrat (Christian Clauss) who rises through the ranks of the Nazi Party. Andrei Konchalovsky (Runaway Train), directing a script he wrote with Elena Kiseleva, frequently interrupts the story of this 2016 feature so characters can address the camera, confronting their innermost feelings and defending their actions, in passages that recall some of the 1960s films of Ingmar Bergman.

Black-and-white cinematography and minimalist sound design contribute to the bleak, austere tone, which befits the theme of survival in a morally bankrupt world. In subtitled French, German, Russian, and Yiddish. —BEN SACHS 132 min. Fri 11/17, 6 PM; Sat 11/18, 7:45 PM; Sun 11/19, 3 PM; Mon 11/20, 7:30 PM; Tue 11/21, 6 PM; and Wed 11/22, 7:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center. v

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CITY LIFE Shop Window

All’s Flair

THE OFFBEAT ACCESSORY is Flair’s specialty. The recently opened Logan Square store’s inventory is dominated by pins featuring figures from Prince to Audre Lorde and patches with generally woke sentiments such as “Fuck the patriarchy” and “We will outlive them.”

“My focus is supporting small businesses by marginalized people, whether they be people of color, LGBTQIA, or women makers,” Flair owner Melissa Elliott says. To that end she stocks her shelves with locally made goods—by such brands as Nyxturna, PinChe Loca, and the Found—with merch from outside labels such as JB Brager, Gaypin’ Guys, and Peace Prospects. She also offers customers a carefully curated selection of vintage clothing and hosts periodic art shows and events in the space. (Local vegan bakery Pie, Pie My Darling will have a pop-up on December 15.)

After “testing the waters” with a storefront on a side street, Elliott moved to her current location on Fullerton—but not without considering the impact her presence could have. “I’m a San Francisco Bay Area native, and I’ve watched communities of color and creative communities suffer from the influx of tech and the rapid gentrification. When I moved to Chicago, it was a priority not to displace anyone as I was displaced in California. With both storefront locations, I worked with the rental company to make sure there were no locals interested in the spaces. It disgusts me when people move in to what realtors have deemed ‘up-and-coming neighborhoods,’ displace locals, and then don’t even bother to be involved in the local community.” To help foster a connection, Elliott invites her neighbors to the opening receptions of all of Flair’s events. “I take care to speak with neighbors, get to know the people and the dogs, and not just be a white person colonizing a neighborhood.” Now if only she could fit that on a patch. —ISA GIALLORENZO Flair 3415 W. Fullerton, facebook.com/FLAIRChicago, instagram.com/flairchicago.

THURSDAY 16

FRIDAY 17

SATURDAY 18

| Ch icago Art Book Fair More than 100 artists and studios will be on-site selling art books old and new. Satellite studios host more vendors; a complete list of locations and times is available at cabf.no-coast. org. 5-9 PM, Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, 12 S. Michigan. F

^ Th e Custo mer Is Always Right: Holiday Edition The popular comedy show—in which customer-service horror stories inspire improv—returns for a limited holiday run. 7 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, theannoyance.com, $8.

¦ Yippee Ki -Yay Merr y Christmas: A D i e Ha rd Christmas Musical The beloved action film Die Hard is reimagined as a musical parody at this annual holiday show. 8 PM, MCL Chicago, 3110 N. Sheffield, mclchicago. com, $20.

SUNDAY 19

MONDAY 20

TUESDAY 21

WEDNESDAY 22

J Viva la Ra sslin 3: Pa in on th e Cob! Chicago wrestler Markus Crane hosts sword swallower/burlesque dancer Sally Marvel, blues-rock band Curio, and lots of ringside action. 4 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2109 S. State, reggieslive.com, $10 in advance, $15 at the door.

É 24 Hour: It’ ll Ma ke Yo u Fe el Bette r Chicago’s biggest sketch institution keeps the house lights on for 24-hours of improv, sketch comedy, and music benefiting Letters to Santa. Featuring Jeff Tweedy, Martha Plimpton, and others. 5 PM-Tue 5 PM, Second City E.T.C., 1608 N. Wells, secondcity. com, $20.

Kyle Kinane Barstool philosopher and Chicago-area native Kinane brings his madcap stand-up back to his hometown. Expect stories about drinking, performing in barns, and drinking. 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, thaliahallchicago.com, 312-526-3851, $25.

Th ree Wi se Monkeys Baldur Helgason, an Icelandic artist, showcases his caricature-like portraits, which resemble the work of an artist on lots of acid. Helgason is no stranger to the Reader, having illustrated our Riot Fest coverage. Noon7 PM, NYCH Gallery, 643 W. 18th, nychgallery. com. F

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

ò ISA GIALLORENZO

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CITY LIFE TRANSPORTATION

What’s up, dockless?

Dockless bike-share providers are courting Chicago, sparking concerns about street clutter, equity, and Divvy disruption.

By JOHN GREENFIELD

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he Seattle-based Twitter feed Dockless Bike Fail hilariously showcases the downside of dockless bike sharing, one of the newest developments in the shared-mobility boom. With this technology, customers can use a cell phone app to locate and access cycles distributed around a city and secured with built-in locks. Unlike traditional bike-share systems like Chicago’s Divvy, there’s no need to install expensive docking stations, and users can leave the cycles right at their destinations.

However, as Dockless Bike Fail illustrates, since the bikes are typically “free-locked,” not secured to a rack or pole, it’s easy for clueless customers, vandals, and pranksters to leave the cycles in hazardous or downright ridiculous locations. The feed includes photos of dockless bikes scattered across sidewalks, hanging from stop signs and trees, and even submerged in Seattle’s Lake Union.

Due to this potential for street clutter (Amsterdam has already banned the technology for clogging its bike racks), as well as questions about maintenance, geographic equity, and competition with Divvy, Chicago hasn’t yet permitted dockless providers to operate here. However, bike advocates in Seattle and Washington, D.C., the nation’s leading laboratories for dockless bike share (aka DoBi), say the technology is a generally positive addition.

Their local counterparts argue that Chicago should also allow DoBi operators—who have recently been courting city officials—to set up shop, provided the systems are run in a responsible and equitable way that complements rather than disrupts Divvy.

The American dockless boom got rolling in Seattle this summer after the city’s traditional bike-share system, Pronto, tanked due to low ridership, blamed on a relatively small number of poorly located stations, plus a local helmet law. Currently San Francisco’s Spin and Beijing’s Ofo as well as LimeBike, in San Mateo, California, each have more than 2,000 bikes in the city, with plans for expansion. (Mayor

Rahm Emanuel’s former senior adviser David Spielfogel is a board member with LimeBike, and former Chicago Department of Transportation commissioner Gabe Klein, who oversaw the 2013 Divvy launch, joined Spin’s board earlier this month.) In comparison, Divvy currently has about 6,000 cycles and 580 stations.

“The free-floating bike-share companies have been amazing,” Seattle Bike Blog editor Tom Fucoloro says. He reports that, unlike Divvy bikes, the cycles make their way to all neighborhoods, and the simpler pricing scheme—a dollar for a 30-minute ride—is much more attractive to casual users. Referring to Divvy’s less convenient day-pass structure, Fucoloro says, “The $10 for 24 hours of unlimited 30-minute trips thing is dead.”

The vast majority of DoBis in Seattle are parked correctly, Fucoloro says, and cycles that block walkways or wheelchair ramps are usually moved promptly by passersby. But vandalism of the bikes is a problem. “Like anything in the public realm,” he says, “the public has its say about it.”

In September, Washington, D.C., home to the successful Capital Bikeshare docked system, launched an experiment by allowing Spin, LimeBike, Beijing-based Mobike, and Jump, an electrical-assist bike company from San Francisco, to release up to 400 cycles each.

Ex-Chicagoan Payton Chung, a director with the Urban Land Institute planning think tank and a longtime cycling advocate, reports that there are often mechanical problems with the bikes and that they tend to accumulate downtown, which is located downhill from most of the city. However, he says the availability of the popular, sometimes-scarce Capital Bikeshare vehicles seems to have improved since hundreds of new rides hit the streets. Divvy availability is currently an issue here—many Loop stations tend to be empty by 6 PM. Dockless bike share also has the potential to address Divvy’s geographic equity problem.

While the system’s service area currently includes almost two-thirds of the city’s res-

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CITY LIFE

Dockless bike-share users in Seattle have left the cycles in many strange spots, even hanging from street signs. ò COURTESY DOCKLESS BIKE FAIL

idents, station density tends to be higher in more populous and affluent areas, and many outlying neighborhoods, including several lower-income African-American and Latino communities, don’t have docks.

The city plans this spring to add 400 more bikes and 40 stations, funded by Divvy revenue and a federal transportation grant. The new docks will increase density in some lowerincome areas. But since the Trump administration has threatened to cut all federal funding for bike projects, expanding the system may be more difficult in the future. Dockless technology could be a way to serve more Chicago neighborhoods that would require no public funding, and it could tax generate revenue for our cash-strapped city.

Slow Roll Chicago cofounder Oboi Reed says he wants to tap dockless bike share’s potential to improve transportation access in communities of color. At the launch party for his new mobility justice organization, Equiticity, earlier this month, he announced that Jump and Ofo have each offered the group and partner organizations 100-plus cycles to establish “bike libraries” for residents in North Lawndale and Riverdale.

In early November Ofo delivered 14 “seed bikes” to the Riverdale-based bike group We Keep You Rollin’. The full bike fleets for Riverdale and North Lawndale are slated to arrive in April.

In addition, Ofo recently notified me that the company hopes to release 50 bikes on the Northwestern University campus later this fall, which would represent its first launch at a U.S. university.

The full details of the Equiticity bike library programs haven’t been hashed out, but leaving dockless cycles out on Chicago streets would probably require the city’s blessing, and

so far officials haven’t given it. At a Mayor’s Pedestrian Advisory Council meeting earlier this month, Chicago Department of Transportation officials said Reed had asked for a letter of support for the bike libraries, but CDOT had declined because the city doesn’t have a policy on the new technology.

During a recent local panel discussion on bike share, CDOT’s Amanda Woodall, who helps manage Divvy, voiced her concern that rather than improving access for underserved neighborhoods, DoBi companies might just focus on more profitable areas. She also noted that there have been cases in other cities where companies dropped off bikes but neglected to maintain them. Another issue is that dockless systems could potentially cannibalize Divvy revenue, which has been used to fund safety improvements such as the recent upgrade of Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park and Bucktown.

At the advisory council meeting, transportation chief Rebekah Scheinfeld said CDOT has been discussing dockless bike share with the mayor’s office and other departments. She noted that Karen Tamley, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office for People With Disabilities, has raised concerns that poorly parked DoBi bikes could create a pedestrian hazard, especially for those with visual impairments.

Deputy CDOT commissioner Sean Wiedel says his department met with Spin representatives in October to discuss permitting issues, and the company has also reached out to local bike nonprofits about contracting them to maintain the cycles. “We expect to be meeting with dockless providers and other stakeholders in the coming months,” he says.

Spin CEO Derrick Ko promises that his company’s technology would be a positive addition to our city’s bike scene. “Chicago has a

fantastic system in Divvy,” he says. “We’re interested in complementing Divvy and bringing affordable bike share to all neighborhoods.”

He adds that his company will work with the city to ensure that “the right kind of regulations and operator responsibilities are in place to ensure responsible use by all riders.”

Sharon Feigon, director of the Chicagobased Shared Use Mobility Center, says it’s understandable that the city wants to proceed with caution. “I do worry about the pictures I’ve seen of bikes piled up everywhere, so that clearly does have to be addressed.” But Feigon, who formerly led I-Go Car Sharing, adds that Chicago shouldn’t be overly timid about allowing DoBi operators to bring their fleets to town. “When I was running I-GO and Zipcar showed up, we were very upset, but in reality it helped build a bigger culture for car sharing,” she says. “It’s always scary to have a new player in town.” v

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

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Downstate

H AT E A history of the bitter, nearly 200-year rivalry between Chicago and the rest of Illinois—and how it’s become so tilted in the city’s favor that some downstaters want to secede

By EDWARD MCCLELLAND

j JUSTIN SANTORA

10 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2017

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On an Amtrak platform in Springfield, I met that rarest of Illinoisans: a woman who divides her time and her loyalties between downstate and Chicago. Pat Staab lives in the state capital most of the time, but she was on her way to Chicago, where she keeps a condo in River North.

“I’m from New York,” she told me. “I need a big city.”

As a result of her peregrinations between upstate and down-, Staab is well versed in how the state’s rival regions view each other. Downstaters think Chicago is “crime—you’re gonna get mugged,” she said. Chicagoans think downstate is “rural, all farms. I tell them we’ve got museums here. We’ve got a symphony.”

“There are people from Springfield who’ve never even been to Chicago,” Staab said.

“I’m sure there are people from Chicago who’ve never been to Springfield,” I replied.

“Except maybe on a field trip.”

The animosity between Illinois’s largest city and its smaller towns is almost as old as the state itself. I say “almost,” of course, because Chicago, incorporated in 1837, is 19 years younger than Illinois, which is set to begin a yearlong celebration of its bicentennial on December 3.

Downstaters have always thought of Chicago as a black hole of street violence and political corruption, sucking up tax dollars generated by honest, hard-working farmers. Chicagoans have always thought of downstate— when they’ve thought of it at all—as an irrelevant agricultural appendage full of Baptists and gun owners who’d just love to turn Illinois into North Kentucky.

For most of Illinois’s history, the two spheres have been evenly matched in influence, with downstate contributing some of Illinois’s most important political figures, from Abraham Lincoln to Adlai Stevenson. Downstate was also the forcing ground of internationally known industries: Moline gave us John Deere, Peoria gave us Caterpillar, and Decatur gave us Staley, which in 1920 hired George Halas to coach a company football team he would move to Chicago the following year and rename the Bears.

More recently, though, the misunderstandings and alienation between Chicago and downstate have been ramped up by two particularly 21st-century phenomena: globalization and political polarization. As the big global city in the northeastern corner of the state sucks jobs and college graduates out of the rest of Illinois, downstate is becoming older, less educated, less prosperous, more reactionary, and more Republican. Politically, downstate is in complete opposition to the Chicago area, especially on such culturally charged matters as gun rights, LGBT rights, and abortion. But it lacks the votes to bend the state to its will on any of those issues. This was never more evident than in 2010, when Governor Pat Quinn defeated state senator Bill Brady, a social conservative from Bloomington, despite carrying only four of the state’s 102 counties—and could’ve won by carrying only Cook County.

“Illinois needs an electoral college,” a Republican friend from Decatur groused after that election.

On a statewide level, that would violate the constitutional principle of “one person, one vote.” So the next year, state rep Bill Mitchell, a Republican from the Decatur area, came up with another solution for ending Chicago’s political dominance over Illinois. He introduced a bill to divide Illinois into two states: one comprising Cook County, the other the remaining 101 counties.

“It’s very simple folks: we just do this and we’ll resemble Indiana more than the present, debt-ridden state of Illinois,” Mitchell said at a press conference to promote his bill. “We can resemble Indiana, which has a lower debt, a lower unemployment rate, and a lower deficit.”

The split between Cook County and the rest of Illinois

would be “just like a divorce; there’s irreconcilable differences between the state of Illinois and Cook County,” he said. “Cook County, you go your way. Let the state of Illinois go its way and try to live like a family lives on their own budget. I think it might be in the best interest of both parties to go their own way.”

This was far from the first Illinois secession proposal.

In 1925, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution in favor of forming the state of Chicago because rural legislators were refusing to reapportion the General Assembly to reflect the city’s growing population. In the 1970s, western Illinoisans upset over a lack of transportation funding declared their corner of the state “the Republic of Forgottonia.” In 1981, state senator Howard Carroll of Chicago actually passed a Cook County secession bill through both houses of the General Assembly, just to scold downstaters who were complaining about funding Chicago’s mass transit. (It was pulled back by then house speaker George Ryan.) Even if a bill were to pass, dividing Illinois would require the consent of Congress. (In our Internet era, this view is represented by the Southern Illinois Secession Movement, whose Facebook page has 106 followers.)

Since downstaters complain so often about sharing a state with Chicago, it’s important to remember that they wanted it this way. Nathaniel Pope of Springfield was the territorial delegate to Congress in 1817, as Illinois was preparing to enter the union. Pope wanted Chicago for the very same reason Mitchell wanted to get rid of it: because it adds a metropolitan, northern character to Illinois.

Originally, the Northwest Ordinance, passed by the Second Continental Conference in 1787, declared that Illinois’s northern border would run along a line defined by the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Had that plan been followed, it would’ve stretched from Calumet City to Moline. What we now know as Chicago would’ve been part of Wisconsin.

Pope proposed pushing the boundary line north.

There were both commercial and political advantages to possessing a Lake Michigan port. The new state could build a canal connecting the Mississippi Valley to the Great Lakes. Most of the Illinois Territory’s early settlers were southerners. Pro-slavery sentiment was strong. But since Mississippi had just been admitted to the union, and would soon be followed by Alabama and Missouri, it was essential that Illinois be a free state to preserve the balance in the Senate. Pope wanted to attract Yankees migrating westward across the Great Lakes.

At the time, of course, no one knew that the unincorporated settlement at the mouth of the Chicago River would become one of the world’s great cities. But Pope realized it would be essential to shaping the state’s character.

Even so, throughout the 20th century, Illinois political power was closely balanced between upstate and downstate. The Republican Party dominated the Chicago suburbs and the farm counties, while the Democratic Party held sway in Chicago and Little Egypt (as southern J

NOVEMBER 16, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 11

continued from 11 Illinois is nicknamed, possibly because the meeting of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, where Cairo sits, is said to resemble the Nile Delta). As a result, “downstate was the swing area,” says Kent Redfield, a former legislative staffer and professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield. “Having downstate candidates was important for balancing the ticket.”

That need for geographic diversity helped build the political careers of such influential downstaters as Democratic senators Alan Dixon and Paul Simon and Republican governors Jim Edgar and George Ryan. But at the beginning of this century, as the rest of the nation divided itself into urban blue and rural red political enclaves, Illinois did the same. The Chicago suburbs became more ethnically diverse, and college-educated professionals repelled by the Republican Party’s virulent Bible Belt conservatism began voting Democratic. Meanwhile, downstate became more Republican, as college graduates left the region and the loss of coal and factory jobs decimated labor unions that had formed the bulwark of the Democratic Party. When Bill Clinton won Illinois in 1992, he carried Chicago and downstate Illinois while losing most of Chicago’s collar counties. Last year, Hillary Clinton carried all of northeastern Illinois but won only a handful of downstate counties—those containing cities and/or college campuses. (Clinton began her political career in 1964 as a “Goldwater Girl” from once staunchly Republican Maine Township—which voted for her by 20 points.)

“Downstate is solidly Republican, but it’s much less important,” Redfield says. “Look at the legislative leaders.”

House speaker Michael Madigan and senate president John Cullerton hail from Cook County. So do the last three governors: Rod Blagojevich, Pat Quinn, and Bruce Rauner.

The only downstaters currently holding statewide office are state treasurer Michael Freirichs of Champaign and Senator Dick Durbin of Springfield.

No place exemplifies downstate’s changing political and economic fortunes better than Decatur, the hometown of secessionist Bill Mitchell. I lived in Decatur in the mid-1990s when I was a reporter for the local newspaper, the Herald & Review. At the time, it was a heavily unionized town loyal to the Democratic Party.

But it was undergoing a series of labor disputes that made it a “flash point of globalization,” according to its then congressman, Glenn Poshard. Tate & Lyle, a British company that had bought Staley, provoked a strike that lasted two and a half years—one of three labor disputes that resulted in a drastic reduction of union jobs in Decatur. Workers at Decatur’s Caterpillar plant went on strike. So did workers at the city’s Firestone plant, which eventually shut down after a scandal over faulty tires. Decatur is now Illinois’s fastest-shrinking city.

Macon County delivered majorities for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, but it voted 55 percent to 38 percent for Donald Trump, who promised to renegotiate the North

12 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2017

If legislators actually did divide Illinois into two states, one comprising the six counties of the Chicago area, the other comprising the rest of the state, here’s what each would contain, and contribute.

Downstate can keep the name, since the Illinois (aka Illiniwek) Indians didn’t live up here. Chicagoland would call the new state Potawatomi.

Illinois

Potawatomi

Two-state solution Population

8.3 million

4.5 million

Fortune 500 companies

30

2 (State Farm, John Deere)

State universities

4

8

Prisons

1

40

State parks

6

35

Per capita income

Ranges from $23,227 in Cook County to $35,546 in DuPage County

Ranges from $13,325 in Pulaski County to $23,173 in Sangamon County

Tax revenue

$10.2 billion

$4.5 billion

Gross state product

$532 billion

American Free Trade Agreement and other Clinton-era trade deals that he claims have hollowed out midwestern factory towns. (NAFTA, which was unpopular with unions from the start, has been blamed for allowing Maytag to move refrigerator production from Galesburg to Mexico, and for letting Roadmaster migrate bicycle production from Olney to Mexico.)

“I backed Bernie Sanders,” says Jay Dunn, the Democratic chairman of the Macon County Board. “I had to

$120 billion

hold my nose to vote for Hillary; a lot of people didn’t hold their nose and voted for Trump.”

Beyond its loss of blue-collar union jobs, Decatur also lost a significant element of its professional class when its most important food-processing companies, Tate & Lyle and Archer Daniels Midland, moved their headquarters to Cook County, which is more appealing to the executives it wants to attract. (Caterpillar recently moved its headquarters from Peoria to Deerfield.)

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“That didn’t help the feelings of the Decatur people, losing the status of that,” Dunn says. “The economic part of it is we’ve lost a lot of air traffic, people flying in to visit the president and the higher executives. Our airport’s kind of struggling. Houses are sitting empty, because most of the executives lived in expensive houses. It’s stupid to blame Chicago, though. The company’s just making business decisions. ADM and Tate & Lyle are international businesses. People flying in, there’s not a lot to do in Decatur, Illinois, compared to Chicago.”

Dunn also disagrees with downstaters who think they’d be better off if they didn’t have to share a state with Chicago.

“We got some people who just hate Chicago, ignorant of the fact that without Chicago, we’d all be broke,” he says.

Just last year, Governor Rauner tried to inflame the Chicago-downstate divide. Speaking at a prison in Vienna, he attacked a $900 million school bailout plan that would have devoted more than half its funds to the Chicago Public Schools. “The senate and house are competing with each other [to see] who could spend more to bail out Chicago with your tax dollars from southern Illinois and central Illinois and Moline and Rockford and Danville— the communities of this state who are hard-working families who pay their taxes,” Rauner said.

“Rauner’s rabble-rousing against Madigan and the mythical Chicago machine, which is informed by polling and focus group data that I don’t have, suggests that the ill-feeling remains general enough to be exploitable,” says James Krohe Jr., a former Reader contributor and author of Corn Kings and One-Horse Thieves: A Plain-Spoken History of Mid-Illinois, published in June

by Southern Illinois University Press. “Chicago and downstate are like conjoined twins, one of whom has a weak heart and is being kept alive at the expense of his stronger sibling. Great swaths of downstate are dying, demographically and economically; parts of the region remain viable only because assorted transfers of wealth from greater Chicago and Washington sustain it in the form of social security and disability checks, crop supports, and university and prison funding. Deep southern Illinois, for example, has only two industries worthy of the name: SIU and road building.”

“Once upon a time, Chicago and downstate belonged to the same economy,” says Richard C. Longworth, author of Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism and a fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “Factories downstate made things Chicago needed. That’s gone away. What’s replaced it in Chicago is the global economy. What economic vitality there is in Illinois is in Chicago. The economic fortunes of Chicago and downstate are diverging.”

Obviously, a lot of downstaters are mad as hell about losing political and economic influence to Chicago. But do Chicagoans even notice? And if they notice, do they even care? No, and probably not. Culturally, Chicagoans don’t identify with—or even think much about—the state

“Chicago and downstate are like conjoined twins, one of whom has a weak heart and is being kept alive at the expense of his stronger sibling.”

—James Krohe Jr., author of Corn Kings and One-Horse Thieves: A Plain-Spoken History of Mid-Illinois

they inhabit. As a friend puts it, “I’m not an Illinoisan.

I’m a Chicagoan.” I once mentioned to another Chicago friend that I’d just visited a small town in southern Illinois, “down by the border with Kentucky.” She looked at me quizzically. “Illinois doesn’t have a border with Kentucky,” she said. (This is someone with a master’s degree—but not in geography.)

If someone tells you, “I’m from Illinois,” it means that (a) he’s not from Chicago, and (b) he’ll be annoyed if you ask. (Matt Weidman is from Berwick. As he puts it in the bio of his Twitter feed, @forgottonia, “Is that near Chicago? NO, it is not.”) Kevin Cronin, the lead singer of Champaign’s REO Speedwagon, once introduced “Ridin’ the Storm Out” in concert with a story about how it was inspired by a Rocky Mountain thunderstorm, an astonishing sight for “an Illinois band.” Musician Sufjan Stevens (who was born in Detroit) offers a pan-Illinoisan view on his 2005 album Illinois, which includes songs about Decatur, the Rock River Valley, and Metropolis as well as Chicago. But Chicago’s lack of identification with the rest of the state has prevented Illinois from developing a distinct identity like that possessed by so many of its neighbors. Wisconsinites drink beer, fish for muskie, and drive snowmobiles across frozen lakes. Minnesotans are passive-aggressive, play hockey, and eat hotdish. Iowans grow corn and sculpt butter cows. What does it mean to be an Illinoisan?

“When I’m in other states and I say I’m from Illinois, the first question I get is ‘How far is that from Chicago?’” says East Saint Louis native Ray Coleman, who helped sell Barack Obama’s 2004 Senate candidacy to downstate voters. “Chicago always comes up in the conversation. In Metro East”—the trans-Mississippi suburbs of Saint Louis—“everybody feels forgotten. It’s Chicago, the collar counties, and that’s all that matters.”

This ignorance is partly a result of the fact that Chicagoans don’t consider downstate Illinois a vacation spot—it’s flat, it’s hot, it doesn’t have any big lakes.

Chicago is a Great Lakes city, so it’s more convenient, and more congenial, to spend a weekend on the water in New Buffalo, Michigan, or Door County, Wisconsin, than on the Mississippi River—even though Illinois has more miles of Mississippi riverbank than any state. Dan Krankeola, president and CEO of Illinois South Tourism, which serves 22 counties south of Interstate 70, says he barely bothers marketing to Chicago.

“We find the majority of our tourists are coming from Saint Louis, Indianapolis, and farther south of us,” Krankeola says. “If you live in a big city, you love that environment. Our character is very different from Chicago.”

(If you’re thinking of heading downstate, Krankeola says, “We’ve got a World Heritage center at Cahokia Mounds; we’ve got Gateway Motor Sports Park, Shawnee Hills Wine Trail, Carlyle Lake Wine Trail. A lot of opportunities for a staycation.”)

It literally took an act of God to lure Chicagoans to downstate Illinois. That act was this year’s so-called J

NOVEMBER 16, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 13

continued from 13 Great American Eclipse, whose path crossed far southern Illinois on August 21. Chicagoan Eric Bremer and his wife, Helen, went to see the rare spectacle. A Decatur native whose grandparents lived in Metropolis, Bremer was familiar with Little Egypt, which lies in the northern salient of the Ozark Mountains, but it was a revelation to Helen.

“I think it was one of Helen’s first trips,” Bremer says.

“We went down, and I sort of forgot—you get down into the Shawnee, and it’s very different, and it’s not the Illinois that you think about. We went to Bald Knob Cross, which was fantastic for eclipse watching. It’s beautiful, looking around there and seeing the valleys. It’s a different world, even culturally, because it’s entwined with the Ohio River and the Mississippi Valley. She had no idea that sort of place existed in Illinois.”

Bremer is already planning a return trip, to the New Columbia Bluffs, in Massac County, which mark the northernmost range of southern flora and fauna, such as bald cypress, magnolia—and poisonous snakes. (One of the last remaining tourist attractions in Cairo is Magnolia Manor, a 19th-century mansion with the namesake tree growing in the front yard.)

When Chicago alderman Ameya Pawar was growing up in the north suburbs, his family vacationed on Michigan’s Mackinac Island and at Niagara Falls, but rarely ventured downstate. So when he launched his campaign for governor (which ended in October because, he said, he couldn’t compete financially with wealthier rivals such as billionaire J.B. Pritzker), Pawar made it a point to venture into “Forgottonia.” He even chose as his running mate the mayor of Cairo, a town as close to Jackson, Mississippi, as it is to Chicago. They bused Cairo public housing residents to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s office in Chicago to protest plans to close down their buildings and scatter the residents. Many were making their first trip to Chicago. On his downstate campaign stops, Pawar inevitably had to overcome local suspicions of the “corrupt Chicago politician,” but once he did, he found commonalities between the two spheres of Illinois. Galesburg, which lost its Maytag factory, and Newton, which lost a Roadmaster plant, are undergoing the same economic dislocation as the south side of Chicago when the steel mills shut down in the 1980s.

“Cairo, East Saint Louis, the south and west sides of Chicago, Freeport, Galesburg—they’re all dealing with the same problems of disinvestment,” Pawar says. “The assumption is that people there are weak. But these communities often have the most resilient people, because they have to stitch things together after government has left them behind. What happened 40 years ago in black and brown communities is happening now in small towns, with the opiate crisis. Now it’s considered a public health problem.”

One of Pawar’s campaign themes was “One Illinois.”

After ending his campaign, he announced the formation of a political action committee with that name. Pawar plans to organize “exchanges” that bring Chicagoans

14 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2017

“When I’m in other states and I say I’m from Illinois, the first question I get is ‘How far is that from Chicago?’ It’s Chicago, the collar counties, and that’s all that matters.”

—East Saint Louis native Ray Coleman

and downstaters to each others’ communities. He is also talking about establishing a “storytelling” endeavor that would feature Illinoisans talking about their lives, as well as long-form journalism highlighting issues common among the state’s residents.

“I want to bring people together from small towns and big cities to tell stories about what it means to be an Illinoisan,” Pawar says. “Bring people together, and you can say, ‘Look, let’s see the commonality. The economy changed. Why are we fighting each other? Why are we allowing our leaders to tell poor whites that black and brown people are a threat to them?’ We end up fighting around race, class, and geography when really it’s the system that’s the problem.”

In 2012, Pawar was part of the inaugural class in the Edgar Fellows Program, which brings young leaders from around the state to the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign for a series of seminars hosted by former governor Jim Edgar.

“On our second day of the fellowship, Governor Edgar put all of us on a bus and he’s like, ‘Look, I want to take all of you to a working farm,’” Pawar says. “So he goes to a farm outside Champaign. He looks at the Chicagoans and says, ‘I’m glad you got to see a working farm. What’s grown on this farm gets traded on LaSalle Street.’ Then he turns to the rest of the fellows. ‘You’ve got to stop complaining about the CTA getting funding. The structure that supports LaSalle Street doesn’t exist without the CTA. If there’s no LaSalle Street, you have no place to trade your grain.’”

From its very origins, when Nathaniel Pope shifted the state’s border to balance southerners with northerners, Illinois was never designed to be a monolithic state.

We’re not Nebraska or Delaware. In its nearly 500-mile run from Galena to Metropolis, Illinois cuts across multiple linguistic, cultural, and topographic regions.

Illinois is Yankee and southerner, Catholic and Baptist, immigrant and native, town and country, Great Lakes, prairie, and hills. Illinois’s demographics are closer to the national average than any state’s. We’re the middle of Middle America. That’s why “Will it play in Peoria?” means “Will it appeal to the average American?” It’s also the source of Illinois’s unique role in American history as the proving ground for racial progress. Abraham Lincoln won the Republican nomination for president because he was seen as a candidate who could reconcile the conflicting views of slavery held by the north, the midlands, and the upper south of the country, all represented in Illinois. Barack Obama prepared to sell himself as the nation’s first black president by selling himself to the diverse electorate of Illinois. Illinois is riven by the same urban-rural animosities that have divided the rest of America, but it’s also the perfect laboratory for figuring out how to overcome them. Chicago and downstate need to stick together, because the rest of the country needs us together too. v

v @TedMcClelland

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READER RECOMMENDED

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Sari Sanchez and Eddie Martinez ò LIZ LAUREN

THEATER

Intersectionality, with laughs

By TONY ADLER

P

orc h l i g ht Mu sic Theat re got charged with whitewashing last year for casting Jack DeCesare, an actor of Italian-American descent, a s Dom i n ica n-bor n cha rac ter Usnavi in Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’s In the Heights. The protests included a town hall meeting at Victory Gardens Theater featuring six panelists and an SRO crowd. In the course of things somebody asked, “Who has the right to tell stories like the one told in In the Heights?”

There was a lot of appreciative finger snapping for the panelist who answered: “Only the people the stories are about.”

But which people are those? I don’t think they were at the town hall. That room was full of folks with arts degrees, far better educated than Usnavi, a poor man who sells coffee in a rough neighborhood. I wondered whether it had occurred to any of the finger snappers that the logic of identity politics isn’t as, well, black-and-white as it seems.

That it can, for instance, be applied as easily to class and acculturation as to race—disqualifying even a person of color from the category of the oppressed.

Based on the evidence of Fade, I’d say it’s occurred to Tanya Saracho. An increasingly celebrated former Chicagoan who now

works in television (most recently on ABC’s How to Get Away With Murder), Saracho has written a workplace comedy—running now, coincidentally, at Victory Gardens in a coproduction with Teatro Vista—that rips reductive notions about ethnic solidarity and economic privilege.

Lucia is a 28-year-old novelist (one published book: The Definitive Guide to Nothing) who comes from Mexico but can negotiate ethnicity at will—“code-switching between Spanish and English,” as Saracho’s character description puts it, much like “the rest of her (globalized) generation.” “I have schooling,” she declares. “I have degrees.”

Telling herself she needs the money to write novel number two, she’s just taken a job writing for a TV show that sounds, from the snippets of dialogue we hear, like a crappy English-language version of a telenovela (“I’m from here; this barrio raised me. . . .

That’s always been my curse”).

A broken bookshelf puts her in contact with Abel, the night janitor, whose ethnic coding she initially interprets as Mexico Mexican. It takes a very funny, slow-building bit during which she assails him with Spanish before she realizes she’s wrong: he’s California Mexican, in fact, with a stubborn prole traditionalist streak.

Lucia befriends the reluctant Abel, partly out of loneliness and partly to vent about her situation as the new kid in the writers’ room.

As delineated by Saracho, directed by Sandra Marquez, and embodied by Sari Sanchez, Lucia is a piece of work: loud, impatient, bilingually logorrheic, self-involved, myopic.

And did I say self-involved? Yet her struggles are never minimized. She really is dealing with an industrial culture only slightly less dire than the one we’ve been hearing about since Harvey Weinstein got outed—where being Latina, in particular, subjects her to a double whammy of predation and condescension. Her white male colleagues call her “mamacita.” Her boss treats her as an office girl and worse. She gets threats whispered in her ear. She’s overwhelmed.

At first, anyway. Lucia’s got schooling, after all, she’s got degrees. And as the recipient of certain bourgeois privileges, she’s capable of accessing both the sophistication and, in her feminist parlance, the “ovaries” she needs to find the levers of power and throw them.

A few years older than Lucia, with a daughter of his own, Abel swallows his essential prickliness to become her ally— which is to say, her sounding board and cheerleader. It’s one of those relationships, though, that inevitably arrives at a point where someone is surprised to find she doesn’t really know much at all about the other—like the tale behind the seMPER FI tattoo on his right forearm. In a neatly, painfully choreographed final scene, Saracho and director Marquez show us precisely where Lucia and Abel’s ethnic bond leads.

Fade loses its balance at times. Sanchez’s hysterics, apt as they are, can become so hard to take that it’s a wonder her Lucia can win Abel’s genuine if bemused loyalty. At the other end of the spectrum, it would be nice to have more concrete information about Abel.

Strands that are left hanging for strategic reasons might be tied up without prejudicing the show. Still, Sanchez is formidable in her willowy way, reconciling Lucia’s seemingly schizzy nature. Eddie Martinez’s standoffishness as Abel is paradoxically engaging. v R FADE Through 12/3: Wed 7:30 (except 11/22, 2 PM), Thu-Fri 7:30 PM (no show Thu 11/23), Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Tue 7:30 PM (no show 12/19), Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, victorygardens.org, $15-$56.

v @taadler

DANCE

Lose yourself in the Seldoms’ The Making

PAINTED BANNERS HANG long and low from the rafters of the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse, and when the music begins with a noise like a siren, the dancers flicker in and out of view through them, as animals in a thicket or words obscured by censorship bars. They are jointed and joined, mechanical and organic, as they emerge and retreat from view, in groupings that create dependencies through the tensions of push and pull that pulse within and beyond the self. The touch becomes strange as a hand skitters down a leg, not a tickle or a grab, something robotic but alive with intention.

The Making, the Seldoms’ newest work, moves the audience through three distinct environments in the field house, offering vantages and modes that showcase the variety of talents that have assembled this immersive experience. It places its constancy in the moving object, in the bodies of the dancers.

Most powerful is the second section, which seats the audience in semicircles scalloped around the room, close enough to touch the restless sinew, to see the detail of the foot as it curls into place, the undulation of the torso as it breathes.

In The Making, dancers are heroic, making cranes and levers of their bodies to furl and unfurl down the length of an auditorium, making architects and architecture of themselves.

The majesty of human endeavor and the humility of its labor are here. —IRENE HSIAO R THE MAKING Through 11/18: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Pulaski Park Field House, 1419 W. Blackhawk, 312742-7559, theseldoms.org, $20.

v @IreneCHsiao

The Making ò CALLUM RICE

NOVEMBER 16, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 15

Lucky Plush dancers Aaron R. White, Kara Brody, Michel Rodriguez Cintra, and Meghann Wilkinson

ARTS & CULTURE

ò ALAN EPSTEIN

DANCE

Orpheus meets Clue in Rooming House

T

he world is littered with adaptations of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, but the Greek myth is just a seed for the creator-directors of Rooming House, Julia Rhoads of Lucky Plush Productions and Leslie Buxbaum Danzig, a cofounder of 500 Clown.

Over its brisk 75 minutes their light-footed, sometimes cheeky production grows into something expansive and challenging, exploring deeper aspects of storytelling and human behavior through Lucky Plush’s signature blend of insight and play.

Rooming House begins with the ensemble of six dancers pondering the myth to establish the central question of the show: Why did it happen? The “it” is a constantly changing situation, starting with the mythological moment when Orpheus looks behind him on his journey out of the underworld, dooming his young wife to death when she is steps away from resurrection. The ensemble enact various interpretations of this scenario through dance, including one version where a vogueing Orpheus performs a death drop after encountering three mean girls representing the Fates.

By OLIVER SAVA

As the ensemble explore Orpheus’s decision from different angles, they come up with a new system for examining any situation motivated by human behavior. Based on the board game Clue, this system looks at who is responsible, what motivates them, and at which point in the narrative. Was it the action taker fueled by duty in the backstory? Perhaps a provocateur driven by fear during the event? Each narrative point is represented by a space on

the blank stage, and each space has its own choreographed sequence that dictates how the performers move.

This system is complicated, and the show acknowledges that. But it also provides a fascinating framework for the creative team to break down individual components of a consequential moment while energizing the story analysis with sharp, emotive movement.

This analysis becomes more personal as the

production delves into moments from the performers’ lives: Rodolfo Sánchez Sarracino’s decision to leave Cuba, Michel Rodriguez Cintra cutting ties with a childhood friend, Elizabeth Luse’s father stopping a robbery in progress.

Luse’s story inspires a fabulous song from Aaron R. White, who struts around the stage as he makes a case for a two-piece swimsuit as a responsible party. And while all the performers are engaging and multifaceted, Cintra is an especially exuberant presence onstage, his bubbly enthusiasm expressed at one point in a sequence that has him swept off the ground to soar above his costars.

Throughout, the action moves in all sorts of unexpected directions into spontaneous bouts of movement. The result is a dynamic production as intricate and slick as it is open and seemingly off-the-cuff. v R ROOMING HOUSE Through 11/18: Wed-Sat 8 PM, Steppenwolf, 1700 Theatre, 1700 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, luckyplush.com, $40, $30 seniors and military, $15 students.

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ARTS & CULTURE

Members of Manual Cinema work with projectors to create live-action films. ò COURTESY MANUAL CINEMA

LIT & PERFORMANCE

Gwendolyn Brooks’s life becomes poetry magic

By AIMEE LEVITT

I

n a darkened room, four overhead projectors snap on. A picture of a street in Bronzeville slides onto a movie screen.

Behind one of the projectors, Jyreika Guest and Eunice Woods drop two paper cutouts onto the glass surface and move them back and forth. Onscreen, the silhouettes of two well-to-do white women circa 1950 stroll down the street. “Is this it?” they coo. “Is this where the Negro poetess lives?”

N. LaQuis Harkins steps in front of the projectors. On the screen, her shadow turns into a woman opening the door to one of the houses.

“I am Gwendolyn Brooks,” she says.

Over the next hour, with the help of hundreds of transparencies, 500 puppets, several hundred sound cues, five actors, and a five-piece band, the story of Brooks’s life will unfold entirely in light and shadow. The production, No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks, is the work of Manual Cinema, a collective that produces live-action films that actors, puppeteers, and musicians perform onstage in real time.

The creation of No Blue Memories began a year and a half ago, when Ydalmi Noriega

and Elizabeth Burke-Dain—the Poetry Foundation’s director of community relations and marketing manager, respectively—saw a performance of My Soul’s Shadow, a Manual Cinema production based on the poetry of Federico García Lorca. They were blown away, Burke-Dain recalls now, and decided that a collaboration with Manual Cinema would be a perfect finale to the yearlong celebration of Brooks’s centennial.

“As soon as the words ‘Gwendolyn Brooks’ were spoken, we knew we must have Eve,” says Sarah Fornace, one of Manual Cinema’s five coartistic directors and the director of No Blue Memories.

“Eve” is Eve Ewing,

the poet and sociologist who was, as it happens, a University of Chicago classmate of Fornace and Drew Dir, another of the coartistic directors. Ewing agreed to write the script as long as she could collaborate with her friend and fellow poet Nate Marshall, and the pair recruited another friend, singer and songwriter Jamila Woods, to compose and perform the musical score along with her sister Ayanna.

The narrative unfolds in three acts. The first tells the story of Brooks’s beginnings as a poet (her first poem, composed in 1924 when she was seven years old: “A crayon is small, / but what it lacks / in size, it makes up for / in WAX”), how she learned to capture her Bronzeville neighbors in her work, and how she became the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize. “Art urges voyages,” she read at the unveiling of the Picasso statue in Daley Plaza in 1967, “and it is easier to stay at home.” The second act chronicles how she left home: her radicalization in the late 1960s, after she attends a writing conference at Fisk University and discovers the Black Arts movement. “I was a Negro poet no more,” she declares. “I dwell in blackness.” The final third shows her generosity as a teacher and a poet—how, even after she became famous, she routinely visited elementary schools and answered letters from prison inmates.

The Manual Cinema team took Ewing and Marshall’s script and storyboarded it into cinema-style shots. Most of Manual Cinema’s work tells stories solely through visuals and sound, like silent movies; No Blue Memories will be its first production to incorporate spoken dialogue. “It’s a weird hybrid process,” says Ben Ka u f f m a n , a coartistic director and the show’s sound designer. “We borrowed te c h n i q u e s from animation and film, but ultimately it’s a theater show. Everything we do that is filmlike needs to be translated into a live show.”

Throughout the production, the audience will be able to see the puppeteers a n d J

NOW PLAYING!

Adapted and Directed by

Heidi Stillman

From the Book by

Charles Dickens In Association with

The Actors Gymnasium

!!!!

—Time Out Chicago

quietly powerful —Chicago Reader

lookingglasstheatre.org 312.337.0665 Cordelia Dewdney and Nathan Hosner; Photo by Liz Lauren

NOVEMBER 16, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 17

ARTS & CULTURE continued from 17

actors at work as well as the finished product up on the screen.

A Manual Cinema show is intended to be an immersive experience. Kaufmann and his team have been working on assembling the hundreds of sound cues to create the backdrop of the settings and scenes; these will be deployed during the performance through a quadraphonic sound system. The light team, meanwhile, is planning how to depict what Fornace calls “poetry magic.” Poetry magic, she explains, is sparkly.

The magic of No Blue Memories is all in the service of capturing Brooks’s spirit.

“Looking carefully at the world for small truths and big ones and erasing lines in between: this is the business of being a poet,” Brooks says at one point in No Blue Memories. “Some people think being a poet is about something else. They want you to be small because they feel small.”

G w e n d o l y n B ro o k s w a s a g i a n t . v R NO BLUE MEMORIES: THE LIFE OF GWENDOLYN BROOKS 11/17-11/19: Fri-Sat 6:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Cindy Pritzker Auditorium, Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State, 312747-4300, manualcinema.com. F

v @aimeelevitt VISUAL ART

Paraguayan parables

By KERRY CARDOZA

I

n the fall of 1971, Faith Wilding was a young MFA student participating in the California Institute of the Arts’ first iteration of its Feminist Art Program. Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, who codirected the unit, hoped to galvanize their students by encouraging them to tackle a major project while working through their own issues as women. Within months the students created Womanhouse, a now-legendary installation that took up an entire mansion in Hollywood. Wilding and the other members of her cohort labored throughout the southern California winter to renovate the house, which had been in disrepair, and conceptualize and install their pieces.

Wilding’s major contributions to the final project were Womb Room, an entirely crocheted structure meant to evoke primitive environments, and Waiting, a performance piece that chronicled the life cycle of a woman. Though Womanhouse was exhibited 45 years ago, the themes that Wilding explored then—women’s bodies, the environment, acts of transformation—have continued to manifest in her work ever since. Her new show at Western Exhibitions, “Un-Natural Parables,” highlights this persistence: it brings together an older series, “Natural Parables,” last shown in 1985, with a new project, “Paraguay: Republica de la Soya.”

18 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2017

The first work you encounter at Western Exhibitions is “Natural Parables,” which consists of watercolor paintings that hang beside oversize pod-shaped panels. The pieces are in superb condition, even though they’ve been in storage for decades. The watercolors are numbered and shown sequentially, and while they don’t exactly tell a story, they’re thematically united by colorful imagery drawn from mythology and nature, including depictions of the female body, and by their use of poems and diaristic passages.

The focus of “ Pa raguay: Republica de la Soya” is more pointed. The works stem from a recent visit Wilding made to her home country of Paraguay, the first time she’d returned since she moved to the United States in 1961. In recent years forests and farmland in Paraguay have been decimated in order to make way for soy crops—largely used to produce animal feed—which covers more than eight million acres, or greater than half, of all agricultural land in the country.

“Imagine what once was amazing jungle, now it’s like thousands of miles of soy plant,” Wilding says. “The kind of devastation that that’s wreaking not just on nature but on the people who used to live there and make their living off the forest and small patches of land.”

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ARTS & CULTURE In Next Gen Cassava, a banner reads that the title plant is said to be the only staple crop that will actually benefit from climate change. The watercolor features a woman holding a flowering plant, while in the opposite corner a man looks to the sky, arms outstretched as if feeling for rain. In Organize, photos from Paraguayan protests are collaged above watercolors of nature-infused images, such as crops and paint blots that look like living organisms; near the top, a row spells out “organize”; the body of a multicolored snake circles the perimeter. One senses the interconnectedness of nature, politics, and people.

Wilding has long been thinking about these topics, which she says were in vogue in the worlds of both art and feminism while she was getting her start in the 1970s.

Though these subjects fell out of focus in the ’80s and ’90s, she isn’t surprised to see environmental and feminist issues returning to mainstream discourse.

“I’m an old person, so I’ve lived long enough to see everything comes back,” she says.

“We’re not done with all of these subjects. If anything, they’re more with us now because of ecocrises, and because so many people, young people, were not even born when that was going on. And now they’re coming of age and they’re realizing, you know, that things are getting worse, not better.”

You can witness evidence of her observation at Volume Gallery, next door to Western Exhibitions, where the artist Tanya Aguiñiga is exploring the same kinds of connections that Wilding makes. Aguiñiga’s work often deals with her Mexican heritage. In her solo exhibition, “Reindigenizing the Self,” two sculptures, created with synthetic hair, hang from the ceiling. Both are titled Pala-

pa, which are traditional Mexican shelters, usually constructed with palm leaves and branches. One of the sculptures is wide enough for visitors to fit underneath it, something many people took advantage of at the opening—an interactive element that’s similar to Wilding’s Womb Room.

In their introduction to the Womanhouse catalog, Chicago and Schapiro describe how the students worked together to create environments throughout the property. The kitchen wall, for example, was covered in fried eggs that slowly morphed into breasts; elsewhere, an overflowing garbage can full of used menstrual products was placed in an otherwise sterile bathroom.

“The age-old female activity of homemaking was taken to fantasy proportions,” the introduction reads. ”Womanhouse became the repository of the daydreams women have as they wash, bake, cook, sew, clean, and iron their lives away.”

Wilding’s work still deals in such fantasy— mythology and paganism abound—and by extension hope is a dominant theme. In Paraguay, more than 85 percent of land is owned by fewer than 3 percent of the population, yet families and activists are fighting for their health and their land. Wilding is calculating about her works—she may paint beautiful nature imagery, but her message is unapologetically political.

“I use beauty as a terrorist tactic,” she says.

“To make people look, to suck them in. Then they look closer and they will see my message and my content.” v R “FAITH WILDING: UN-NATURAL PARABLES” Through 12/22. TueSat 11 AM-6 PM, Western Exhibitions, 1709 W. Chicago, 312-480-8390, westernexhibitions.com. F

v @booksnotboys

NOVEMBER 25 & 26, 2017 New Show Hours!

o g ca i h POP

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Comics, Toys (New & Vintage), Gaming, SCI-FI, Legos, Stars, TV/MOVIE MEMORABILIA, Super Heroes, Steampunk, Action Figures, Cosplay, Fantasy, Horror, Collectibles, Anime, Rock Memorabilia, Vinyl Records/CDs, Artists, Publishers, Sports Memorabilia, - but open to anything fan related!

PHEASANT RUN MEGA CENTER, ST. CHARLES, IL Installation view of “Un-Natural Parables” at Western Exhibitions ò JAMES PRINZ

4051 E Main St, St. Charles, IL 60174

715-526-9769 • ChicagoPopCultureCon.com • facebook.com/chicagopopculturecon NOVEMBER 16, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 19

Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

ARTS & CULTURE Jacob Tremblay and Julia Roberts in Wonder

MOVIES

Light in Auggie

By J.R. JONES

A

ugust Pullman, the ten-year-old boy at the center of Stephen Chbosky’s Wonder, is severely deformed: the bridge of his nose reaches to his forehead in a straight line, the corners of his eyes are pulled down in a perpetual sob, his cheeks are traced by scars, and withered ears peek out from under his long hair. One dreads to think what he might have looked like before the 27 plastic surgeries he mentions near the beginning of the film. Auggie’s devoted mother, Isabel (Julia Roberts), has been homeschooling him since he was small, but the time has come for Auggie to join the world. As the story opens, he, Isabel, and Auggie’s gentle, laid-back father, Nate (Owen Wilson), are anxiously preparing for the first day of class at the local public school, where Auggie will be dropped into the shark-infested waters of fifth grade.

I come to this review highly credentialed because, growing up, I paid some of the same dues as young Auggie. When I was born, my

ssss EXCELLENT

sss GOOD

left ear was only a nubbin of flesh, and from age four to 11, I underwent 13 plastic surgeries to construct something that looked halfway normal. These involved skin grafts from my legs and later, in a more invasive procedure, cartilage extracted from my ribcage. Seeing one’s body carved up and reassembled can be horrifying for a child; I still remember the grinning doctor who, having painfully cut through and plucked out the stitches in my chest and drawn out a length of black surgical thread, handed me the tweezers and asked if I wanted to finish the job myself. At some point there was talk of drilling a hole through my skull to create an auditory canal, but when I was in sixth grade my parents decided enough was enough and the surgeries ended, leaving my ear like an unfinished swimming pool.

Because of that history, I may approach Wonder less sentimentally than other viewers (at least that’s my excuse this time). So you can take my word for it that the movie, adapted from a children’s book by R.J. Palacio,

ss AVERAGE

20 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2017

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treats its young protagonist and his craniofacial deformity with respect and common sense. The film delves inside not just Auggie and his overlooked older sister, Via (Izabela Vidovic), but also several of their classmates, who are much easier on the eyes but have as much trouble looking in the mirror as Auggie.

So while Auggie’s experience in school doesn’t exactly square with mine—the kids at school bully him for his disability, which was considered uncool even when I was growing up—I have to admire a storyteller who recognizes that emotional flaws can be every bit as debilitating as physical ones.

One thing Chbosky gets right is the discomfort of being stared at by strangers. “You’re gonna feel like you’re all alone, but you’re not,” Nate tells Auggie when the family drops him off at school—loving words but a paltry defense against the sea of eyes widening with sick fascination as Auggie ventures through the playground and the crowd parts to let him pass. This shot from Auggie’s perspective wouldn’t be nearly as haunting if the director hadn’t already played on our voyeurism in the opening scenes, where Auggie (a science whiz and Star Wars fanatic) romps around the family’s house in a spherical white astronaut’s helmet whose black visor hides his face. Chbosky gives us an uncertain glimpse of Auggie in his bedroom at night when the boy pulls off his helmet and his face is reflected in the darkened glass of a window, but only the next morning, when his parents take him to meet the principal, are his features fully exposed.

Wonder takes place in a school full of wise, with-it teachers and cruel, clueless children, which doesn’t really square with the more complicated social terrain I remember. The principal, Mr. Tushman (Mandy Patinkin), appoints a trio of kids, including Jack and Julian, to welcome Auggie to the student body, though they mainly pull away from him once classes have begun. Jack (Noah Jupe) connects with the new kid immediately but takes his social cues from rich, handsome Julian (Bryce Gheisar), whose personal antagonism toward Auggie progresses from smart remarks (“Do you eat special food?”) to physical bullying to vicious notes and cartoons stuffed

into Auggie’s locker. All of that can and may well happen, but in my own school experience from kindergarten onward, hassling someone because of a physical deformity was considered obnoxious (and unnecessary, because in fifth grade you can get hassled for nothing at all). I had more trouble from well-meaning but incompetent teachers who’d single me out in class and invite the other students to pity me.

My relationships with my siblings were all shaped (perhaps misshaped) by the inordinate amount of attention I got from my parents, a dynamic to which Wonder is well attuned.

After sticking with Auggie for a while, Chbosky turns to Via, a high-schooler whose identity has been defined by her younger brother. Via loves and looks out for Auggie, but she craves the attention of her mother, who’s even more preoccupied with the boy now that he’s caught up in the social crises of middle school. Via’s best friend, Miranda (Danielle Rose Russell), returns from summer camp and inexplicably freezes her out, though Via keeps this heartache to herself (“I just knew my family couldn’t take one more thing,” she explains).

Her life brightens when a classmate named Justin (Nadji Jeter) urges her to audition for the school play with him and they edge toward romance. Via is so delighted to be the object of his gaze that she deletes Auggie from her life, telling Justin she’s an only child.

This being a family film, Auggie triumphs at the end, winning not only a place for himself in the school but a medal, awarded at the last assembly of the year, for the positive influence he’s exerted over the student body. Apparently nothing can stop educators from singling out a kid for his disability and using him as part of their lesson plan. Prior to that scene, however, Wonder levels the social playing field by widening its narrative frame to focus on Jack, Julian, and Miranda, each of whom hurts as much as Auggie and his family. In one scene Miranda—who lives alone with her divorced, bitter, and lonely mother—stands outside the Pullmans’ house, spying on them through a window as the happy foursome decorate their Christmas tree. Like Auggie, Miranda has serious problems, but hers are invisible to others, and those are usually the kind that get you in the end. v WONDER sss Directed

by Stephen Chbosky. PG, 113 min. For listings visit chicagoreader.com/movies.

v @JR_Jones

WORTHLESS

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ARTS & CULTURE The Third Part of the Night

MOVIES

God, give me a sign

By ANDREA GRONVALL

T

he title town of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri seems like the very model of traditional small-town America, radiating charm and tranquility. Neighbors keep in touch, and the crime rate is so low that the police station shuts down at night. But after the savage rape and murder of a local teenager goes unsolved for seven months, the victim’s fed-up mother, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), rents three billboards outside town and uses them to shame the popular police chief, Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). Her defiant stance will push buttons and trigger a wave of violence, turning this funny, profanity-laced drama into a cautionary tale about the dangers of playing God. Irish playwright Martin McDonagh broke into feature filmmaking with the critically lauded In Bruges (2008) and followed it with the crime comedy Seven Psychopaths (2012), and like those movies, this third feature revolves around buffoonery and bloodshed. Willoughby and his dim-bulb deputy, Dixon (Sam Rockwell), alternate as the targets of Mildred’s wrath. At first they seem like a couple of good ol’ boys awkwardly adjusting to a new era in which public displays of racism and homophobia are taboo; Dixon makes an unconvincing bid for political correctness by substituting

“persons of color” for the N-word, but on a bender he beats up a local man he suspects of being gay. Willoughby has cancer, Dixon has mommy issues, and because of their own demons, they connect with Mildred’s pain and try to keep her from destroying herself.

So does a local priest (Nick Searcy), whom Mildred insults by bringing up the pedophilia scandals of the Catholic church. Even the town dwarf (Peter Dinklage), who wants to get into Mildred’s pants, covers up for her after she commits arson.

Mildred seems to be heading toward self-immolation, and her constant rage incites blowback from the townspeople: in one scene, after a protester torches the billboards, Mildred hauls an extinguisher to the top of one and balances there precariously in hope of saving this shrine to her daughter, whom she argued with only hours before the girl’s death. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri tells the story of a woman emulating God’s vengeance when she might profit more by emulating his forgiveness, especially toward herself. vTHREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI ssss Directed by Martin McDonagh. R, 115 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre, River East 21, Webster Place

Frances McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

MOVIES

Occupied and preoccupied

By BEN SACHS

B

est known for the cult psychodrama Possession (1981), writer-director Andrzej Żuławski made his feature debut ten years earlier with The Third Part of the Night, and it shows him already at the height of his powers. A sustained nightmare about societal and personal breakdown, it presents one man’s descent into madness during the Nazi occupation of Poland, though the story is hard to follow (perhaps by design). Żuławski divulges important information about the characters in short, unexpected bursts, and the plot moves sinuously between the hero’s present, past, and dream life. Moreover, the camera is almost always moving hurriedly around the characters, as though the director were having trouble keeping up with his own subjects. These devices can make a viewer feel lost, much as the hero feels in his own experience.

Based on the wartime memories of Żuławski’s father, Mirosław, Third Part centers on a 22-year-old intellectual named Michal (Leszek Teleszyński) who is convalescing from a long illness at his family’s country estate in the company of his parents, his wife (Małgorzata Braunek), and her young son from a previous marriage. No sooner has Żuławski introduced these five characters than Nazi soldiers descend on the estate, killing Michal’s wife, stepson, and mother, and setting fire to the house. Michal and his father return to their apartments in Lvov, and Michal joins the anti-Nazi resistance, but on his first mission he and a colleague

are sabotaged by secret police, the colleague is killed, and Michal runs for his life. Finding refuge in the apartment of a woman (also played by Braunek) who’s about to give birth, Michal delivers the baby and then resolves to help the young mother. Żuławski never indicates whether the pregnant woman, Marta, is the dead wife’s doppelganger or whether Michal, driven mad by his experience, just thinks she is.

The filmmaker also stages Michal’s dreams and hallucinations, raising the question of whether the details from these scenes are true. Other situations that seem outlandish were actually based on fact: after settling down with Marta, Michal finds work as a blood donor at a scientific institute breeding lice for disease research, and in fact the Rudolf Weigl Institute in Lvov paid intellectuals for this very purpose during World War II. The only thing beyond dispute in Third Part is the horror of the Nazi occupation, in which brutal violence and police roundups occur with shocking regularity. Żuławski would go on to make other, more abstract films about lives descending into chaos (not only Possession but also On the Silver Globe), yet in The Third Part of the Night such breakdowns are rooted in history. v THE THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT ssss Directed by Andrzej Żuławski.

102 min. Tue 11/21, 7 PM, Univ. of Chicago Doc Films, 1212 E. 59th, 773-702-8575, docfilms.uchicago.edu, $5.

v @1bsachs NOVEMBER 16, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 21

MUSIC

Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of November 16 b

THURSDAY16

PICK OF THE WEEK

Portland rapper Aminé makes songs as bright as his favorite color, yellow

Chicago Fringe Opera Presents As ONe See also Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

7 PM, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, $20$40. b Chicago Fringe Opera is presenting the local premiere of this compact 75-minute transgender coming-of-age story, which has had an unusual number of productions since its first appearance in 2014. That might be due to its economical structure— it requires only two singers and a string quartet—but also, no doubt, owes to its topical subject. As One is loosely based on the experience of colibrettist Kimberly Reed, whose 2008 documentary Prodigal Sons traced the story of her own transition from high school football hero (and class president) to adult woman and lesbian (who incidentally makes the surprising discovery that her brother is the grandson of Hollywood legends Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles). In this chamber work that’s more like a musical-theater piece than a full-fledged opera, Reed has worked with librettist Mark Campbell and composer Laura Kaminsky to tell a universal tale of growing up and blossoming into oneself.

Baritone Jonathan Wilson sings the role of the single character, Hannah, as a youth; mezzo-soprano Samantha Attaguile is Hannah after her transition.

As in real life, both these elements of an evolving total person are present at some level all the way through. Alexandra Enyart conducts members of the Chicago-based Zafa Collective; the production includes film by Reed. —DEANNA ISAACS

ò RANDY SHROPSHIRE

AMINÉ, PELL, A2

Sat 11/18, 9:30 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, sold out. 18+

IN ADAM “AMINÉ” Daniel’s breakout video for “Caroline,” the Portland rapper goofs around with pals in the parking lot of a classic drive-in burger joint, in a car—and on top of said car while it’s in motion. He also drops a skit into the middle of the video (which has amassed more than 200 million YouTube views since 2016), an absurd bit in which he asks about the bananas scattered behind him in the car that, according to the driver, are for “decoration.” Like the song “Caroline,” a sleek, minimal dance track built on a lithe, funky synth, the video excels because it exudes joy and all its familial synonyms, in part because of Aminé’s predilection for the color yellow, demonstrated by the bananas as well as several blindingly colored backdrops and outfits. More specifically, it exudes black joy; on his July debut, Good for You (Republic), he raps “I rock yellow on some yellow like what purple is to Prince” (the track is called, you guessed it, “Yellow”). Aminé, whose parents emigrated from Ethiopia to the U.S. in the 90s, frequently uses his favorite color as a template to share the lightness of black life, and his effervescent rapping and feel-good instrumentals cast a similar clarity and vividness throughout Good for You. A friendly iconoclast, Aminé has a gift for making music that can touch both people who intimately understand his everyday experiences and those who may struggle to decipher his most basic reference points. —LEOR GALIL

22 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2017

Fire-Toolz Gel Set headlines; Fire-Toolz, Mukqs, and A&E open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $5. 21+ Chicagoan Angel Marcloid has been making experimental tunes under more than a dozen pseudonyms since the 90s. As Fire-Toolz she conjures sounds that align with experiencing music during the current streaming era, where it’s possible to leapfrog between disparate artists, genres, and generations of music with the same dizzying speed and apathetic carelessness with which couch potatoes channel surf through thousands of networks. But unlike a TV zombie’s viewing habits, Marcloid’s work is always purposeful, even when it’s hard to figure out where she’s going; part of the fun of relistening to February’s Drip Mental (Hausu Mountain) and the brand-new Interbeing (Bedlam Tapes) is retracing her path through a ten-car pileup of retouched elevator music, unflinchingly harsh noise, industrialized and sugary pop, crunchy metalcore, and samples of computer technology and sputtering music gear. Tonight’s show celebrates the record’s release. Though it’s a tad slower and less frenetic than Drip Mental, Marcloid’s collage hits the bull’s-eye as effectively as before; the guttural howls atop a slow-moving sample of adult-contemporary pop are just a fraction of what makes “Window 2 Window” both challenging and visceral. —LEOR GALIL

ALL AGES

F

Oso Oso Hotelier headlines; Oso Oso and Alex Napping open. 6 PM, Cobra Lounge, 235 N. Ashland, $15. b The Yunahon Mixtape, the second full-length by Long Island punk lifer Jade Lilitri, who records and performs as Oso Oso, is about the denizens of a fictional town called Yunahon. It’s also the story of frustration—not necessarily in the creative process, but during the final stages of its birth. After an unsuccessful search for a label, Lilitri uploaded the album to Bandcamp last January as a pay-what-you-want release. Despite its beginnings, the album set a high bar for emo and indie rock that few other 2017 albums have surpassed.

That’s because above all else, The Yunahon Mixtape is about hope and about giving yourself over to the power of guitars that can thrust you beyond the sphere of your everyday life, if only for three- to five-minute chunks. With the sudden surge of a chorus or a particularly delightful display of interlocking guitars, Lililtri taps into feelings that for generations of young rock fans have made the rest of the world feel inconsequential compared to their favorite music; that quality whereupon listening, the hairs on your arms straight up, the energy of the room suddenly changes, and everything looks a little different. Lilitri’s welcoming vocals add to that effect, and though the themes of The Yunahon Mixtape flavor his delivery, it seems he’d be able to accomplish that no matter what he was singing about. The album is even more immersive due to his nimble musicianship and sweet songwriting sensibilities— the first time the chorus for the intimate-yet-grand “Reindeer Games” blasts off is as much a view of the Lilitri’s imagined universe as it is a reminder of the things that can make existing in our individual fucked-up worlds great. —LEOR GALIL

Fire-Toolz ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

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Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

MUSIC

Jim Lauderdale ò SCOTT SIMONTACCHI

FRIDAY17 Chicago Fringe Opera Presents As ONe See Thursday. Presented by Chicago Fringe Opera. 7 PM, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, $20-$40. b Jim Lauderdale Matthew Francis Andersen opens. 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, 6615 W. Roosevelt, Berwyn, $20. $15 in advance. 21+ Elements of vintage soul have long been part of Nashville veteran Jim Lauderdale’s portfolio, dating back to his stunning 1994 album Pretty Close to the Truth (Atlantic)—a knockout hybrid of American music that’s also distinguished by the melodic sensibility that’s made him one of the most successful songwriters in modern country history. They appear once again on his latest record, London Southern (Sky Crunch), which was cut four years ago while Lauderdale was on a UK tour backed by the like-minded working band of roots maverick Nick Lowe. The songs were composed by Lauderdale on his own or with stalwarts like Odie Blackmon, John Oates (whose cowriting on “Different Kind of Groove Some Time” harks back to the earliest, soul-drenched days of his little duo with Daryl Hall), and country-soul master Dan Penn. Regardless of who he partners with (if anyone), bits of soul shine through, like the Memphis flavors that seep through “We’ve Only Got So Much Time,” with some stabbing guitar leads a la Steve Cropper from Steve Donnelly. Lauderdale combines his American influences with a salute to the pop sounds of Great Britain, summoning a Beatlesque flair on “No Right Way to Be Wrong” while evoking both Buck Owens and Ray Charles. Elsewhere, he delves into suave supper-club crooning, such as on the string-laden ballad “I Love You More,” but through it all the catchiness of the performances makes the genre stroll feel irrelevant. —PETER MARGASAK

Mike Weis, Steven Hess, and Keefe Jackson A duo of Danny Van Duerm and Ben Billington and There Is Absolutely Nothing Lonelier open. 9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b Chicago hosts one of the world’s most vibrant improvisational scenes, so it’s not automatically remarkable when three of the city’s musicians get together to create in a live setting. But this combination stands out because of the unusual affiliations each member brings to this first-time encounter. In addition to playing low-key rock music with Zelienople and abstracted folk themes with Scott Tuma, percussionist Mike Weis performs ambient soundscapes with Mirror of Nature and solo material influenced by forms of Korean rituals.

Steven Hess hits the drums hard and precise with art-metal combos Locrian and RLYR and combines stark beats with electronic textures in Cleared, but he also explores the resonance of Kentucky caves with the experimental ensemble Haptic on their new CD Ten Years Under the Earth (Unfathomless).

And Keefe Jackson is a redoubtable presence on Chicago’s jazz scene, contributing tenor saxophone and bass and contrabass clarinets to his own bands, Greg Ward’s Mingus-themed 10 Tongues band, and Jason Stein’s muscular, swinging quartet as well as plunging into fractious free improvisation in the Urge Trio with Tomeka Reid and Christoph Erb. Hess and Weis have played exactly one duo concert, a marvelous exploration of textures and rhythms that took place six years ago at the Impala Gallery, and Weis also occasionally guests with Haptic; Jackson has guested with Mirror of Nature; and Hess and Jackson are both members of Austrian saxophonist Boris Hauf’s sextet Next Delusion, which layers heavy reed squalls over the restless interplay of multiple drummers. Just what this performance will sound like is open to conjecture, but you can count on the three men to be thoughtful, forceful, and wide open to possibility. —BILL MEYER J

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NOVEMBER 16, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 23

Learn to play with us!

End the year on a high note.

New adult group classes are now open! Browse our class schedules online at oldtownschool.org

11.22

1200 W RANDOLPH ST, CHICAGO, IL 60607 | 312.733.WINE

J UST A N N O U N C E D

JOSHUA DAVIS with Nicholas Barron

ON SALE AT NOON THURSDAY 11.16 ON SALE TO VINOFILE MEMBERS TUESDAY 11.14

STORY SESSIONS BRUNCH JOEL CHASNOFF CHRISTMAS FOR THE JEWS STEVE FORBERT 1.3 1.11 FLOBOTS 1.16 TRACY NELSON & THE BEL AIRS 1.18 SANDRA ANTONGIORGI AND GUESTS MELANIE FIONA 2.7 2.21 THE BIRDLAND ALL-STARS FEAT. TOMMY IGOE 3.9 TOM PAPA - 7 PM & 10 PM SHOWS 4.15-16 CANDLEBOX ACOUSTIC DUO

11.24

12.3 12.25

The Verve Pipe

playing two classic albums and more!

UPCOMING SHOWS 11.21

MIKI HOWARD W/ STEVE ‘STONE’ HUFF

11.27

MARCUS JOHNSON

11.29

EARL KLUGH - 6:30 PM & 9 PM SHOWS

11.30

RHETT MILLER’S HOLIDAY EXTRAVAGANZA W/ SPECIAL GUEST MATTHEW RYAN

12.2

LYNNE JORDAN IN ‘A GREAT BIG DIVA’ 1PM SHOW

12.3

JEFFREY FOUCAULT & KRIS DELMHORST

12.4

THE SECRET SISTERS W/ SPECIAL GUEST BRIAN DUNNE

12.6

JOE PUG WITH JUANITA STEIN

12.9

SHEMEKIA COPELAND

12.9

MIHALI - 11:30PM SHOW

12.10-13 LOS LOBOS

11.25-26

Kurt Elling The Beautiful Day 5 pm & 8 pm shows

12.14

DWELE - 7 PM & 9:30 PM SHOWS

12.17

THE EMPTY POCKETS’ HOLIDAY WONDERLAND CONCERT

12.18

KRIS ALLEN - SOMETHIN’ ABOUT CHRISTMAS

12.19-20 BEBEL GILBERTO 12.22-23 MICHAEL MCDERMOTT MISCHIEF & MISTLETOE

presents

Sunday · December 3, 2017 · 11am-5pm Chicago Plumbers Hall · 1340 W Washington

For more information, visit ChicagoReader.com/MICM 24 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2017

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MUSIC Circuit Des Yeux ò JULIA DRATEL

continued from 23

SATURDAY18 AminÉ See Pick of the Week. Pell and A2 open.

9:30 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, sold out. 18+ Chicago Fringe Opera Presents As ONe See Thursday. 7 PM, Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, $20-$40. b Circuit Des Yeux Ka Baird opens. 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $15, $13 in advance.

18+ I’ve been observing the artistic growth of Haley Fohr since she moved to Chicago in 2012 from Bloomington, Indiana. She’s matured in leaps and bounds since the release of her breakthrough album, In Plain Speech (Thrill Jockey), in 2015, but nothing could have prepared me for her achievements on the remarkable new Reaching for Indigo (Drag City)—which might be the best album I’ve heard in 2017. Early on, Fohr convinced me that she possessed lots of ideas, but at the time she seemed to struggle to sort through them.

Now she fully commands her talents as a songwriter, singer, and arranger, and she’s forged a unified approach that reconciles her abiding feel for artsong experimentation, expansive folk, and psychedelia. Coproduced with Cooper Crain of Bitchin Bajas, Reaching for Indigo brilliantly frames her arresting voice: her commanding lower register is harnessed as a howling operatic force on “Black Fly,” and on “Paper Bag” her upper range is captured in stunning minimalist patterns that evoke the heyday of Philip Glass. Ornamented with a powerful swell of massive brass tones by trombonist Nick Broste, the stunning opening track, “Brainshift,” is a delicate, hymnlike meditation that seeks to capture a sudden, all-encompassing transformation that’s overcome the narrator. The galloping “A Story of This World Part II” features some of Fohr’s most far-flung vocal experiments, mixing wordless howls and melismatic whoops with a focus and precision missing from her earlier work. There’s no mistaking

the influence of singers like Yoko Ono, Diamanda Galas, and Nico—whose album Chelsea Girl Fohr covered in a live show last month—but there’s nothing derivative about her new album. The only thing that’s more exciting than what Fohr has done here is contemplating what might come next. —PETER MARGASAK

Geof Bradfield Sextet 8 PM, Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, $15. 21+ Few Chicago jazz musicians operate with the erudition and rigor of saxophonist Geof Bradfield, a scholar of the music’s history, a thoughtful composer, and an artist who never reverts to autopilot. When he was approached about making a live release by British Columbia-based jazz label Cellar Live, he didn’t merely trot out an assortment of past accomplishments but crafted new pieces with the attention to detail and holistic construction one might expect on a meticulously assembled studio effort. The album, Birdhoused, was recorded during a cold March day this year at the Green Mill (in front of an “audience of Canadian jazz fans and friends,” according to Bradfield’s liner-note essay). It opens with a trio of pieces that seem confounding together on paper—Curtis Mayfield’s “The Other Side of Town,” Charlie Parker’s “Constellation,” and the early György Ligeti masterpiece “Sonatina”— but flow into one another with ease, oiled by the sextet’s versatile personnel—alto saxophonist Nick Mazzarella, trumpeter Marquis Hill, trombonist Joel Adams, bassist Clark Sommers, and drummer Dana Hall. Bradfield’s lovely arrangements make the most of his four-horn front line, and the wide array of styles the album’s covers is echoed in the originals that follow. “Fearful Symmetry” features a twined exploration of Messiaen and Moroccan music, and “Solid Jackson,” a tune inspired by Bradfield’s studies with bassist Charlie Haden, mixes Ornette Coleman-like melodic flair and the slow-motion movement characteristic of Keith Jarrett’s early quartet. Of course, all the exactitude and intelligence in the world don’t help if they’re not matched by soulfulness, and this combo brings an unstinting depth of feeling to its work. Tonight the full band reconvenes at the spot where the record was made.

—PETER MARGASAK J

NOVEMBER 16, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 25

NEW

STEEP CANYON RANGERS

FEB 03

NEW

MAGIC GIANT

FEB 09

NEW

THE SHEEPDOGS

FEB 27

NEW

AMY SHARK

MAR 05

NEW

JAN 28

ALEX CAMERON

MAR 07

NEW

RORY SCOVEL

SCREAMING FEMALES

MAR 10

NEW

NEW

MUSIC

DURAND JONES & THE INDICATIONS

APR 13

PARADISE FEARS

JAN 03

MAR 23

S. CAREY

APR 05

NEW

LUCY ROSE

NEW

FEB 28

NEW

FEB 22

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FEB 16

STÉLOUSE SHAME

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FEB 02

KUINKA

PALEHOUND + WEAVES

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JAN 13

THE DEEP DARK WOODS

CHARLIE CUNNINGHAM

NEW

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GORDI

26 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2017

continued from 25 Pere Ubu Minibeast opens. 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $25, $20 in advance. 21+ It’s no longer particularly remarkable when a rock band continues to soldier on more than four decades after it started, but it’s another matter when a group continues to produce strong new music rather than exploit nostalgia. David Thomas is the only member left from the original lineup of Pere Ubu, but despite the stunning cast of musicians that have played in the band over the years, including synthesizer master Allen Ravenstine and guitarist Jim Jones, among others, it would be hard to dispute that it’s always been his outfit—no element has defined the band’s music more than his slightly unhinged yawp.

The recent Drive, He Said 1994-2002 (Fire), the third in a series of box sets, continues a significant trawl through Pere Ubu’s voluminous archives, but I’m more excited by the band’s brand-new album, 20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo (Cherry Red). The record features the group’s trademark squelch of analog synthesizers and driving rhythms, probing, astringent clarinet lines, and a collision of lacerating licks, atmospheric washes, and psychedelic leads produced by its current three-guitar lineup of Keith Moliné, Gary Siperko, and Kristof Hahn. The music carves out a bountiful, deeply varied space for Thomas’s singing, which is sometimes hectoring, sometimes tender, but never half-assed—he sounds as driven and engaged as he has at any point in his storied career. Whether embracing furious postpunk energy on “Monkey Business” or spookily exploring “Prison of the Senses,” 20 Years shows there’s nothing remotely retrograde about the current Pere Ubu. —PETER MARGASAK

John Wiese 8 PM, Graham Foundation, 4 W. Burton. Free with RSVP at grahamfoundation. org/public_events/5704-john-wiese. b F After years as one of the most prolific and unrelenting noise artists in the U.S., veteran LA experimentalist John Wiese seems to have deliberately altered his modus operandi. His discography lists more than 400 items under his own name as well as projects like Sissy Spacek, Leather Bath, and others, but over the last half decade his output has screeched to a near halt. That said, if he only intermittently drops a title like the recent one-sided record Escaped Language (Gilgongo), I’m OK with it. As on its 2015 predecessor, Deviate From Balance, Wiese uses components such as abstract electronics, samples, or found recordings with precision and composerlike thrust. Yet he simultaneously operates on a more intuitive level, working intensely with his materials and spinning each performance of a given work into a variation on a theme. As he said in an interview with C. Spencer Yeh in Bomb magazine last year, “I would describe myself as a whittler, turning a log into something else.” The new 19-minute piece was recorded at Ina/GRM’s 2016 Présences Électronique Festival in Paris, and although the largely abrasive, clangorous sounds he uses feel far more constrained than those on Deviate From Balance, he shapes them with a three-dimensional richness.

It’s as if the listener is taken on some kind of haunted-house theme-park ride, where new iterations of sound lurk around every corner. For tonight’s

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MUSIC Lucas Debargue ò FELIX BROEDE/SONY CLASSICAL

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brings a brooding, almost blackened intensity to the thundering left-hand figures in the Szymanowski, pushing ever deeper into a despairing tone. Debargue will perform the same three pieces from the new album in his Symphony Center debut. —PETER MARGASAK

Lucas Debargue 3 PM, Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, $21-$83, $15 students. b These days the field of classical music is crowded with prodigies whose careers seem to have been cemented before puberty, so it’s refreshing to discover that one of today’s most acclaimed younger pianists was a late bloomer. French pianist Lucas Debargue began studying music when he was 11, but his studies weren’t rigorous. By the time he was in high school he was more taken with literature than the piano, and it wasn’t until after he earned his bachelor’s degree that he pursued formal music studies. He started working with Russian mentor Rena Shereshevskaya in 2011, and four years later he caused a sensation at the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow; although he placed fourth, his rumpled appearance and incendiary performance attracted most of the attention, and a recording of that performance was later released as his debut album through Sony Music. His second album placed a relatively obscure work by Nikolai Medtner alongside pieces by Bach and Beethoven, raising interest in the Russian composer. Similarly, Debargue’s recently released third album, Schubert, Szymanowski, balances a pair of familiar Schubert sonatas—A (D664) and A Minor (D784)—with a much lesser-known piece, the second sonata by the Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. The pianist dispatches the Schubert pieces with gripping finesse, blending melodic clarity and rhythmic oomph, and he

Chicago would have been a much more mundane place over the last two decades without the tireless efforts of musician, artist, promoter, historian (and Reader contributor) Plastic Crimewave, aka Steve Krakow. Sometimes his music can seem overshadowed by his work organizing and promoting shows of great psychedelic trip-meisters from all over the world, but a new Plastic Crimewave Syndicate album is always a cosmic event. The power trio—which currently includes Anjru Kieterang on bass and Jose Bernal on drums—is about to drop Thunderbolt of Flaming Wisdom on Eye Vybe (run by erstwhile drummer Karissa Talanian). Featuring contributions from Bill Vermette (synth), Bruce Lamont (sax), and Whitney Johnson (viola), the record is just a little over a half hour long, but there’s not a second of filler; from the riff-roaring “Ghost of Dread Reaction” that nails the band’s signature Stooges-like freakout style to the cooler space rock of “Future to the Ancients” to the throbbing, loping long-form jam of the 11-minute closer “No Place,” they leave no turn unstoned. The effect is never ironic but always heartfelt, and it provides a wild time-and-dimension-warping ride through decades of psych- and space-rock styles, bringing the classic Blue Cheer/Hawkwind sound through the tones of Japanese high-wire artists and chill Teutonic rhythm drivers. —MONICA KENDRICK v

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bottom lounge ON SALE FRIDAY 11.17 4544 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG • 773.728.6000

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2 showS! FRIDAY DECEMBER 1

UPCOMING SHOWS

Idan Raichel Piano-Songs presented by Old Town School at the Athenaeum Theatre SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2018 7PM

REACT PRESENTS

11.16 BLEEP BLOOP

UM.. / SUMTHIN’ SUMTHIN’ TOMMY RUFFINGERS

11.17 SHE WANTS REVENGE COSMONAUTS

11.22 OCEANS ATE ALASKA

DAYSEEKER / AFTERLIFE / TANZEN EIGHTY SIX HAPPINESS

I'm With Her - Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O'Donovan presented by Old Town School at Thalia Hall FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2018 8PM

11.24 FACE THE FIRE

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

11.25 BEACH SLANG

DAVE HAUSE & THE MERMAID SEE THROUGH DRESSES

BUY TICKETS AT TICKETMASTER.COM THE CHICAGO THEATRE BOX OFFICE

BY PHONE: 800-745-3000

SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS

11.29 EKALI The Residents TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2018 7PM

MEDASIN / JUDGE

12.01 MEST

MR. T EXPERIENCE

12.02 THE WHITE BUFFALO 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, DECEMBER 1 8PM SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2 8PM

Asleep at the Wheel "Merry Texas Christmas Ya'll"

12.07 BLACK PISTOL FIRE COBI

12.08 THE DEAR HUNTER THE FAMILY CREST / VAVA

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

12.16 THE LAWRENCE ARMS

3RD ANNUAL WAR ON X-MAS “SEXY XMAS”

NOTHINGTON / SASS DRAGONS

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3 4PM

12.17 THE SPILL CANVAS

Old Town School at 60: Benefit Concert & Celebration

12.23 INEPT 12.31 MURDER BY DEATH

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 3 6PM • FAMILY SHOW / 8PM • MAIN SHOW

Funkadesi 21st Anniversary Concert ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL 4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL

11/17

Global Dance Party: Bomba Dance Party with La Escuelita Bombera de Corazón

WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE

11/22

Kinobe & The Global Junction

OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG 28 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2017

ALICE DRINKS THE KOOL AID

93XRT PRESENTS

WILD / SUPER WHATEVR

‘SO MUCH BEWTEEN US’ 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

THE LIFE AND TIMES

01.17 ANTI-FLAG

STRAY FROM THE PATH / THE WHITE NOISE SHARPTOOTH

02.01 DIET CIG

GREAT GRANDPA / THE SPOOK SCHOOL

02.02 AVATAR

THE BRAINS / HELLZAPOPPIN

02.28 J BOOG

JESSE ROYAL / ETANA

03.07 THE EXPENDABLES THROUGH THE ROOTS PACIFIC DUB

03.24 KNOCKED LOOSE

TERROR / JESUS PIECE / STONE

www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

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IN ROTATION

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.

MUSIC

1800 W. DIVISION

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

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

The cover of the Soror Dolorosa album Apollo

Car Bomb ò COURTESY THE ARTIST

NOVEMBER 17...........STRAY BOLTS THE STREEMS NOVEMBER 18...........LUNCHTIME NOVEMBER 19...........JOHN FORD @8PM TONY DO ROSORIO @9PM NOVEMBER 22...........JAMIE WAGNER & FRIENDS BAD FORUM NOVEMBER 24...........ARTIFACT NOVEMBER 25...........THE POLKAHOLICS 20TH ANNIVERSARY SHOW LETTERBOMB NOVEMBER 26...........WHOLESOMERADIO DJ NIGHT NOVEMBER 29...........PETE CASANOVA QUARTET EVERY TUESDAY (EXCEPT 2ND) AT 8PM OPEN MIC HOSTED BY JIMIJON AMERICA

Two Inuit throat singers perform on opening night of the 2017 Canada Summer Games Festival. ò MATT DUBOFF / CANADA SUMMER GAMES

Reader music editor

PHILIP MONTORO

Bandleader of Vaskula, session violinist

JOHN BECKER

GREG RATAJCZAK Guitarist, vocalist, and programmer in Plague Bringer

Godflesh, Post Self Drum machines and digital production make it easy to achieve robotically precise music. What I like about the new Godflesh record is that Justin Broadrick engineers its pistoning industrial stomps and dirgelike oscillations to sound like they’re kept in alignment only by exhausting physical effort. It helps that his favored vocal style is a hoarse, strained bark—you can almost see him fighting to hold shut a bulging steel hatch.

Soror Dolorosa, Apollo In September, Parisbased band Soror Dolorosa—led by vocalist, fashion photographer, and all-around standup gent Andy Julia—put out an album of some of the finest contemporary gothic rock around. Apollo showcases a mature ability to mix “convertible driving through the desert” rockers with ethereal atmospheric passages—think the Sisters of Mercy plus Alcest. A choice album for a gray autumn day.

UbuWeb’s collection of Inuit vocal games Though banned by Christian clergy for almost a century, Inuit throat singing survived, and since the 1980s it’s undergone a renaissance as a living cultural practice. Avant-garde archive UbuWeb has posted 98 free-todownload recordings of Inuit vocal games, broadly called katajjaq (plural katajjait).

They’re generally played by two women faceto-face: one creates a rapid, shifting pattern of rhythmic noises, and the other tries to keep up by filling in the gaps. Those noises are what make the games sound fun: growls, barks, gasps, wheezes, hoots . . . and often, when someone loses, helpless laughter.

The David Bascombe trilogy From 1985 to 1987, British recording engineer and producer David Bascombe was involved with three fantastic albums: Tears for Fears’ Songs From the Big Chair (1985), Peter Gabriel’s So (1986), and Depeche Mode’s Music for the Masses (1987).

All three have influenced me enormously over the past few years, and each provides ways to learn about songcraft, studio production, and all forms of musical performance.

WVVX 103.1 FM, the Rock Chicago Wants If you lived in Chicagoland in the mid- to late 80s and early 90s and listened to heavy metal, you’re probably familiar with the call letters WVVX and the slogan “The Rock Chicago Wants.” When I began listening in 1989, this low-wattage mostly talk station, based in Highland Park, hosted a heavy metal show that ran from 8 PM till 4 AM seven nights a week. Night after night, I would tune in to an eclectic array of heavy metal, from glam to death (and everything in between), broadcast in mono into my bedroom. Over the years, the voices of DJs Scott Loftus and Paul Kaiser became like family to me as they guided the first steps of my lifelong journey into metal.

Electric Wizard, Wizard Bloody Wizard Only time will tell if the new Electric Wizard LP will join Dopethrone and Come My Fanatics . . . in the doom-metal canon—as much as I like the bass playing on this one, I’d prefer less bluesrock and more evil down-tuned slop. But I’m just happy they’re still out there, trolling the pious hypocrites who have to believe in covens of satanic baby killers in order to maintain their self-serving persecution fantasies.

Jean-Luc Ponty at City Winery on June 19 Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to witness the greatness that is Jean-Luc in all his glory. His band was made up of longtime contributors, and the set list hit many crucial pieces and favorites of mine. Ponty’s music has been with me from a very early age, and I find myself going back to his albums over and over again, discovering new gems each time. My former violin professor Edgar Gabriel was invited to take the stage alongside the band for the encore of “Open Mind,” and I met Monsieur Ponty after the gig. Couldn’t ask for more.

Surachai, Asymmetry Codex/Temple of the Weakening Sun Surachai is one of my favorite local artists, and over past few years his abstract, ominous electronic music has left quite an impression on me. I’m not a journalist, so I’m not going to ramble on attempting to (poorly) describe how “dark” or “organic” it is.

Just put on some headphones, dim the lights, and experience it for yourself.

Car Bomb, Meta I love this band, and I can’t get enough of their album Meta. I don’t know (or really care) how to classify their sound, but whatever it is makes me want to flip tables.

Meta has been a go-to album since its release in 2016. Without sounding forced, the music is as weird as it is heavy and as simple as it is technical. (What?) In short, it’s not what you’d expect. “Sets,” which features Suffocation vocalist Frank Mullen, is particularly awesome.

NOVEMBER 16, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 29

FOOD & DRINK

RAISU | $$$$ R 2958 W. Irving Park 773-961-7299 raisusushi.com

Bluefin tuna sashimi ò ERICA KOHAGIZAWA

RESTAURANT REVIEW

Raisu raises the bar for raw fish

The low-profile sushi spot in Irving Park might help you miss Katsu a little less.

By MIKE SULA

T

en years ago a friend came down with cholera after eating a malevolent oyster at Katsu. It happens. Despite this unfortunate event, the unassuming sushi bar on an unfashionable far-north-side street—which closes it doors at the end of the month after nearly 30 years in the business—remained in regular rotation among my pal’s favorite restaurants.

That’s because Katsu was the best in the city—and I’ll fight anyone who says any different.

In an age of sushi glam, the now retiring Katsu Imamura was a minimalist. Sure, you might be treated to a slice of black truffle or a fleck of gold leaf gilding your nigiri, but the master didn’t hide his fish behind frippery.

“Please understand Katsu does not honor requests for extra sauces and extra wasabi,” read his menu. He was old-school and kept things pretty quiet. He didn’t advertise, Instagram, tweet, or Facebook. But if you were a lover of great fish from out of town and you found yourself in Chicago, hungry for the sea, you’d know—or at least find out about—Katsu.

I’m in no way going to compare Katsu to Raisu, a notable and fairly new sushi spot in Irving Park in a corner location that must be haunted, having been the home of a string of restaurants that each withered briefly before dying in quick succession. Well, I’ll make one comparison: like Katsu, Raisu keeps it kind of quiet.

It does, however, have a Facebook page, where usually twice a week someone posts pictures of the gorgeous, seemingly random selection of clear-eyed fish that have arrived, packed in ice, from a purveyor at Tsukiji Market in Tokyo. Chef Simon Liew calls this his “omakase” supply, a selection of seasonal sea creatures that make up the sashimi specials and his own sushi omakase that ranges from $50 up to “no budget.”

Week to week Liew doesn’t know exactly what his delivery will bring. One day it might be aji, knifejaw, triggerfish, and Hokkaido uni; another day Spanish mackerel, amberjack, bonito, alfonsino, sea bream, or cutlassfish. There’s often a beauty shot of a slab of fatty otoro, the coveted bluefin tuna underbelly, as pretty as pink marble (and, due to the species’ precarious hold on existence, a sight that should make people sad and angry rather than covetous and hungry). Liew is getting the goods, for better and worse.

You build connections after a decade in Chicago sushi. He’s worked at Humboldt Park’s great Kai Zan, among others. He credits Kaze Chan of Macku as the mentor under whom he learned the most. Six years ago he worked at Katsu too, and in his style you can detect the influence of all three.

Liew tells me he’s all about sashimi. His unadorned maki are tightly rolled, the rice often muscling out the fish. The market demands maki, even overburderned ones, and Raisu delivers, though in more limited quantity than most. J

30 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2017

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FOOD & DRINK

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

Thinly sliced, minimally dressed sweet Hokkaido scallops arrayed across a palm leaf ò ERICA KOHAGIZAWA

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32 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2017

continued from 30 As is typical, the fish and often the rice are overwhelmed by extraneous additions or too many varieties of fish. The Tornado features unagi, hamachi salmon, and two kinds of tuna, blanketed by thick layers of cold avocado. The Inferno Dragon is loaded with white tuna, fried smoked salmon, fried jalapeños, and spicy mayonnaise.

You’d never imagine the quality of fish Liew brings in judging from these overcomplicated constructions. To hear him speak, he almost disavows them, and when you experience his florid sashimi arrangements with relatively minimally garnished fish, you see why. He arrays thinly sliced, judiciously dressed sweet Hokkaido scallops across a palm leaf, the only baroque touch a fan of lemons and apples perched in a scallop shell. Slices of pristine scarlet bonito knife across the plate sprinkled with sesame seeds and chive, with a topknot of green onion.

Like the nigiri at Macku, Liew’s signature pieces are adorned with some questionable elements (yes, cream cheese). But there are

plenty of more restrained options with unconventional garnishes that harmonize nicely with the fish, or at least don’t get in the way of it. Sea bream is touched with fresh ginger and a single fried garlic chip; salmon with black pepper and maple butter; botan ebi with garlic, mayonnaise, and green tobiko, the shrimp’s tail meat posed dramatically with its disembodied head.

There are few non-fish-related things to eat at Raisu: udon soup, chicken wings, tempura vegetables, and a surprisingly hearty miso soup, which is fine given the direction Liew seems to want to pursue. Eight Japanese whiskeys and seven sakes (and more off menu) make it easy to know what one ought to drink with the sea creatures. Still, Liew’s minimally adorned fish is really the only thing you should be concerned with here.

There’s one legitimate comparison you can make between him and Katsu: put yourself in either of their hands and you can’t go wrong. v

v @MikeSula

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

FOOD & DRINK

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BOOZE

ast year around this time, hundreds of gallons of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Brand Stout were being distilled at Rhine Hall to make bierschnaps. The spirit originated in Bavaria, where small brewers who owned a still would often distill leftover beer. Despite increasing interest, it’s never really become popular in the U.S. (though several local distilleries, including Koval, Chicago Distilling Company, and CH Distillery, have made spirits from beer). Turning unwanted beer into spirits is a no-brainer; the first step to making whiskey is essentially to make beer, minus the hops. But taking a beer as sought-after as Bourbon County Stout and making it into something else seems a little counterintuitive.

“Because of how distinctive Bourbon County Stout is, that supermalty finish, we really wanted to see just what would happen to it,” says Rhine Hall co-owner Jenny Solberg Katzman. The distillery focuses on schnapps— which it calls fruit brandy or eau de vie to avoid confusion with oversweetened bottomshelf schnapps—so making bierschnaps was a natural step, and Goose Island is a Fulton Street neighbor. Rhine Hall’s first experiment was with distilling Goose Island’s Matilda into schnapps, though the version made from BCBS was released first, in mid-December of last year. At the time it was identified only as “a stout beer from a brewery neighbor of ours,” and the distillery declined to answer a direct question about its provenance from the Guys Drinking Beer blog.

Solberg says that Rhine Hall and Goose Island agreed that it didn’t make sense to cobrand the unaged version. “They don’t want to confuse their customer base with something

Rhine Hall releases beer-barreled bierschnaps distilled from Bourbon County Stout

By JULIA THIEL

clear,” she says. “A lot of people don’t understand that whiskey starts out clear before it goes into a barrel.”

Some of the schnapps was bottled and sold, but most of the spirit went back into the beer barrels to age. On Black Friday, November 24, the same day that Bourbon County Stout and all its variants are released annually, that beer-barreled bierschnaps will be released at the same stores where BCBS is being sold (mostly Binny’s, but also many smaller retailers). It’s priced at $29.99 for a 375-ml bottle, and is 40 percent ABV. “It’s really fun to see how big of a correlation there is between the beer and the distilled version of it,” Solberg says. In addition to the two Goose Island beers, the distillery has made a bierschnaps with a saison from Church Street Brewing in Evanston, and according to Solberg, the difference between the spirits is notable. “They’re very distinct, to the exact flavor profile of the actual beer.”

The aged version of the BCBS bierschnaps is much like the unaged version, she says, but amped up a bit. “The maltiness is more pronounced, but the [unaged] is already supermalty. You get some characteristics of the wood; barrels tend to round out clear spirits, take the edge off. It’s a little more approachable.”

Solberg says that Rhine Hall may continue the series with other breweries if this release sells well. “Ideally we’d do different types of beer,” she says. “We have good ties with a bunch of breweries. We’re already talking with Pipeworks about doing one.” v

v @juliathiel

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design specifications, test plans, and protocols; identifying relationships of bugs to software code; testing browser based and device based UI applications; and utilizing middle laye r/service layer, White Box and Black Box Testing, and Maven/ Jenkins/Bamboo for CI/CD. Send Resume to: L. Paino, Foot Locker, Inc. 112 West 34 St., NY, NY 10120 ref job code “vs17ad”. No phone calls or agencies please.

JOBS

ADMINISTRATIVE J. APONTE & ASSOCIAT ES, LLC

seeks Immigration Paralegals in Chicago, IL. Under supervision of attorney: draft & review NIV & IV petitions: H-1B, TN, L-1 & B-1, & I-140 petitions; draft PERM app. & supporting recruitment materials for USDOL; draft I-485, EAD & Advance Parole apps.; effectively support attorneys in managing active caseload of 100+ employment-based apps. & petitions; & use MSWord, Outlook, Excel, & detailed case mgmt. database system. Must have bachelor’s in Political Science, related or its equiv. + 1 yr. exp. E-mail resume to careers@ japontelaw.com No calls. EOE. Req. #1001.

Quality Systems Contro l- China – Help Quality Mgr implement quality assurance programs during product life cycle. Duties: implement measurement systems for product sourcing, manufacture, distribution; work w suppliers to ensure timely delivery; work w Customer Services to ensure on-time orders; develop relations with suppliers/clients; prep suppliers/auditors to inspect plants, pass inspection, and make improvements; conduct supplier audits; work on Sales/ Marketing procedures; formulate operations quality control policies/ protocol; communicate with Chinese suppliers, colleagues, clients re product life cycle. Intl travel (China) 25%. Reqd: Bach deg in Org Psych or Indust Eng; 2 yrs wk exp in quality process/ procedure audit; fluency in written /spoken Mandarin; and perm US work auth. Contact G. Satherlie, Pres., Accurate Products, Inc., 4645 N. Ravenswood Ave., Chicago, IL 60640.

SALES & MARKETING MARKETING: KRAFT FOODS GROUP BRANDS LLC seeks Brand Manager to work in Chicago, IL. Accntbl for dvlpng & executng annual operatng plan of a portfolio of brands in frozen catgry w/ a P&L of about $300MM. Hold complet ownrshp of all marktng responsbilts incl base busness, brand activatn & brand buildng. Degree & commensurate exp. req’d. Apply to #R-1687 at kraftheinzcompany.com/careers.

THE NORTHERN TRUST COMPANY is seeking a Cash

General

Balances Platform Technical Lead in Chicago, IL w/ the following reqts: BS degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field or foreign equivalent degree. 5 yrs of related experience. Required skills: D esign/Develop services using Spring MVC, Java/J2EE platform and Service oriented architecture (5 years); Identify and fine tune application performance bottleneck using various performance tools such as wily, dynatrace (4 years); Design/Develop services with Spring Boot, Spring Integration in Tomcat environment (3 years); Design Business User Interface using Angular, JQuery, AJAX (5 years). Please apply on-line at www. northerntrustcareers.com and search for Req. #17133

SENIOR SOFTWARE DESIGN

Engineer in Test (Chicago, IL) (Foot Locker Retail, Inc.): Design, build, test, and deploy effective test automation solutions. Create manual and automation scripts using different fra meworks/tools for multiple projects.

Requires: Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field and five (5) years of progressively responsible experience building and maintaining open source test automation frameworks for Mobile and Web involving Selenium and Cucumber using TestNG and Java junit. Five years of experience must include: developing

THE CITY OF Iowa City, Iowa is currently accepting applications for the position of Police Officer.

To access the candidate information packet and to apply online, visit www. icgov.org/policerecruitment. Online applications must be submitted by Friday, December 15, 2017.

For more information, contact Human Resources at 319-356-5020 or jobs@ iowa-city.org.

It is the policy of the City of Iowa City to afford equal employment opportunities for all employees and potential City employees. Persons who are members of a protected class are encouraged to apply.

System Integration Test Engineer Develop and implement system integration testing procedures for microwave and free space optics networks, including use of millimeter wave technology and customization of testing environments and deployment of such procedures for ultimate application in the field.

Requirements: Associate’s degree or equiv in Telecommunications Engineering or related field and 6 years experience. Forward resume and references to SMG Holdings LLC d/b/a Anova Technologies, HR, 205 N. Michigan Ave, Ste 4230, Chicago IL 60601.

NO calls DIRECTOR, OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE: NORTHBROOK, IL

Astellas US LLC seeks experienced Director, Operational Excellence – to implement and monitor enterprise-wide corporate strategic initiatives, driving organizational growth, among other duties.

Interested candidates submit detailed resume by mail, referencing Job Code D/OE/2017 to: Mr. Walter Garcia, Astellas US LLC, 1 Astellas Way, Northbrook, IL, 60062.

RELATIVITY (CHICAGO, IL) seeks Software Engineer in Test to drive customer confidence by assuring quality of current/future core products. Submit resumes at: https://www.relativity.com/ careers/available-positions/ Job ID: 2017-MM-ENG-1010.

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, AIS FINANCE CRM: NORTHBROOK, IL

Astellas US LLC seeks experienced Assistant Director, AIS Finance CRM. Participate in the evaluation, implementation, and management of business technology solutions, among other duties. Interested candidates submit detailed resume by mail, referencing Job Code AD/ AISFCRM to: Mr. Walter Garcia, Astellas US LLC, 1 Astellas Way, Northbrook, IL, 60062.

DELANEY STATION INC.,

(Waukegan) seeks Operation Mgr. to supervise employees, make deposits, open/close, order supplies. 1 yr. mana ger/sales expr required. Contact Jay at 847-336-7060.

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

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

Retail

BINNY’S IS HIRING! Binny’s Beverage Depot is the Midwest’s largest upscale retailer of fine wines, spirits, beers and cigars, and due to our continued growth, we are now looking for dedicated individuals to join our team at the following locations:

Skokie Elmwood Park River Grove Lincolnwood

Grand Avenue Lakeview Lincoln Park South Loop

SEASONAL AND PARTTIME STORE ASSOCIATES We are seeking energetic, customer-oriented individuals to perform a variety of store functions. Qualified persons must be over 21 years of age, able to lift 40-50 lbs. and available to work flexible hours. Previous retail experience a plus, with cashier or stock experience preferred.

Candidates must be able to work nights & weekends.

In return for your skills, we offer growth opportunities and attractive compensation.

Please apply online at

binnys.com/careers

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 CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

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

CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE -

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

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

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

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)

SOUTHSIDE, 1BR, VICINITY of 66th & Michigan, quiet building, carpeted, $550/mo + security. Call 773-978-3507, after 3pm.

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

EOE

34 CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 16, 2017

CHICAGO - $299 Move In Spe-

cial! 110th & Michigan, 1BR & 2BR Apts, $580-$725/mo. Avail. now Secure building. 1-800-770-0989

Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212

E ROGERS PARK: Deluxe 1BR + den, new kitc., FDR, oak flrs close to beach. $950-1050/heated, 773743-4141 ww.urbanequities.com

NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $133/wk & up. 773-275-4442

1 BR $1100 AND OVER

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

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

1 BR $700-$799 62nd & Maplewood, 2br garden $775 $450 move in fee, 4br $1200, $850 move in fee, lrg LR/DR, utils not incl, No sec dep 773-406-0604 2032 E. 72ND PL. 2-E.

2BR, 1BA Condo, 2nd flr, heat, appls and parking incl. $1000/month + security. Call 312-497-2819

83rd & Loomis, large 1BR & 2BR apts, newly remodeled, hdwd flrs, appls & heat incl $750 & $850 plus $350 move in fee 773-507-8534.

CHATHAM 708 East 81st(langley), 4 room, 1 bedroom, 1st fl $700+security. Please call Mr. Joe at 708-870-4801 for more info

1 BR $800-$899 3001 S. MICHIGAN, large studio, walk in closet, transportation nearby, heat & gas incl. $875/mo.

Credit check required. 312-326-1000 2 MONTHS FREE 6600 S. Ingle-

side, 1 & 2 Bedrooms, $850-$1000 Free heat and Laundry Room, Sec 8 OK. Niki 773.808-2043. www.livenovo.com

1 BR $900-$1099 WEST RIDGE, 6200N/ 2200W. Spacious updated one

bedroom garden apartment. Near transportation, shopping, parks.

Heat, appliances, electricity, blinds included. 773-274-8792. $900.

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 Warren Park. 1902 W. Pratt.

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

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.

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 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 EDGEWATER 900SFT 1BR, new kit, sunny FDR, vintage builtins, oak flrs, Red Line, $1095/mo heated www.urbanequities.com 773-743-4141

2402 E. 77TH St. (77th & Yates) Clean furnished rooms with Bed, TV, mini-blinds, free Utilities, Shared Kit & Bath, $475-$525/mt. (312)4795502 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**

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 ∫

1BR, 7724 S. Jeffery Ave. $750 1BR, 1645 E. 85th Pl., $750.

Heat & appliances included.

Shown by appt.

773-8742556 www.archerinvestm entco. com

MOST BEAUTIFUL APARTMENTS! 6748 Crandon, 2BR, off street pkng 7527 Essex, 2BR, $850/mo and up.

773-947-8572 / 312-613-4424

F PALOS HILLS -REALLY NICE! E 1 bedroom, Heat/water included. Laundry facility. Close to 294 & Rt. 83. Call 708-9744493

WAIKIKI, HI. Furn, 1BR, 1BA, living room, kitchen, lrg balcony, beauitiful view, pool, 5 min walk to beach.

Nancy 909-815-7709

INGLESIDE between 86 & 87, 2BR Apt, 1BA, newly renovated, granite kitchen, parking. $960/mo.

Sec 8 OK. 312-868-1824

l

l

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

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

2 BR $1100-$1299

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

East Chicago, IN 2BR $675 heat incl; tenant pays utils. 1 mo. free rent w/lease. Call Malcolm 773577-9361

2 BR $900-$1099 AUSTINWESTSIDE OF CHICAGO,

2 BR/5 rm apt. $1,000 + 1 mo security. No Pets, heat incl Hdwd flrs throughout, lg bathroom compliment this newly renovated & decorated apt. 773-261-4415

AUSTIN AREA, 2BR Apt, carpet, small newer building, $700/mo.

Tenant pays heat and elec. Section 8 Welcome. Call 773-457-2284

CHICAGO, ASHBURN AREA, 2 & 3BR, 1BA, hdwd floors, laundry room, C/A, no appliances, $885-$1025 /mo. Sect 8 welc.

773-563-3991

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

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

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200

WEST WOODLAWN, 6200 S. St. Lawrence, 2 & 3BR’s, $800-$995/mo, heat incl.

Close to transportation.

Section 8 Welcome.

773-8559916

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

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

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.

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, 9121 S. Cottage Grove, 2BR apt. $1050/mo Newly remod, appls, mini blinds, ceiling fans, pkng Sec 8 OK. Free Heat 312-915-0100

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar

SECTION 8 WELCOME

BRIDGEPORT MINI LOFT. Two

8324 S INGLESIDE 2BR, newly remodeled, laundry, hardwood floors, cable, Sec 8 welcome. $780 /mo. 708-308-1509 or 773-4933500

2 BR OTHER

DOLTON - 2 BR Apt. Private parking, laundry facility, tenant pays electric, $850. Section 8 welcome. No pets. 708-8896726

2 BR UNDER $900

EXCITED ABOUT THE LOVELY 2BR apt located near 83rd & Paulina, new updates, heat incl, Call for appt, $730/mo, no pets.

773-783-7098

WEST ROGERS PARK: 2BR, new kit. FDR, new windows, $1295 /heated, 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities.com

SECTION 8 WELCOME Newly Decorated - Heat Incl

77th/Ridgeland. 3BR. $850.

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

773-874-9637 or 773-493-5359

Apartments Available FOR RENT at 4615 Davis St, Skokie, IL 60076 Gorgeous units available in a beautiful building! Spacious and bright apartments! Modern courtyard building with great landscaping! Central air and heat in the building! Parking and laundry available onsite! Near shopping, schools, parks, and public transportation. Option to rent out parking space if needed. Equal housing opportunity.

1 Bedrooms $1,195 2 Bedrooms $1,295 Call us at 847-324-8974 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 ELMHURST: Dlx 2BR, n e w appls & carpet, a/c, balcony, $1195 /mo. incl heat, prkg. OS lndry, 773743-4141 www.urbanequities.com

AUBURN GRESHAM, BEAUTIFUL 2 flat building, newly decorated 3BR $875. Hdwd flrs, heat incl., security deposit. 708-4816751 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.

OGDEN & KILDARE 2BR APT, appls incl. $825/mo. 1st and last mo req’d 773-727-7608

BRONZEVILLE - Lg 3BR, 2BA,

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

Elegant & Spacious, 4BR, 7706 S. Paulina, nice block. Hdwd floors. $1100/Month No Sec Dep. Sec 8 Welc. Call 312-505-8737

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 AMAZING 3 BEDROOM , 1.5

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

AUSTIN AREA Huge 6 rooms, 3BR, 1.5BA, 1st flr & 3rd fl avail, hardwood flrs, heat incl. $1050/ mo + move-in fee. 773-419-3014 CHICAGO. 7838 S. Winchester.

3br, 2nd flr. $1075. Heat Included. Section 8 Accepted.

Call 773-405-7636 ROBBINS 3 lrg bdrm, 2nd flr Apt for rent. Very quiet area, laundry rm, Senior Discount. $850 + utils.

Section 8 accepted. 708-299-0055

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 $1800-$2499 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.

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

3 BR OR MORE $2500 AND OVER GARY - SERENITY LAKE Senior

Independent Living 2 Bedroom $559/ month Tax Credit Guidelines Apply 5601 E Melton Road 219-939-6000

LANSING, IL - 3BR Apt, 2 full bath, walk in closet, laundy facility & parking in back, newly remodeled, $1250 /mo + sec. Ten pays elec. Contact Ms. Galindo, 708-369-7739

3 BR OR MORE

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799

CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent.

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

Call 708-752-3812 for

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.

WRIGLEYVILLE 1800SF 3BR, Sunny New Kit, SS appl, deck, close to beach/ Cubs park, Ldry/ storage, One Month Free! $1995/ heated 773-743-4141 urbanequities .com

W.HUMBOLDT PK 1500W remod spac. 1BR, new kitc/appls, OS lndry, storage. $825-$975 + util LANSING Cute and Cozy 3BR, 2 NO DEP 773-743-4141 www. bath, 2 Story, lrg fenced yard w/ urbanequities.com garage, appls incl, pets OK. $1050/mo. Call 708-513-2288

ALB PK 1600SF 3BR + den, new kit, SS appl, granite, oak flrs, onsite lndy, $1495/+ util. 773-7434141 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, 5 5 0 0 North. 2600 West, 3BR+, dining room, Spacious living room, 1.5BA +. $1600/mo incl heat. 773-784-0763

Cyril Court Apartments, a Section 8 Apartment Community located in the quiet South Shore Community, just minutes away from Lake Michigan. Enjoy living in our spacious studio and one-bedroom apartments designed for your comfort and convenience. You can enjoy an array of amenities including a clubhouse, elevators, laundry on site, and gated secure parking lot. We as well offer controlled access, and after hours emergency maintenance assistance. Residents enjoy monthly activities with their neighbors which creates a sense of community. Come in and fill out an application and see why Cyril Court Apartments should be your new home.

GENERAL 5T MANAGEMENT Waitlist for low-income housing OPEN November 18, 2017 9AM-12PM 647 E. 75th St Chicago, IL 60619 Bring: State ID/Driver’s License for all individuals over 18 years of age, Birth Certificate and Social Security Cards for all individuals in house-hold.

Applications processed on a first come first serve basis.

5T MANAGEMENT La lista de espera para vivienda de bajos ingresos ABIERTA Noviembre 18, 2017 9AM-12PM 647 E. 75th St Chicago, IL 60619 Traiga: Identificación del estado o licencia para individuales que tienen más de 18 años, Certificado de Nacimiento y Tarjetas de Seguro Social para todas individuales en el hogar. Las solicitudes serán procesadas en una primera base de ser.

FOR SALE FOUR STAR

Global Timeshare. $7000/obo.

Kinnie 312-315-5545 Call between 8am-6pm.

non-residential 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.

roommates SOUTH SHORE, Senior Discount. Male preferred.

Furnished rooms, shared kitchen & bath, $545/mo. & up. Utilities included. 773-710-5431 AURORA - SLEEPING ROOM. $90 weekly, clean and quiet plus deposit. Fridge access.

Call 630-247-1031

MARKETPLACE

GOODS

Around 128th & Sanganom.

Please call: 312-720-1264

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

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

/Dining rm. hdwd flrs. high ceilings, enclosed porch, pantry, bsmnt, Sec 8 OK 708-612-1732

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

224-223-7787

HEALTH & WELLNESS

legal notices

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

SOUTH SIDE- 5 BR, 1.5 BA, Living

IS THIS YOU? You want to write but you have no time.

When you do find time, you just can’t drag yourself to the desk.

If you do get going, your writing starts strong, but becomes such a mess you don’t know whether to keep working or dump it all and start something new.

You write lots of bits and pieces, but none of them fit together into a meaningful whole.

You have training (workshops, college courses, or even a degree in creative writing) but little or nothing you write gets published.

You haven’t taken a class because you’re not sure where to turn or what to do first. One thing you do know is you want to get the right start so you don’t waste a lot of time working on things that don’t matter.

GET SOLUTIONS to these and any other writing problems at Chicago’s legendary Writers’ Loft.

Mary@Immediatefiction.com http://thewritersloft.com

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

opening the waiting list for two, three and four bedroom apartments on November 21st to November 23rd from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm. If you are interested please come to our management office at 3630 W. 51st Street, Chicago, IL 60632. Phone #773-7677260.

Westside locations 773-287-4500

FAR SOUTH CHICAGO 2br+ house for rent, 1 bath.

THE WRITERS LOFT

FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90

RECLAIMING SOUTHWEST CHICAGO Apartments will be

OTHER

SERVICES

BLUE CANE CORSO PUPS 3M 3F ICCF REGISTERED Ready 23 NOV 17 Sire 140 Lbs Dam 90 Lbs 2500.00 773 230 3798

INTERIOR DESIGNER’S HOME. FURNISHINGS, LIGHTING, ART, TEXTILES, DESIGNER CLOTHING, VINTAGE BOOKS, CRYSTAL, SILVER... Ancient Colombian Artifacts & Jewelry.

From mid-century modern and antique pieces to original and new pieces.

By appointment only. 312-787-1287 or Email: irobinson@iri-cepco.com All sales final. Cash only.

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pursuant to “An Act in relation to the use of an Assumed Business Name in the conduct or transaction of Business in the State,” as amended, that a certification was registered by the undersigned with the County Clerk of Cook County.

Registration Number: D17152638 on November 8, 2017 Under the Assumed Business Name of WAY BACK WHEN JEWELRYwith the business located at: 40 E 9TH STREET APT 813, CHICAGO, IL 60605. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s)/partner(s) is: JOHN JOSEPH MURRAY, JR 40 E 9TH STREET APT 813, CHICAGO, IL 60605, USA STATE OF ILLINOIS County of

herd Pups - father is a newly imported IPO3 male & both maternal grandparents are imported. $1500, 260-593-0160 x 3

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

ADULT SERVICES

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 AKC BLACK & Red German Shep-

BUILDING HAS A SENIOR PREFERENCE!!

Preference as well given to disabled, homeless or displaced.

Applicants subject to HUD income eligibility and other screening requirements.

Rent based on 30% of adjusted monthly income.

Call Now: (773) 588-7767 ext. 108 TTY (711 National Relay)

www.CyrilCourtApts.com Email: CyrilCourt@m2regroup.com 7130 S. Cyril Court, Chicago, IL 60649

NOVEMBER 16, 2017 | CHICAGO READER 35

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By Cecil Adams Q : Is there a general consensus on aspartame’s health effects?

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A : You’d think, wouldn’t you? The artificial

sweeteners aspartame (marketed as NutraSweet) and sucralose (Splenda) were first synthesized in the 1960s and ’70s, respectively; Sweet’N Low decades earlier. By now, surely, there’s settled science on all of them.

No dice. As recently as 2016 Pepsi was still dithering over which fake sugar to put in its no-cal drinks. Faced with rising consumer health concerns and declining sales, in 2015 the company replaced the aspartame in Diet Pepsi with a combination of sucralose and acesulfame potassium. Unfortunately, diet soda drinkers hated the new taste; throwing up its corporate hands, last year Pepsi announced the return of aspartame cola under the mouth-watering name Diet Pepsi Classic Sweetener Blend.

If industry execs feel a bit of whiplash, well, you can sympathize. Part of the problem is that we’re looking at a bit of a moving target.

When last we addressed the topic in this column, in 1996, aspartame was being blamed for Gulf War syndrome. (Conclusion: nope.) For a while people were worked up about aspartame’s alleged links to cancer, though studies haven’t borne those fears out, and the major health bodies, like the FDA and the European Food Safety Authority, have given it their stamp of approval.

OK, so ingested in non-insane quantities aspartame probably doesn’t cause cancer— not exactly a ringing endorsement, maybe, but good to know all the same. In recent years, however, concern has drifted to the surprisingly complicated question of whether it and other sugar-free sweeteners even work as advertised. People use them because they’re watching their weight, counting calories, minding their health. But is it paying off?

Frankly, the early returns don’t look great, and not just for aspartame. Formally, we’re talking about the whole category of compounds called noncaloric artificial sweeteners, or NAS: a group of substances, sucralose and saccharin included, that have long been considered “metabolically inert”—that is, they pass through our bodies unchanged from how they went in, providing no caloric energy along the way. For about ten years now,

though, researchers have been troubled by studies that have persistently linked NAS consumption with things like weight gain and attendant health issues. A 2009 study, for instance, suggested folks who drink diet soda daily are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome (a group of related conditions, including high blood pressure, linked to heart disease, stroke, etc) than people who don’t drink soda, diet or regular.

Of course, there are other factors to consider: for instance, people drinking diet may be doing so because they’re already overweight and thus more likely to run into such health troubles. So scientists turned back to mice—who, in a 2014 study out of Israel, also showed warning signs for obesity and diabetes after they suckled on water mixed with artificial sweeteners. Control groups of mice were fed natural sugars; only the NAS mice developed abnormally high blood sugar levels.

This tracked with what was already suspected, but it provided an idea about why.

The theoretically inert sweeteners, the Israelis found, seemed to be having some effect on our old friend the gut microbiome. Specifically, the researchers reported that the guts of mice fed with NAS contained greater populations of bacteria particularly good at extracting energy from food and turning it into fat.

This line of inquiry is just getting started, but I’ll also mention a research review published earlier this year in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The preponderance of clinical trials conducted over the years, the authors wrote, don’t “clearly support the intended benefits of nonnutritive sweeteners for weight management,” and might raise the possibility we’ve been discussing—that these substances could actually be linked to obesity and metabolic problems. So: Are sweeteners like aspartame hurting your health? Stay tuned on that, but it’s looking more and more like they ain’t helping. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 30 N. Racine, suite 300, Chicago 60607.

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SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

How to help a woman who’s never had an orgasm And other life lessons from a live Q&A in Vancouver, BC I WAS HONORED to appear with Esther Perel at the Orpheum Theater in Vancouver, BC, a few weeks ago to discuss her new book, The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Questions were submitted on cards before the show—some for me, some for Esther, some for both of us—and we got to as many as we could during the event.

Here are some (mostly for me) that we didn’t get to.

Q : I’ve never slept with anyone. My current boyfriend has had sex with many, many partners. He knows I’m a virgin, but I’m worried. Any tips on how I can avoid performing like the amateur gay man that I am?

A : Give yourself permission

to be bad at it—awful at it, inept and halting and awkward. And remind yourself going in that whatever happens, this isn’t the last time you’ll ever have sex. Some people are good at sex right out of the gate; most people need a little practice before they catch a groove. But nothing guarantees a bad first experience (or bad millionth experience) quite as effectively as faking it—so don’t fake. Just be.

Q : How would you help

a woman who has never experienced an orgasm?

A : I would gift her a mild

pot edible and a powerful vibrator.

Q : I’m a woman in my mid30s. Sometimes I want to bang it out in 30 seconds but my husband wants 45 minutes. What do we do?

A : Your husband has a nice

solo stroke session for 44 and a half minutes, and then you climb on top or slide

underneath for the last 30 seconds.

Q : My 40-year-old boyfriend

used to date his sister-inlaw. One time he said he thought it would be funny if I asked her who was better in bed: him or his brother. Is this weird or is it just a man thing?

A : It could be both—a weird

man thing—but seeing as your boyfriend asked only once, he’s clearly not obsessed. Still, if you’re bothered by it, should it ever come up again you might try “I could ask her, or I could go fuck your brother myself and report back.”

Q : What do I do if my

wife doesn’t want an open relationship and I do? We haven’t had sex in 11 years, but we are still in love and have two young children.

A : I don’t understand

monogamous but sexless marriages. Because if your relationship is monogamously sexless . . . wouldn’t that mean you don’t have sex only with each other? Setting that aside aside . . .

Your wife probably and perhaps reasonably fears that opening up your marriage could result in you leaving her for some woman you’re fucking. But if you’re unwilling to go without sex for the rest of your life, you’re going to wind up leaving your wife in order to meet some woman you can fuck. So the thing she fears might happen if you open the relationship up is definitely going to happen if you don’t.

Q : Do you believe the hype about Vancouver being a hard place to date? Any advice for a single lady searching for a long-term hetero partnership?

A : Everywhere I go—New

York, Chicago, Toronto, Dallas, Los Angeles—I hear the same thing: [Name of city] is a uniquely hard place to date! I also meet happily partnered people everywhere I go, which leaves me disinclined to believe the hype. “This city is a hard place to date!” is often said in frustration by people who just need to give it some time and effort or are sabotaging their relationships somehow (unresolved personal issues, too many deal breakers, irrational expectations) but instead of working on their own shit blame the city where they happen to live.

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Q : How does someone in a

straight-presenting, longterm relationship come out as being bisexual/pansexual?

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A : Someone opens his/her/ their mouth and says “I’m bisexual/pansexual.”

Q : I’m in a relationship

that involves BDSM and Japanese-style bondage. I often have marks left on my body: bruising, scratches, rope marks, etc. I’m afraid my children and friends will notice. Any suggestions for how to explain this to people? I don’t want to wear long-sleeve shirts for the rest of my life.

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A : Wear long-sleeve shirts

and lie to your kids—you’re taking a martial-arts class while they’re at school, you fell into a blackberry bramble—but tell your friends the truth, lest they think you’re in an abusive relationship. v

Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. v @fakedansavage

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Screaming Females ò COURTESY OF GIRLIE ACTION

NEW

Alter Bridge 12/11, 7:30 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont Alvvays 3/23, 7:30 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Sandra Antongiorgi 1/18, 6:30 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/16, noon b Bad Plus 2/2, 7:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 11/17, 8 AM b Barenaked Ladies, Better Than Ezra, KT Tunstall 7/13, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM Baths 4/11, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM, 18+ Birdland All-Stars with Tommy Igoe 2/21, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/16, noon b Alex Cameron 3/7, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM, 18+ Candlebox 4/15-16, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/16, noon b Brandi Carlile 6/15, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM Carpenter Brut 4/26, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Coast Modern 4/7, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Brent Cobb & Them 3/22, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Elysia Crampton 2/3, midnight, Hideout Craig David 1/13, 8 PM, 1st Ward, on sale Thu 11/16, noon, 18+ Dee-1 1/23, 7:30 PM, Subterranean b Deep Dark Woods 1/13, 9 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM Devil Makes Three 1/12, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+

Don Diablo 2/15, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Eden 3/24, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Esta, Joe Kay 12/1, 10 PM, Metro, 18+ Melanie Fiona 2/7, 7 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/16, noon b Flint Eastwood 2/10, 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Flobots 1/11, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/16, noon b Flor, Handsome Ghost 2/10, 6:30 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Steve Forbert 1/3, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/16, noon b Tigran Hamasyan 2/28, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Icon for Hire 3/8, 7:30 PM, Subterranean, on sale Fri 11/17, noon b Kimbra, Arc Iris 2/3, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Knocked Loose, Terror 3/24, 5:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Ladysmith Black Mambazo 2/17, 5 and 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 11/17, 8 AM b Chris Lane 12/9, 7 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont Lettuce, Galactic 2/23, 9 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM, 18+ Lil Smokies 2/1, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ LP 2/24, 7:30 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Jeff Lynne’s ELO 8/15, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM Magic Giant 2/9, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM, 18+

38 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 16, 2017

Maluma 5/12, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM Matoma 3/2-3, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM, 17+ Dan Navarro 2/9, 7 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM Tracy Nelson & the Bell Airs 1/16, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/16, noon b Tito Nieves 12/10, 1 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont Nude Party 1/16, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Don Omar 1/27, 9 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont Our Last Night 3/16, 5:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Paradise Fears 1/3, 7 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Tom Paxton 2/9, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 11/17, 8 AM b Plack Blaque, Thoom 1/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Polica, Stargaze 2/22, 7 PM, Thalia Hall b Quinn XCII 3/9, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Idan Raichel 2/18, 7 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, on sale Fri 11/17, 8 AM b Railroad Earth 3/9, 8 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM, 18+ Residents 4/17, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 11/17, 8 AM b Lucy Rose 3/23, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Screaming Females 3/10, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Amy Shark 3/5, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM, 18+

b Sheepdogs 2/27, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM, 18+ Steep Canyon Rangers 2/3, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Teenage Bottlerocket 12/17, 2 PM, Cobra Lounge, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Think Floyd USA 1/20, 8 PM, Park West, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM, 18+ Thriftworks, Desert Dwellers 12/30, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Tropical Trash, Crazy Doberman 12/3, 9 PM, Empty Bottle U2 5/22, 8 PM, United Center, on sale Mon 11/20, 10 AM U.S. Bombs 1/27, 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Rufus Wainwright 12/3, 7:30 PM, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Skokie Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan 3/2, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 11/17, 8 AM b Aaron Watson 1/12, 8 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont Weepies 4/14, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 11/17, 10 AM b Wood Brothers, Nicki Bluhm 4/13-14, 8 PM, The Vic, 18+ Brett Young 12/15, 8 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont

UPDATED Marc Broussard 12/19 and 12/21, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, 12/21 sold out, 12/19 added b Foo Fighters 7/29-30, 7 PM, Wrigley Field, 7/29 sold out, 7/30 added, on sale Sat 11/18, 10 AM

UPCOMING Dan Auerbach & the Easy Eye Sound Revue, Shannon & the Clams 4/2, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Roy Ayers 12/20-21, 8 PM, the Promontory Beach Slang, Dave Hause & the Mermaid 11/25, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Big Brave 12/11, 9 PM, Empty Bottle F Black Marble 12/12, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Cloud Rat 12/30, 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Commander Cody 2/28, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Crowbar, Tombs 11/27, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Do Make Say Think 12/8, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Do or Die 12/9, 9 PM, Subterranean Dream Syndicate 12/4, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Alejandro Escovedo Band 1/25-27, 8 PM, City Winery b Exhumed 12/5, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+

ALL AGES

WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK

EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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Foreign Air, Shaed 11/30, 7 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Foster the People, Cold War Kids 12/1, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Ghoul 12/11, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Godspeed You! Black Emperor 3/18-19, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Hatebreed 12/3, 7 PM, Metro, 18+ Iron Chic, Off With Their Heads 12/1, 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Jay-Z 12/5, 8 PM, United Center K.Flay 2/2, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Lecrae 12/6, 7 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Lorde 3/27, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Majid Jordan 2/21, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Marked Men 12/8, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Morrissey 11/25, 8:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Angel Olsen 12/9, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Pink Spiders 12/15, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Portugal. The Man 2/16, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Todd Rundgren 12/16-17, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Scarface 12/8, 8 PM, Portage Theater, 17+ Sleigh Bells 1/31, 8 PM, Metro St. Vincent 1/12, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre b Sza 12/20, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Tune-Yards 3/3, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Twista 11/25, 9 PM, Wire, Berwyn Wax Fang 12/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Wedding Present 3/26, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall Weezer, Pixies, Wombats 7/7, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park George Winston 12/13, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Andrew W.K. 5/12, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Lee Ann Womack 1/20-21, 8 PM, City Winery b “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 Mike Zito 12/12, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Zombies 3/19-20, 8 PM, City Winery b v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene NEBRASKA NATIVE Charlie CurtisBeard, who moved here for school and still attends Columbia College, is one of Chicago’s most promising young MCs. His debut, Childish, was among the best overlooked local hip-hop releases of 2016, and on Friday he drops his second full-length, Existentialism on Lake Shore Drive. In its loose narrative, framed by dramatized phone messages, Curtis-Beard holes up at home while his friends have a wild night out. “I just wanted to tell the story of going out to pointless parties and staying locked in my room, from both sides,” he says. It’s an ambitious, tender album full of killer beats—“Fried Chicken” is playfully self-critical, and “Can’t See Clear” is my favorite hip-house track since Vic Mensa’s “Down on My Luck.”

Founded in 2013, Chicago’s chapter of LGBTQ prisoner-advocate group Black and Pink sends hundreds if not thousands of cards to incarcerated folks every year, and in August it hosted the organization’s national meeting. On Sunday, November 19, Elastic Arts hosts a benefit for Black and Pink’s reentry working group, which helps former prisoners reacclimate to society. The Chicago-centric bill includes rappers Plus Sign and Rahim Salaam, pop-punks Polish Gifts, and underground rock supergroup Cyber Pink (with members of Negative Scanner, the Porno Glows, and Dianetics). The event also features readings by Melissa Almandina and Nancy Sanchez of Brown & Proud Press and a raffle with prizes from Drag City Records and artist Grace Mattingly.

Spa Moans is the solo project of weirdo local beat maker and pop maven Jenny Polus, whose cloudy jams have a haunted, illbient feel. Is rain-forest wave a thing?

It is now! On Tuesday, November 21, she releases her new tape, Obedient Vibrations (via Portland label Drop Medium Recording Technologies), and celebrates with a set at the Empty Bottle, opening for goth-industrial Chicago creepers Hide.

—J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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Home Alone FILM

IN CONCERT

Members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Richard Kaufman conductor Anima - Young Singers of Greater Chicago Emily Ellsworth artistic director Score by John Williams

A true holiday favorite returns to Symphony Center! This beloved comedy classic features renowned composer John Williams’ charming and delightful score performed live by Members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Macaulay Culkin stars as Kevin McCallister, an 8-year-old boy who’s accidentally left behind when his family leaves for Christmas vacation, and who must defend his suburban Chicago home against two bungling thieves.

Hilarious and heart-warming, Home Alone is holiday fun for the entire family!

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© 1990 Twentieth Century Fox

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