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 7, 2 0 1 6
Politics How do you solve a problem like Donald Trump? 8
Music Grassroots rock bands brighten the corners they’re in. 26
1,507 DAYS IN COOK COUNTY JAIL
No-show cops and dysfunction in the courts kept Jermaine Robinson and 1,000-plus other people in jail for years awaiting trial. By SPENCER WOODMAN 12
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EDITOR JAKE MALOOLEY CREATIVE DIRECTOR PAUL JOHN HIGGINS DEPUTY EDITOR, NEWS ROBIN AMER CULTURE EDITOR TAL ROSENBERG DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS KATE SCHMIDT, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN SENIOR WRITERS MICHAEL MINER, MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS 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 EDITORIAL ASSISTANT CASSIDY RYAN CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, DERRICK CLIFTON, MATT DE LA PEÑA, MAYA DUKMASOVA, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, DMITRY SAMAROV, KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS ISABEL OCHOA GOLD, JACK LADD VICE PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT NICKI STANULA VICE PRESIDENT OF NEW MEDIA GUADALUPE CARRANZA SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES FABIO CAVALIERI, ARIANA DIAZ, BRIDGET KANE MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA CLASSIFIEDS REPRESENTATIVE KRIS DODD DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com CHICAGO READER 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654, 312-222-6920, CHICAGOREADER.COM THE READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY SUNTIMES MEDIA, LLC, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654. © 2016 SUN-TIMES MEDIA, LLC. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL. POSTMASTER: SEND CHANGE OF ADDRESS TO CHICAGO READER, 350 N. ORLEANS, CHICAGO, IL 60654.
4 IN THIS ISSUE
4 Agenda The musical End of the Rainbow, stand-up comic Jerrod Carmichael, First Annual Publishers Fair, Book Fort Fair, the film Christine, and more recommendations
CITY LIFE
7 Street View The Landan Twins don’t always try to dress like they’re starring in a Doublemint commercial. 7 Chicagoans Tarot-card reader Alan Salmi discusses the mystical and practical sides of his vocation. 8 Joravsky | Politics City officials try to figure out what to do about Trump. 10 Transportation Competing lawsuits have been filed in the
11 Frank Cruz bike fatality case. 11 Identity & Culture We don’t need “unity” after Trump’s election. We need resistance.
ARTS & CULTURE
19 Dance Khecari’s The Retreat is a respite from troubled times. 20 Theater A mesmerizing performance saves About Face Theatre’s I Am My Own Wife. 21 Lit See what we learned at the Chicago Humanities Festival. 22 Lit In Chicago, political corruption also happens on the water. 23 Visual Art “Tattoo” leaves a permanent mark at the Field Museum. 24 Movies Get a taste of Andrea Arnold’s Cannes-
23 favorite debut American Honey at Facets.
MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE 30 In Rotation Current musical obsessions include dry ice, Julie Christmas, and Kaia String Quartet 31 Shows of note Noname, Alejandro Escovedo, Thee Oh Sees, and more
FOOD & DRINK
37 Restaurant review: Coda di Volpe Billy Lawless’s latest is a splash of southern-Italian spice in Lakeview. 41 Key Ingredient: Branston Pickle Blackbird’s Ryan Pfeiffer makes a dish with a
37 British condiment that “looks like shit but tastes good.”
CLASSIFIEDS
41 Jobs 42 Apartments & Spaces 44 Marketplace 44 Straight Dope How did horses evolve and survive with neither horns nor antlers? 45 Savage Love Sex and other consolations postelection 46 Early Warnings Flaming Lips, Laura Jane Grace, Bruno Mars, Wilco, and more shows to come 46 Gossip Wolf CHI PRC celebrates Chicago’s rich history of punk and hardcore, and more music news.
FINISH STRONG
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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 7, 2 0 1 6 | V O L U M E 4 6 , N U M B E R 7
FEATURES
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
1,507 DAYS IN COOK COUNTY JAIL
No-show cops and dysfunction in the courts kept Jermaine Robinson and 1,000-plus other people in jail for years awaiting trial. BY SPENCER WOODMAN 12 ON THE COVER: ILLUSTRATION BY READER CREATIVE DIRECTOR PAUL JOHN HIGGINS.
MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE
CHICAGO’S GRASSROOTS ROCK BANDS BRIGHTEN THE CORNERS THEY’RE IN
Reviews of new releases by Bleach Party, Coaster, Fake Limbs, Lala Lala, Strawberry Jacuzzi, and Swimsuit Addition BY LEOR GALIL 26
Expand your knowledge base. ENROLL IN EVENING CLASSES AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY — NO APPLICATION REQUIRED. Northwestern University School of Professional Studies offers the opportunity to earn credit in undergraduate courses without applying to a degree program. Choose from courses in 36 subjects to advance your career, prepare for graduate study or explore a new topic. Classes are held in the evening on Northwestern’s Chicago and Evanston campuses. Browse courses at sps.northwestern.edu/sal
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F by the desire to “save” Jo—it becomes clear she’s being brutalized so badly in bed that she’s bleeding internally and may die. Sensitively directed by Azar Kazemi, Dirty Butterfly is as memorable and profound as it is brutal. —MAX MALLER Through 12/10: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 6 PM, Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3253 W. Wilson, 773-478-7941, halcyontheatre.org, $20; limited number of free seats available at the door.
ARE YOU AGE 18 OR OLDER? YOU MAY BE ABLE TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLINICAL RESEARCH STUDY THAT MAY INVOLVE TREATMENT.
End of the Rainbow Up to a R point it may be possible to think of Judy Garland’s life as the stuff of
After the Dance o JUSTIN BARBIN
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4 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
After the Dance This 1939 drawing-room drama by British R writer Terence Rattigan (The Winslow
Boy, The Browning Version, Separate Tables) concerns dissolute middle-aged socialites David and Joan Scott-Fowler, whose marriage seems to be a model of fashionable frivolity until David falls in love with his young cousin’s fiancee, with tragic results. Not one of Rattigan’s best works, the play is nonetheless an effective period piece—a portrait of carefree “bright young things” of the 1920s as they ungracefully age while their world slips inexorably toward another world war. Runcible Theatre Company’s intimate staging (apparently the script’s Chicago premiere) features strong performances under Andrew Root’s direction. With his quick, nervous smile, Layne Manzer is especially compelling as the conflicted David, a weak, shallow, privileged alcoholic torn between his loyalty to his wife and the new sense of purpose he finds in his romance with a younger woman. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 12/18: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Royal George Theatre Center, 1641 N. Halsted, 312-988-9000, runcibletheatre. org, $28.
The Amish Project A decade ago last month Charles Roberts walked into the Amish school at Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, took ten little girls hostage, and shot them all before killing himself. His act might’ve been considered a run-ofthe-mill post-Columbine atrocity if not for the Amish community’s response. They forgave Roberts and treated his widow and children with kindness. In Jessica Dickey’s “fictional exploration of a true event,” a solo actor plays seven characters, including versions of the gunman, the widow, a scholar, two nonAmish women, and two of the victims. Though the 75-minute piece occupies a problematic limbo between fact and imagining, it can be intensely moving. Sarah Gise gets us only part of the way there. As directed by David Connelly for Interrobang Theatre, Gise’s physical
work is interesting; her vocal range is too limited, however, to yield convincingly differentiated characters. —TONY ADLER Through 12/4: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, interrobangtheatreproject.com, $17, $12 students and seniors. Deer and the Lovers The first act of Emily Zemba’s play wants to be a farce with absurdist overtones, about a lovey-dovey young couple whose country-house getaway is wrecked when (a) they discover a dead deer in the living room, (b) relatives show up uninvited, and (c) nasty secrets come out. The second act turns into a sort of horror-movie version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as everybody takes to the woods. The two parts might coexist, and possibly entertain, despite Zemba’s endless preoccupation with the fact that “deer” and “dear” sound alike. But not in Jesse Roth’s staging for First Floor Theater. Failing to understand that even silly behavior should make internal sense, Roth tries to build comedy on free-floating wackiness. The result isn’t laughs but puzzlement: Why are these people acting this way? —TONY ADLER Through 12/4: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Den Theatre, 1329-1333 N. Milwaukee, 773609-2336, firstfloortheater.com, $20. Dirty Butterfly When T. S. Eliot’s R friend Conrad Aiken congratulated him effusively on the publication
of Poems 1909-1925, Eliot responded in rebuke with a clipping from a journal for nurses and midwives in which he’d underlined the words “blood, mucus, shreds of mucus, purulent offensive discharge.” Debbie Tucker Green’s Dirty Butterfly, making its American debut at Halcyon Theatre in a coproduction with the Blind Owl, is concerned overtly with the discharge, the blood, vomit, mucus, and urine, of its main character. Jo (Leah Raidt), whose powers of allure are almost supernatural, is in a loud, violent relationship that keeps neighbors Amelia (Genevieve VenJohnson) and Jason (Reginald Robinson Jr.) awake in their West End flats. As they each become obsessed with her—Amelia possessed by the desire to clean up after her both figuratively and literally, voyeuristic Jason
drama. But by the end of 1968, just six months ahead of her fatal OD, the only thing left was a downward slide as sure as physics. All the more credit to playwright Peter Quilter and this Porchlight Music Theatre production, then, for making the inevitable so startling. Garland is a puree of need suspended in wobbly aspic: married to her final husband and strung out on you-name-it as she tries to cover her debts with a six-week stand at a London nightclub. Angela Ingersoll shows us the icon’s indomitability amid utter collapse, even as she displays her own diva-level chops. You’re simultaneously relieved and enraptured every time she makes it through a song. Jon Steinhagen is more modestly powerful as Garland’s accompanist. —TONY ADLER Through 12/9: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, 773-3275252, porchlightmusictheatre.org, $45-$51. In De Beginnin’ First produced at the Body Politic in 1978, Oscar Brown Jr.’s witty and wise musical adaptation of Genesis 1-3 has a lively score and memorable lyrics that put African-American dialect to playful use. Sadly, much of the show’s glory is muted in this staging from ETA Creative Arts, marred by awkward pacing, unnecessary miking, and sound-flattening synthesizer that robs the score of the jazzy richness an acoustic piano would provide. Still, the production, directed by Kemati J. Porter, has its fine points: Fania Bourn, a fetching Eve with a glorious voice, easily steals the show, and Barton Fitzpatrick gracefully embodies the Old Testament creator, one minute merciful, the next full of thunder and fury. —JACK HELBIG Through 12/24: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3
PM, ETA Creative Arts Foundation, 7558 S. South Chicago, 773-752-3955, etacreativearts.org, $40, $25 seniors, $15 students. La Gringa Playwright Carmen R Rivera still-relevant identity-crisis comedy was first staged in 1990, well
before the accelerated economic and population crises straining Puerto Rico’s workforce today. A young New Yorker (Sofia Tew) visits her extended family in Las Piedras, whom she discovers are none too impressed by her enthusiastic but uninformed claim to being an “authentic” Puerto Rican. With joy in its heart, Miranda Gonzalez’s UrbanTheater Company production reflects on what it means to feel a connection to a culture; though the blocking in the tight storefront space can be a little awkward, Gonzalez’s ensemble radiates loving vibes at a time when they’re few and far between. —DAN JAKES Through 12/11: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Urban Theater Company, 2620 W. Division, 773347-1203, urbantheaterchicago.org, $20, $12 seniors, $10 students. The Nutcracker The House R Theatre’s playful and irreverent version of E.T.A. Hoffman’s famous story
begins with news of tragedy; from there, Christmas is nearly canceled, but it’s the very threat of loss that imbues the holiday with meaning. Kids and grown-ups alike will be charmed by Clara (Ariana Burks) and her talking toys as they defeat the Rat King—a symbolic defeat of fear and death’s obliterating spell— rekindling the season’s celebratory spirit. With puppetry and other effects, this singular production is perfectly set in Chopin’s small, circular space, and while the songs feel a bit ancillary, the onstage orchestra is impressive. It’s a smart, layered, and very modern take on a classic tale. —SUZANNE SCANLON 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-$45. One Boppa: Two Acts Playwright Beau O’Reilly’s latest offering is about three dysfunctional sisters struggling to make sense of their dysfunctional family in a dysfunctional world. Julia Williams plays the put-together one—though her
Dirty Butterfly o EMILY WILLIAMS
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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of November 17
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Dance Theater of Harlem o RACHEL NEVILLE
calculated, logical interface with life may in its own way be a kind of insanity. Sister Tip (Vicki Walden) has no money and therefore can’t tip. Of the three it’s sister Andi (Meredith Lyons) whose confusion is most clearly motivated—she has a baby boy named Charlie, whom she calls “Woof-Woof,” and the identity of his absentee father is a mystery. Nothing much happens in this Curious Theatre Branch production directed by Matt Reiger. Mainly, the sisters talk, and it’s nice to listen to them do so, though their conversation comes close to deranged blather at times. The eponymous Boppa is their father, or stepfather, or kind-of father. He never shows up. —MAX MALLER Through 12/18: Fri-Sat 8 PM (no show Fri 11/25); also Sun 11/13 and 12/18, 3 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 773-5397838, curioustheatrebranch.com, $12-$15 or pay what you can.
DANCE R
Dance Theater of Harlem The African-American ballet company returns to Chicago to perform works by John Adams, Francesca Harper, Robert Gardner, and Nacho Duato, with live accompaniment from the Chicago Sinfonietta. 11/18-11/20: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, 800-982-2787, auditoriumtheatre.org, $30-$85.
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Hubbard Street Dance Chicago: Fall Series This year’s fall series highlights the 15th original work from resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo and a world premiere from Brian Brooks, the Harris Theater’s newly named artist in residence. 11/17-11/20: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, 312-334-7777, hubbardstreetdance.com, $30-$189.
COMEDY
Jerrod Carmichael LA-based R comedian Jerrod Carmichael performs stand-up. Fri 11/18-Sat 11/19: 8
and 10:30 PM, Up Comedy Club, 230 W. North, 312-337-3992, upcomedyclub. com, $25.
Jerrod Carmichael o JOE SCARNICI
Late Late Breakfast The monthR ly Saturday-afternoon comedy show tackles the theme “Human Decen-
cy.” As always, there are free pancakes; all donations benefit the ACLU. Sat 11/19, 3 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773227-4433, hideoutchicago.com. F
VISUAL ARTS Bridgeport Art Center “Inspired by Social Issues,” Lelde Kalmite curated this group show featuring works by local male artists of color. Opening reception Fri 11/18, 7-10 PM. 11/18-1/6 by appointment. 1200 W. 35th, 773-247-3000, bridgeportart.com.
Punk Then, Punk Now, Punk R Forever Punk academics David Ensminger and Daniel Makagon join Los
Crudos’s Martin Sorrondeguy to discuss punk history and DIY culture. Fri 11/18, 7 PM, Quimby’s Bookstore, 1854 W. North, 773-342-0910, quimbys.com.
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Paul Zollo The songwriter discusses his new book More Songwriters on Songwriting, which features interviews with musicians including Aimee Mann, Paul Simon, and Brian Wilson. Tue 11/22, 6:30 PM, City Lit Books, 2523 N. Kedzie, 773-235-2523, citylitbooks.com.
play Vinny’s parents, and Ted Levine is a corker as the fighter’s wily manager. Ben Younger (Boiler Room) directed his own script. —ANDREA GRONVALL R, 116 min. Crown Village 18, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings
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Christine Rebecca Hall gives a heartrending performance as Christine Chubbuck, the young TV journalist who killed herself with a pistol during a 1974 broadcast in Sarasota, Florida. Most of the surface tension in this biopic springs from the hot social issues of the era (women’s lib, the trivializing of TV news), and screenwriter Craig Shilowich tries to connect Chubbuck to our modern consciousness by portraying her as a tragic postfeminist hero, frantically busy and chronically lonely. Yet Hall transcends these narrow topical concerns by presenting the charmless, insecure, morbidly depressed reporter as a complex and irreducible personality. Particularly haunting are the puppet shows Chubbuck improvises for children in a local hospital; their wise, gentle stories speak to her own emotional journey, which will end in a performance neither wise nor gentle. Antonio Campos directed; with Michael
Renaissance Society “Sadie Benning: Shared Eye,” the artist’s installation of mixed-media panels. Opening reception Sat 11/19, 5-8 PM, features a discussion between Benning and curator Solveig Øvstebø. 11/19-1/22. Tue-Fri 10 AM-5 PM, Sat-Sun noon-5 PM. 5811 S. Ellis, Cobb Hall 418, 773-702-8670, renaissancesociety.org.
LIT
lions, and Heretics joins Volumes Bookcafe to discuss its female subjects and sign copies. Mon 11/21, 7 PM, Volumes Bookcafe, 1474 N. Milwaukee, 773-6978066, volumesbooks.com.
Movie Theater & Full Bar $5.00 sion admis e for th s Movie
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The Magnificent Seven Sunday, November 20 @ 6:00pm Mon-Tue, Nov. 21-22 @ 6:30pm
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Sunday, November 20 @ 8:00pm Mon-Tue, Nov. 21-22 @ 8:30pm
The Beatles: Eight Days A Week
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“REBECCA HALL ASTONISHES.” - Nigel M. Smith, The Guardian
“A MASTERFUL PIECE OF FILMMAKING.” - Noel Murray, The Playlist
Bleed for This
MOVIES
More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS
Book Fort Fair Curbside Books Bleed for This The familiar conR & Records hosts a biannual fair R ventions of the boxing movie—the featuring publishers, presses, and more underdog getting his shot, the fighter
for an afternoon of bookselling. The event includes workshops, literarythemed cocktails, and an all-day DJ. Sat 11/19, 11 AM-4 PM, Revival Food Hall, 125 S. Clark, curbsidesplendor.com/curbside-books-records.
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Elastic First Annual Publishers Fair, this fair organized by the Chicago Printers Guild celebrates the artists who “make things print,” with speakers, prints for sale, and an exhibition of participants’ work. 11/18-11/19: Fri 7-11 PM, Sat noon8 PM, and by appointment. 3429 W. Diversey, 773-772-3616, chicagoprintersguild.org/fair, $5 suggested donation.
Have Fun with Rebecca O’Neal R Comedian Rebecca O’Neal Jason Porath The author and headlines a night of free comedy hosted R illustrator of Rejected Princesses: by Abi Sanchez. The show features Tales of History’s Boldest Heroines, HelAlex Dragicevich, with spots open for special walk-on guests. Thu 11/17, 8 PM, Cole’s, 2338 N. Milwaukee, 773-276-5802, coleschicago.blogspot.com. F
The Marrow This installment of the monthly storytelling show hosted by Leah Pickett and Naomi Huffman features guests Gina Frangello and Samantha Bailey. Sun 11/20, 6 PM, Whistler, 2421 N. Milwaukee, 773-2273530, themarrow.tumblr.com.
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bonding with his trainer, the hero making a comeback—get a muscular overhaul in this gritty biopic about Vinny Pazienza, known as the Pazmanian Devil. Miles Teller (Whiplash) gives a deft performance as the cocky junior welterweight, who silenced his detractors by jumping two weight classes and becoming super middleweight world champion, only to suffer a broken neck in a car accident shortly afterward. Aaron Eckhart is strong in the quieter role of Pazienza’s downtrodden coach, who drinks but whose vision and instincts are sound. Ciaran Hinds and Katey Sagal
C. Hall, Tracy Letts, Maria Dizzia, and J. Smith-Cameron. —J.R. JONES R, 120 min. Music Box The Edge of Seventeen A R garrulous, unpopular high school student (Hailee Steinfeld) seethes
when her studly brother (Blake Jenner) begins dating her only friend (Haley Lu Richardson). This is the first feature by writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig, and despite the conventional teenpic narrative, her protagonist is richly conceived: in contrast to the stereotypical four-eyed nerd, she’s uncool in the way that most teenagers are, hovering awkwardly outside of social circles and storing up bitterness for every perceived slight. Steinfeld (True Grit) is well cast in the role, proving she can shine with the right material; the supporting cast includes Woody Harrelson, Kyra Sedgwick, and Hayden Szeto. —LEAH PICKETT R, 102 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6 W
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6 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
AGENDA Elle Dutch writer-director Paul Verhoeven, making his first Frenchlanguage film, returns to the themes of sexual perversion and errant womanhood he mined in Basic Instinct (1992) and Showgirls (1995). An affluent video games executive in Paris (Isabelle Huppert) is brutally raped in the first few minutes of the movie, and her reaction ranges from sad and predictable (she doesn’t report the crime) to disturbing and unexpected (she’s attracted to the perpetrator). Huppert is spellbinding as the icy, licentious victim; she seems to be daring the viewer to dislike her character, but the woman’s mettle and barbed wit produce the opposite effect. Verhoeven masterfully stretches the suspense, and his gallows humor lands most of the time. His attempts at edginess slide into exploitation, though, as he entertains the notion that women might enjoy sexual assault and even deserve it. In French with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT R, 131 min. Landmark Century Centre Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Warner Bros. launches a second Harry Potter franchise, scripted by J.K. Rowling and based on the fanciful, fake textbook she published in 2001. That book’s fictional author, wizard Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), arrives in New York City in the 1920s looking for magical beasts in the American southwest; helping him are two witch sisters (Katherine Waterston and Alison Sudol), and hot on his trail is a wizard cop (Colin Farrell, grave and colorless) from the Magical Congress of the USA. This is indistinguishable from the Potter movies, though as first in the new series, it has considerably less backstory to lug around. Dan Fogler, who’s spent years knocking around in bad comedies, walks away with the movie as a frumpy baker who gets pulled into the supernatural hubbub; the dull special-effects gloss of a fantasy blockbuster only throws his charming performance into greater relief. David Yates directed; with Ezra Miller, Samantha Morton, and Jon Voight. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 133 min. Block 37, ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, Ford City, Lake, New 400, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place I Am Not Madame Bovary This Chinese drama has nothing to do with Flaubert, though as other critics have noted, its tale of a lone woman challenging a patriarchal bureaucracy bears a striking resemblance to Zhang Yimou’s The Story of Qiu Ju (1992). A young woman (Fan Bingbing) seeks justice from the courts in a highly ambiguous case: she and her husband divorced so that she could keep
The Edge of Seventeen their country house, he could apply for an apartment in the city, and they could reunite later with both properties in hand, but then the husband double-crossed her and moved into the new apartment with another woman. Covering more than a decade, director Feng Xiaogang and screenwriter Liu Zhenyun focus on institutional tension as the heroine works her way to the top reaches of the government, driving a succession of midlevel male bureaucrats frantic with worry. Her primary concern is neither property nor retribution, but clearing her name after she’s been labeled an adulteress; as in the earlier movie, her crusade brings unintended consequences. In Mandarin with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 128 min. River East 21 Raising Bertie Director Margaret Byrne started out making a documentary about the Hive, an alternative school in predominantly black Bertie County, North Carolina, but the school ran out of funds and shut down, so she decided to follow three male students as they returned to the public high school. Things are rough for them there: they’re all two or three grades behind, dealing with poverty and family dysfunction, and as Byrne tracks their progress over five years, their career prospects in the rural area settle at the level of barbering, landscaping, harvesting, and serving up fast food. Byrne wanted to call attention to the poor education afforded these young men, and her best evidence is her own subjects: one needs his mother to fill out his job applications for him, and another is still playing for the football team as he struggles to graduate at age 21. Near the end of the documentary the Hive reopens as a small community-resource center, which highlights the need for more social services in the boondocks but also reminds you that the original school played its part in leaving these young men unprepared. —J.R. JONES 105 min. Byrne, producer Ian Kibbe, and editor Leslie Simmer attend the screenings Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday. Fri 11/18, 2 and 8 PM; Sat 11/19, 8 PM; Sun 11/20, 5:30 PM; Mon 11/21, 8 PM; Tue 11/22, 6
PM; and Wed 11/23, 8 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Tales Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Bani-Etemad revisits characters and themes from two previous features, Gilane (2004) and Under the Skin of the City (2001), with this elegiac series of stories that are poignantly, if not always seamlessly, connected. Set in contemporary Iran, the narrative moves through the lives of several working-class people dealing with a variety of societal issues: drug addiction, domestic violence, prostitution, and obstruction of workers’ rights, to name a few. The film (2014) works better in vignettes than as a whole, and the use of a documentary filmmaker to tie all the stories together and comment on society’s ills is too facile. But several of the more minor characters’ interactions are searing, from a corrupt government official humiliating a retiree who’s been denied health-care coverage to an abusive drug addict bawling to his wife from the other side of a closed door, “I don’t have anyone but you.” In Persian with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 92 min. Bani-Etemad attends the screening. Northwestern University Block Museum of Art The Tenth Man Israel / Is Real reads a T-shirt worn by the pudgy, balding hero of this Argentine comedy, which unfolds in the six days leading up to Purim and against the rich tapestry of the Jewish district in Buenos Aires. The protagonist arrives in town to visit his father, whose business concerns include a dry cleaner and a meat market, but the old man never materializes—he’s like Yahweh with a to-do list, repeatedly phoning the son with errands to be taken care of. Writer-director Daniel Burman (Family Law, Brother & Sister) saunters down a few comic avenues with the hero—his flirtation with one of the father’s employees (Julieta Zylberberg), his hapless attempts to straighten out a disagreement with a bullying meat supplier (Adrián Stoppelman)—that converge in a character study of a disgruntled schlemiel with daddy issues. In subtitled Spanish, Hebrew, and Yiddish. —J.R. JONES 82 min. Gene Siskel Film Center v
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CITY LIFE Jon and Andrew Landan o ISA GIALLORENZO
Chicagoans
The tarot-card reader Alan Salmi, 56
Street View
Leading a double life FROM ALL APPEARANCES, Andrew and Jon Landan spend hours planning their outfits. But outside more formal engagements the social butterflies known as the Landan Twins aren’t so perfectly matched. “Some days one of us will wear lots of color while the other will wear all black. It really matters how each of us feels,” says Andrew, pictured with his brother during the opening of the Richard H. Driehaus Entrepreneurial Center at the Chicago Fashion Incubator at Macy’s on State Street. “We really don’t coordinate unless we are attending a wedding or black-tie event. When we are home, there is no coordination at all.” The secret to their cohesiveness, Andrew says, is sporting the same distinctive pieces: big eyeglasses or loud bow ties or oversize headphones or neon timepieces. “Our signature statement of the moment is our Mohawks,” Andrew says. “Jon has a blond one and I have a brown one.” —ISA GIALLORENZO See more Chicago street style on chicagolooks.blogspot.com.
THE TAROT originated as a card game in Renaissance Italy. It was a game with images that were part of the general moral instructions of the time. Like, Temperance and Judgment were the names of some of the cards. The regular playing-card deck that you know—aces, clubs, and whatnot—evolved from tarot cards. Tarot decks became mass-produced once the printing press came a long, a nd then the tarot became grafted onto things like the Jewish kabbalah. You can study the tarot as a spiritual path, in which you spend time meditating on the figures on the cards and imagining yourself speaking to them, or you can use the cards as a way of doing divination, which is the fancy term for fortune telling. Where do the cards get their power? The most extreme expla-
nation would be that there is an angel who presides over the spirits of the cards and helps you place them in the right places. There is a more scientific explanation, though. There’s a guy named Edward de Bono who developed something called lateral thinking. He says when you’re stuck in a problem, you’re usually stuck because your thinking is channeled in a certain way. And when you have a random input, the random input can get you t h in k ing in new ways. For example, you’ve had the exper ience of somebody asking just the right question, and it f lips s om e t h i n g i n you r brain, and it organizes in a new way. I think the tarot can also be thought of as that kind of process. Last year, I almost died. I woke up thinking I had the flu, and by that
“When you have a random input, the random input can get you thinking in new ways,” Salmi says of the potential of tarot. o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS
night I was in the ER. I had a massive infection in my heart, and that caused some strokes. I’m on disability as my major income. I wanted to feel useful still, and there’s a new restaurant just a half block from where I live, Five and Dime. So the third Tuesday of every month, I read cards there. I’m trained in three different types of psychotherapy too. A lot of times people ask about money and romance. Often it’s women who sit down
and go, “Is this the right guy for me?” I have two answers for that. One is, “Is this somebody you would go into business with?” They go, “Why are you asking me that?” I say, “Because if you’re going to spend your life with somebody, you’ve got to rely on them. How you are going to organize the finances? Who’s going to pick up the kids?” The other thing was, I developed something called the seven S’s, like, is the person
sane, sober, sexy, and solvent? Sometimes it would lead to a useful discussion, but sometimes the person would say, “Oh no, I’d never go into business with him.” Then I’d say, “Well, then we just have to find out how long a romance this is.” Sometimes the deck will say things directly: “Boom, here’s your answer. In the next four to six weeks, you’ll have something shift here.” I tell people, “I’m not psychic, but the cards are.” —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD
¥ Keep up to date on the go at chicagoreader.com/agenda.
SURE THINGS THURSDAY 17
FRIDAY 18
SATURDAY 19
SUNDAY 20
MONDAY 21
TUESDAY 22
WEDNESDAY 23
× Penguin Hops Re lease Pa rty Shedd Aquarium and Revolution Brewing pair up to host a night of live music and craft beer celebrating the release of a collaborative limitededition harvest ale made with hops from the Shedd’s vines. 5 PM, Shedd Aquarium, 1200 S. Lake Shore, sheddaquarium.org, $25.
{ Ch icago Podcast Festival This festival features live podcast recordings of shows—including My Favorite Murder, It’s All True!, and Filmspotting—at spaces like the Promontory, the Athenaeum Theatre, and the Vittum. 11/17-11/19, various times, various locations, chicagopodcastfestival.org, $10-$47.
Ä Hot Heels Cl ub A different local DJ—including Alex White, Johnny Walker, and Stefan Ponce—hosts each session of this roller-rink party. Throwback skating outfits are encouraged. 11/18-11/20: Fri 6 and 9 PM, Sat 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 4 and 7:30 PM, Chicago Athletic Association, 12 S. Michigan, chicagoathletichotel.com, $12.
9 Connect Hyde Pa rk This festival highlights art, film, performance, music, lit, and fashion at venues across Hyde Park, including Collaboration Gallery, the Harper Theater, and the Silver Room. 11/18-11/20: Fri 5-10 PM, Sat noon-10 PM, Sun noon-5 PM, various locations, connecthydepark.com. F
24 Hour: Yo u Can Al ways Come Ho me Second City’s 15th annual 24-hour celebration features performances by Cecily Strong, Edgar Blackmon, Jeff Tweedy, and more. Proceeds benefit Onward Neighborhood House’s Letters to Santa program. Mon 11/21, 5 PM-Tue 11/22, 5 PM, Second City, 1616 N. Wells, secondcity.com, $20.
Th e Gi rl Talk This iteration of the monthly feminist show hosted by Jen Sabella and Erika Wozniak focuses on “fighting racism, sexism, homophobia and hatred in Trump’s America.” 6:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, hideoutchicago. com, $5.
· Dr. Strangelove or : How I Learned to Stop Worr ying and Love the Bomb All are invited to enjoy—or cringe at—Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 comedy about efforts to avert an accidental nuclear holocaust as part of the Is It Still Funny? series. 7:30 PM, Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport, musicboxtheatre.com, $12.
NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 7
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E
ver since Donald Trump’s victory—a phrase I still find hard to write—I’ve been trying to soothe freaked-out millennials by telling them: (1) I can remember a time that may have been worse, and (2) don’t worry, our local leaders, like Mayor Rahm Emanuel, won’t abandon us in this fight. Hey, I’m trying to stay optimistic. We’ll get to the mayor in a moment. But first, for the benefit of younger readers who may be shell-shocked over say, Trump naming Stephen Bannon, champion of the white supremacist alt-right, as a senior White House adviser, let me say this: as terrifying as the prospect of a President Trump may be—and it’s pretty freaking scary—you’re not the first generation of left-of-center idealists scared shitless by a presidential election. To prove my point, let’s go back to the 1972, when President Richard Nixon, old Tricky Dick himself, won reelection. For those who might be thinking, Oh, but Nixon wasn’t as bad as Trump is, I urge you to read Tim Weiner’s book One Man Against the World, which is based largely on transcripts of conversations Nixon secretly recorded in the White House.
Weiner reveals President Nixon to be a hard-drinking, paranoid insomniac who stayed up late spewing bile about his enemies (he kept a list) and “the Jews,” and vowing to “bomb the hell out of the bastards,” i.e., the people of Vietnam. His aides nodded along with these screeds, either because they agreed with him or because they were too afraid to object. One of the most disturbing moments of Nixon’s reign came in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War. Israel was fighting its Arab neighbors, and the U.S. and the Soviet Union seemed headed for a confrontation as a result. During one late-night moment of crisis, Nixon was largely out of commission, unable to talk to America’s allies because, as Henry Kissinger, his chief foreign policy adviser put it, “he was loaded.” As in wasted. As in drunk. Not all of these details were known during the 1972 campaign. But Nixon was already well-known as a nasty, ruthless, red-baiter— indeed, Trump once bragged that he planned to take a page from Nixon with a tough-oncrime campaign. And yet he easily defeated liberal South Dakota senator George McGovern in the ’72 race. Actually, it was worse than that. Nixon anni-
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Read Ben Joravsky’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.
CITY LIFE hilated McGovern, winning every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. And the District of Columbia isn’t even a state. On election night Nixon came before a cheering crowd of well-lubricated Republicans chanting “12 more years”—an allusion to vice president Spiro Agnew, who was as loathsome in his race-baiting rhetoric as Bannon is now, and who was presumably waiting in the wings to carry on Nixon’s legacy. It was all too much for one 16-year-old high school student named Benny. That night, he retired to his bedroom sobbing. The next morning, fortified by a couple of chocolate Pop-Tarts, he wrote the following excerpt in his diary. Yes, young Benny kept a diary. “Wed. Nov. 8, 1972—In my life, I’ve had a few setbacks. But nothing can compare to my inner feelings as I watched the political disaster nicknamed—the United States Election. George McGovern stood for everything I thought was right, while Nixon was something evil. . . . Look out America. I hope we survive.” I could go on, but I think that’s enough from Benny’s diary. Again, my point here isn’t to say that Trump doesn’t pose a grave threat to American democracy—he does—but rather to say that we’ve faced such threats before. Democracy is fragile. Voters are routinely bamboozled by hucksters. Crushing defeat often follows jubilation. Progress comes in spurts, if it comes at all. But just when you think all is lost, everything can turn around. In the case of Nixon and Agnew, they were gone within two years. Agnew resigned in disgrace within a year of the election after being indicted for accepting bribes while governor of Maryland. So much for 12 more years. Then, in 1974, Nixon himself stepped down—one step ahead of impeachment—as the Watergate scandal unraveled. Someday, if you’re lucky, I’ll treat you to Benny’s diary entries on that. That brings me to Mayor Emanuel and the other local elected officials to whom we now look for guidance and leadership in this most Democratic of cities. Some officials, like 47th Ward alderman Ameya Pawar, have been forceful in their resistance to Trump’s more extreme proposals, like banning Muslims and deporting Mexicans and other immigrants. “We know what it feels like to be seen as ‘the other,’” Pawar wrote in a letter to his constit-
uents. “Economic policies, widening income inequality, and a lack of investment in communities manifested itself in the results on Tuesday night. We must deal with these issues and hear people before suffering forces more people into the arms of a demagogue.” Others have been more cautious. Alderman Patrick O’Connor was advising Chicago not to get on Trump’s bad side even before the election, on the grounds that Trump is a vindictive SOB. Historically, Chicago’s mayors have favored the O’Connor approach to dealing with Republican presidents. Nixon had a strong affinity for Mayor Richard J. Daley—the Daley in charge of Chicago back in ’72. Indeed, Nixon benefitted from a rift between lefties like McGovern and Democratic bosses like Daley. Then, his son, Richard M.—the Mayor Daley most of you remember—was especially chummy with President George W. Bush. In fact, when Dubya won reelection in 2004—speaking of sickening election-day outcomes— Daley said national Democratic leaders had it coming for being antireligious. As for Rahm, he’s been cautious in response to Trump. Generally lightning quick to comment on major news events, the mayor’s press office was uncharacteristically quiet about the election for almost a week. He seemed reluctant to get into a war of words with the president-elect, maybe because Trump could, as O’Connor suggested, pull millions of federal dollars from Chicago. Then, on Sunday, the mayor issued a statement underscoring his commitment to protecting undocumented immigrants in Chicago—even if that meant a loss of federal funds. “I want to assure all of our families that Chicago is and will remain a sanctuary city,” he said. “Chicago has been a city of immigrants since it was founded. We have always welcomed people of all faiths and backgrounds, and while the [presidential] administration will change, our values and our commitment to inclusion will not.” Well, that’s good to know. Emanuel’s statement came several days after similar declarations had been made by mayors from New York City to Seattle to Los Angeles. But better late than never. I now find myself hoping that Emanuel will finally put his talents to good use in the fight against Trump. In this struggle, we’ll need all the help we can get. v
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CITY LIFE Francisco “Frank” Cruz was killed in a hit-and-run crash August 17. o COURTESY OF THE CRUZ FAMILY
TRANSPORTATION
Crash conflict
Competing lawsuits have been filed against the company whose unidentified driver killed Frank Cruz. By JOHN GREENFIELD
A
lmost three months after Francisco “Frank” Cruz, 58, was fatally struck on his bicycle by a hit-and-run van driver in West Garfield Park, police still haven’t made an arrest. That’s despite the fact that a security camera captured an image of the vehicle that hit him, which was marked with the phone number for a local real estate company. Last month Cruz’s mother, Isabelle, made her own attempt to bring her son’s killer to justice, filing a wrongful death lawsuit against the company, Advanced Real Estate, as well as the as-yet-unidentified driver. But last week a separate lawsuit was filed on behalf of a man named Kevon Williams, identified by his attorney as Frank Cruz’s son and as the special executor of his estate. Now, the potential conflict between the two competing suits threatens to delay possible compensation and closure for the fallen cyclist’s family. On August 17 at 10:19 PM, Cruz, a security guard and contractor, was biking home to North Lawndale from a liquor store next to
10 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
the Pulaski Green Line station, where he’d stopped after work to pick up beer, according to a friend who was with him shortly before the crash. As he rode south at Maypole and Pulaski, the northbound van driver made a left onto Maypole, running over and crushing the cyclist, according to police. Video indicates that the motorist didn’t brake, but instead fled west on Maypole. Cruz was pronounced dead at 11 PM at Stroger Hospital. Even though the Chicago Police Department has the image of the van, and there were several witnesses present, the investigation remains open and the driver is still at large, according to the CPD. On October 12 the personal injury firm Disparti Law Group filed the wrongful death suit against Advanced Realty and the unnamed van driver in Cook County circuit court on behalf of Isabelle Cruz. The suit seeks at least $50,000 in damages. “Frank’s mother wants the person who did this to be held accountable for her son’s death,” Kolb said in an interview last week. “It
was a case of a man just riding his bike home with his dinner and having his life tragically ended by a reckless motorist.” The lawsuit alleges, among other things, that the van driver was driving too fast for conditions, failed to yield, and failed to brake before hitting Cruz. The suit also states that the driver caused Cruz “bodily injury, pain, fright, disfigurement, and other injuries” before his death. It’s unclear whether Cruz died immediately after he was struck or sometime later, Kolb said, “but even if he lived only another minute or half minute, the fact that he got crumpled under that vehicle. . . . Can you imagine the pain of having your bones crushed and broken?” The suit adds that Cruz’s passing has denied his family his “services” and “society,” and caused them “grief, sorrow, and loss of relationship.” But unbeknownst to Isabelle Cruz and her attorney, on November 8 came the second lawsuit was filed against Advanced Realty and the unidentified driver by the firm Gordon & Centracchio on behalf of Williams, identified in the suit as the special administrator to Cruz’s estate. This second suit is also seeking more than $50,000 in damages. Last week Gordon & Centracchio attorney Joe Ryan told me that Williams is the son of Frank Cruz and his wife, Virgie Burdine. Ryan said he needed to consult with Williams before discussing the case further, and subsequently didn’t return multiple follow-up messages I sent him earlier this week. Reached on the phone last week, Isabelle Cruz and Frank’s sister, Candy Cruz, said they don’t know Williams. Both declined to comment further on the case. Although a CBS report in the wake of the crash described Burdine as Cruz’s wife, Candy Cruz told me in September that Burdine was merely “Frank’s ex-girlfriend.” When I informed Kolb of Williams’s lawsuit, he said he suspects the other suit is invalid, both because of the way it was filed and because it’s not clear whether Williams is actually related to Cruz. Although research by a private investigator hired by his firm didn’t turn up evidence of children, Kolb said, he acknowledged that there may still be relatives of Cruz’s who need to be notified of the suit. A spouse or child of a victim takes precedence over a parent or sibling in these kinds of cases. “If [Williams’s attorney] can provide me with the marriage or birth certificate, I’ll move on and they can take over the case,”
Kolb said. “If he’s wrong, then I represent the appropriate heirs.” Jim Freeman, a personal injury lawyer with the bike-focused personal injury firm FK Law (a Streetsblog Chicago sponsor), said it’s possible that both Isabelle Cruz and Kevon Williams—if he’s Frank Cruz’s son—deserve compensation for Cruz’s death. But Freeman added that determining who gets what portion of any potential compensation could be time-consuming. “[The two sides are] going to have to duke it out,” he said. However this conflict is resolved, now that law firms have been retained, it’s possible that the attorneys will be able to uncover more information about the driver who killed Frank Cruz.
“If [Williams’s attorney] can provide me with the marriage or birth certificate, I’ll move on and they can take over the case. If he’s wrong, then I represent the appropriate heirs.” —John Kolb, attorney for Isabelle Cruz
Kolb said Advanced Realty hasn’t responded to calls or letters, and a search of county records indicated that the company hasn’t yet responded to either lawsuit. (Advanced Realty also hasn’t returned multiple messages I’ve left.) But its lawyers will have to formally answer the complaint, as well as answer written questions under oath on subjects such as the names and job titles of all employees and who had the van on the night of the crash, which could provide the police with new leads. A court date is scheduled for December 6. While some people in the local bike community feared the case had gone cold, it’s still possible that justice can be served. v
John Greenfield edits the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago. ß @greenfieldjohn
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Read Derrick Clifton’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.
CITY LIFE Protesters flanked Trump Tower the day after Donald Trump was elected. o JOHN GRESS / GETTY
IDENTITY & CULTURE
Not my president
We don’t need “unity” after Trump’s election. We need resistance. By DERRICK CLIFTON
I
held out hope.¶ Hope that reason would prevail. Hope that a seasoned public servant would triumph over a reckless political amateur. Hope that a campaign with unifying messages would soar above the divisive rhetoric of its opponent. Hope that a woman would shatter the highest of high glass ceilings at long last, in a resounding triumph over the old boys’ club. I held tight, even when all signs pointed to a bitter outcome that, sadly, is as uniquely American as NASCAR or apple pie. In a dimly lit Lakeview bar last Tuesday night, a friend and I embraced as she sobbed uncontrollably, fearing how the outcome of the election would affect her reproductive rights, access to health care, and struggles for racial justice. Not far from us, a queer woman in the bar clutched her chest. Next door, what started as a boisterous LGBT watch party morphed into a wake.
This time at the ballot box, hate trumped love. And the people I love—many of them members of groups Donald Trump’s campaign openly vilified and attacked—began grieving what felt like a stunning betrayal. My denial and disbelief quickly turned to anger that night, and for the foreseeable future, that’s where I’ll stay. It’s also where tens of thousands of protesters across the country, including those here in Chicago, continue to dwell. Acceptance is not an option. Nor is the kind of empty “unity” many politicians are calling for. But in resistance, there’s another kind of unity. It’s not the same brand of “unity” Trump encouraged in his victory speech, nor is it necessarily the coming together requested by other elected officials. It shouldn’t be. But everyday Americans of all stripes can unite to resist any impending harm against those who are most vulnerable.
The day after the election, President Obama spoke from the White House Rose Garden, sounding at times as if he were addressing the country after a national tragedy. “We have to remember that we’re all on the same team,” he said. And moments before Obama’s remarks, Hillary Clinton addressed the country too, wearing purple to symbolize the unification of red and blue (as well as the dignity and purpose of the suffragists). She urged the public to accept the election results and to look to the future. “We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead,” she said of Trump. Clearly Clinton opted to “go high” after a campaign that was undeniably low. She was dignified in defeat. But this was no ordinary loss. As much as I respect Clinton and the president, I must disagree with their calls for unity and forbearance. We may all inhabit the same country, but
we should know by now that we can’t be on the same team as the people who deny our basic humanity and would deprive us of our rights. How can we find unity when our presidentelect pledged to ban Muslims, incited violence against protesters at his rallies, repeatedly disparaged Mexicans, and chose a running mate who’s OK with directing tax dollars towards electroshock therapy to “cure” gay people? How can we find unity when the president-elect opened the White House doors to a white nationalist, naming former Breitbart executive Stephen Bannon as his senior adviser and chief strategist? We can’t accept the normalizing of white supremacy, as some media outlets and everyday people ignore it or refuse to name it—instead sanitizing it with the “alt-right” label coined by its proponents, or depicting its leaders as benevolent or benign. We can’t accept the hundreds of incidents of harassment and violence directed at marginalized people in Trump’s name. Like the one at a Minneapolis high school where students scribbled WHITES ONLY and the N-word on a bathroom door. Or the one in a suburban Detroit school where students yelled “Build the wall!” at their Hispanic classmates. Or the one in Utah, where a gay couple found FAGET and HOMO DIE spray-painted on their car. We can’t accept that a Chicago man was allegedly beaten for supporting Trump either. It’s horrific. But it does appear to be a more isolated incident, as reported attacks on marginalized people far outnumber any reported attacks on Trump supporters. Calls for unthinking, uncritical unity and acceptance won’t stop these attacks or quell the concerns of marginalized groups and their allies, who fear that our civil rights and liberties are now at risk. What we need now is a unified front, not only to challenge the status quo, but also to resist the autocratic order likely ushered in by the election—one in which the victor lost the popular vote, let’s not forget. People who believe in justice, who believe in protecting and aiding society’s most vulnerable people, can’t regard a Trump administration as though it’s some kind of new normal. We can’t just “get over it,” as we have with previous defeats at the ballot box. What Trump has wrought isn’t ordinary. And at every level, with the fullest force, there must be unity in resistance. v
ß @DerrickClifton NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 11
1,507 DAYS IN COOK COUNTY JAIL NO-SHOW COPS AND DYSFUNCTION IN THE COURTS KEPT JERMAINE ROBINSON AND 1,000-PLUS OTHER PEOPLE IN JAIL FOR YEARS AWAITING TRIAL. By SPENCER WOODMAN
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une 25, 2012, was a terrible day for Jermaine Robinson. Overall, life was good—the 21-year-old Washington Park resident had been studying at Columbia College and was a few weeks into a job working as a janitor at a nearby Boys & Girls Club. But his 13-year-old neighbor had been killed by random gunfire the previous day, and Robinson spent the evening at an emotional memorial service. After the service ended around midnight, Robinson repaired to his girlfriend’s house on Rhodes Avenue to hang out with friends and to see his oneyear-old daughter, he says. But just after midnight, he says, several Chicago police officers rammed down the side door of the house and burst into the living room. Police would later say that they had spotted Robinson dashing from the front porch into the house holding a revolver. According to police reports, the officers found a handgun in the house, which they claimed belonged to Robinson. They arrested him and two other young men. At the precinct, in a cinder-block interrogation room, Robinson says he told police he was only visiting the home and knew nothing about the gun. But by the time of his arrest, Robinson was well acquainted with Cook County’s criminal justice system. He had grown up poor in the Ida B. Wells Homes in Bronzeville, where his great-grandmother, a retired CTA bus driver, struggled to raise him, his mother, and a dozen other grandchildren. “It was sometimes seven of us in one bed,” Robinson recalls. At times he’d skip school because he feared that his student uniforms were so smelly and unclean they’d draw derision from his classmates. By his midteens he’d started dealing cocaine and heroin, and at 17 he was arrested on drug and weapons charges. Although still a minor, he was charged with a felony and booked into Cook County Jail. After entering a guilty plea, he says, he spent the rest of his teens downstate in the Vienna Correctional Center. In 2011, Robinson says, he spent another several months in prison after being caught with a small amount of marijuana. But upon his release later that year, Robinson says he was striving toward a different path. He’d taken two courses
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in music management at Columbia that spring, and he hoped to return. His dream, he said, was to cultivate the talent of musicians he knew across the south side. His girlfriend was seven months pregnant with a second child, and the future seemed to hold promise. The arrest at the house in Washington Park marked a sudden end to Robinson’s hopes. He feared his past convictions would cast him in a suspicious light in front of a judge and jury. “My case was basically my word against the police’s word,” he says. “So by my being a convicted felon, my credibility was already shot.” In the early hours of the morning, Robinson recalls, he was transferred from the police precinct to Cook County Jail, a 96-acre complex of bleak concrete cell blocks stretching along California Avenue on the southwest side. Although no court documents indicate that the state had any physical evidence linking Robinson to the gun, a judge denied his request for electronic monitoring and set his bond at $7,500—the amount he’d have to pay in order to be released from jail and resume work and school as he awaited trial. It was a sum neither Robinson nor his family had at their disposal. Robinson’s family set out on the first of numerous failed attempts to raise the money while Robinson stayed in jail waiting for his case to be resolved. As Robinson reacclimated to life behind bars, he noticed something that dismayed him: a few of the inmates he’d met during his first spate in jail as a teenager were still there now, awaiting trial. “There were guys there still fighting their cases from when I first came to the county in 2007,” Robinson said. “These guys were in there for six, seven years.” He didn’t yet know it, but Robinson was about to join their ranks. Although formally innocent in the eyes of the law, he would spend 1,507 days in jail—more than four years—awaiting trial for the weapon-possession charges. The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution grants anyone accused of a crime the right to a speedy trial. But a 2014 New Yorker profile of Kalief Browder, who was incarcerated as a teenager in New York’s Rikers Island jail and held for three years awaiting trial, catapulted the
Although formally innocent in the eyes of the law, Jermaine Robinson spent more than four years awaiting trial on weapon-possession charges. o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS
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tional spotlight and demonstrated that this constitutional mandate isn’t always enough. In June 2015, two years after his release, Browder committed suicide at age 22. In April of that year, the New York Times reported that Browder’s case wasn’t an isolated occurrence. Of the approximately 10,000 inmates at Rikers at that time, more than 400 people had been awaiting trial for at least two years. Now, a joint investigation by the Reader and the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute has found that although Cook County Jail has fewer inmates than Rikers did then—roughly 8,000—it holds more than double the number of inmates awaiting trial for multiple years. More than 1,000 Cook County inmates have been awaiting trial for more than two years, according to the Cook County sheriff’s department. In some extreme cases, some have been held without trial for more than eight years. Minorities account for 93 percent of these long-waiting inmates, an even higher percentage than the jail’s overall population. Only 11.5 percent of Cook County inmates are white, as are a mere 7 percent of its long-term pretrial detainees. (The racial breakdown of the jail’s population is already strikingly disproportionate to the county’s population as a whole, which is 42.6 percent white.) Most inmates awaiting trial for multiple years in Cook County face charges for violent crimes such as murder, rape, or assault. But according to the sheriff’s department, nearly half of them have been held not because they’ve been deemed too dangerous for release, but simply because they couldn’t post bond. (The problem of pretrial inmates being held because they can’t afford even small bond amounts is so widespread that on Monday Cook County sheriff Tom Dart proposed abolishing the state’s cash bond system altogether.) According to a recent report from the Chicago-based journalism nonprofit Injustice Watch, less than 3 percent of the jail’s population are serving a postconviction sentence; the rest are still awaiting trial or sentencing. But poverty isn’t the only cause of prolonged pretrial detention, our investigation finds. Dozens of attorneys, court administrators, and inmates interviewed for this story—plus a highly critical report from the Department of Jus-
tice—paint a picture of a court system plagued by unnecessary delays. Court systems around the country are crippled by overwhelmed public defenders and overscheduled courtrooms, but Cook County defendants also face judges and police commanders who fail to ensure that officers appear in court when needed and a state crime lab so overburdened it can take up to a year to turn around basic DNA samples. Perhaps most troubling, some defense attorneys who choose to invoke Illinois’s speedy trial law—which requires the state to seat a jury within 120 days for defendants in custody—claim to have faced prosecutorial or judicial retaliation. The Cook County state’s attorney’s office, which oversees more than 1,500 prosecutors and administrative employees, declined to be interviewed for this story and didn’t respond to a list of questions. In a statement, the office of Cook County circuit court chief judge Timothy Evans said that a complicated host of factors contributes to trial delays and that the office had launched a series of initiatives to study the problem and implement best practices. Attorneys agree that complex criminal cases may legitimately take a lot of time—sometimes years—to adjudicate. Nevertheless, the consequences for defendants of such lengthy trial delays are severe, and raise troubling questions about the unequal application of justice in Cook County. Extended trial delays deprive defendants of their liberty for months or years as they await trial, causing them to lose jobs, incur debt, fall behind on schooling, and endure separation from loved ones. Perhaps more disturbingly, numerous studies have shown that lengthy trial delays mean defendants are more likely to plead guilty and less likely to be acquitted at trial as compared with those able to bond out of jail. More than one former Cook County inmate said that after being held under pretrial detention for years, they’d concluded that their only way out of jail was to plead guilty for crimes they maintain they didn’t commit. “Defendants are much more likely to take pleas just because they want to get out of jail,” says Max Suchan, a private defense attorney and a founder of the Chicago Community Bond Fund. “That,” he says, “happens in Cook County every day.”
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POPULATION
JAIL
Minorities make up 57.4% of Cook County's population but account for 93% of inmates waiting more than two years in Cook County Jail.
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elieving the state had no substantial evidence against him, Robinson hoped that his case would be tossed out quickly—perhaps in time for him to return to his studies at Columbia that fall. But as registration came and went, Robinson remained in jail, struggling to get his defense off the ground. His family hired a private attorney, then began falling behind on payments; this set off several months of uncertainty about who exactly would represent him, according to the Cook County public defender’s office, which took up Robinson’s case in early 2013. Roughly once every month or two, guards would wake Robinson up at 4:30 AM, put him in shackles, and lead him onto a bus whose windows were mostly covered by steel plates. As the sun began to rise, he would arrive at the courthouse in west-suburban Bridgeview, where he says he would wait with dozens of other inmates in a cramped basement holding area. As noon approached, Robinson would be called to appear before a judge. Each time, the hearing would last for only a minute or two, Robinson recalls, before the judge would decide, for an array of reasons, that his case wasn’t ready to move forward. “Then it would be another continuance,” Robinson says—and another month or two in jail. As he faced continuance after continuance, Robinson tried to readjust to life inside the jail. His cell was infested with
spiders and cockroaches, he says, that crawled on him at night and made it difficult for him to sleep. Yet jail’s greatest indignities, Robinson says, came from people. To Robinson, the jail felt like a concentrated version of the rivalries and violence of Chicago’s streets. “They take those old-fashioned shampoo spray bottles and make a concoction with their feces, urine, and all kinds of other stuff, and spray it on people or throw it on people,” he says of his fellow inmates. “I guess it’s the next best weapon to a gun in Cook County Jail. They do it to disrespect people; it makes you feel real low.” When he was drawn into tussles, guards would send him into “the hole”—solitary confinement—for weeks at a time, Robinson recalls. There, he was alone, with nothing to distract him from the incessant screams and moans of inmates in neighboring isolation cells. (According to the Cook County sheriff’s office, typically 25 to 30 percent of Cook County Jail inmates suffer from mental illness.) Periodically, his neighboring inmates would cover their cells with their own feces, filling the block with a smell so intense that it would make the guards vomit. Once, Robinson says, he saw a shackled inmate attempt suicide by throwing himself over a stairwell banister. As Robinson’s case meandered through the court system, weeks turned into months, and then a whole year passed, yet he wasn’t any closer to trial. When I reached out to Robinson’s family in January, he had been awaiting trial for nearly four years. His great-grandmother had passed away in 2008, leaving his mother, Lasheena Weekly, to battle her son’s prolonged trial delays. Robinson had spent four months in jail as his public defender fought to obtain personnel records on his arresting officer, Anthony Bruno, records that his judge then took months to review. Before that, Robinson had waited five months just for the court to hear, and reject, a motion to reduce his bond. Although she believed that the facts of the case were going Robinson’s way, Weekly faced a problem that has particularly vexed many Cook County defendants: although under subpoena to testify at a hearing on a pretrial motion to quash the arrest, Bruno had repeatedly missed court dates, causing months more delays.
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In December 2015, Robinson’s public defender, Rosemary Costin, issued a subpoena warning Bruno that his failure to appear at the next hearing, scheduled two months from then, would result in him being held in contempt of court. Still, when that court date arrived, Bruno was nowhere to be seen. Robinson’s judge, Thomas Davy, set a new court date six weeks later to try again. Costin issued another subpoena for Bruno to appear. When that date in late March arrived, Bruno was in court, according to records—but in a different courtroom, apparently on a different case. This time, one of Robinson’s witnesses also failed to appear; she had forgotten the court date altogether. Costin issued another subpoena for Bruno to appear. At the following hearing almost two months later, Bruno was again absent. Costin issued yet another subpoena. Five weeks later, Bruno again failed to appear. “It’s been prolonging and prolonging and prolonging,” Weekly said. “They want to get [Robinson] tired of being in that awful place and get him to admit to something that he did not do.” Robinson marveled at how the state handled Bruno’s absences. “Had it been the other way around, and I’d been subpoenaed to court and didn’t show up,” Robinson told me, “there would be a warrant out for my arrest.” In 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice, with American University, released a study into how the Cook County Criminal Court manages felony cases. Primarily seeking to understand the relationship between lapses in courtroom efficiency and overcrowding in the jail, the report found that the court system suffered from “a ‘legal culture’ that facilitates unnecessary delay in case processing.” A major driver of this, according to the study, was startlingly simple: as in Robinson’s case, police officers were continually failing to show up for court hearings that hinged on their presence as witnesses. Police absenteeism not only runs afoul of state laws meant to ensure that witnesses appear in court; it also violates the Chicago Police Department’s own rules of conduct, which specifically prohibit officers from failing to report promptly when called to court. Yet the study noted that police absenteeism
“does not appear to generate any sanctioning” of the officers themselves. Daniel Coyne, a defense attorney and clinical law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, confirmed the DOJ findings on no-show officers in a 2007 paper. More than a decade after the DOJ study was published, little appears to have improved in Cook County when it comes to reliably getting officers to show up to testify. Officers failing to appear in court continues to be a stubborn contributor to pretrial delay. “I haven’t seen any change in this problem,” says Coyne, who mainly represents defendants facing serious felony charges. “It really hasn’t been getting much better.” Defense attorneys and court administrators echoed Coyne’s concern over police witnesses failing to appear. “Lately, it’s worse than it’s ever been,” adds Bill Murphy, a private defense attorney who’s been practicing in Chicago for nearly 50 years. In fact, the backlogged dockets of Cook County’s overburdened courtrooms mean that, when an officer fails to appear at a hearing, it can take months to try again. “It’s rarely like, ‘OK, let’s meet next week,’” says Michael Bianucci, a private defense attorney who has worked in Cook County’s criminal courts for 26
THEREWERE “GUYS THERE STILL
FIGHTING THEIR CASES FROMWHEN I FIRST CAME TO THE COUNTY IN 2007. THESE GUYSWERE IN THERE FOR SIX, SEVEN YEARS.
”
—Jermaine Robinson, former Cook County Jail inmate
years. “No, you’re often talking three months later. If that happens a couple of times, nine months is gone. It’s unbelievable.” “These are not witnesses like other witnesses,” says Keith Ahmad, a top supervisor in the Cook County public defender’s office. The court is “very reluctant” to issue warrants for police witnesses who repeatedly fail to come to court, Ahmad says—warrants that would be standard issue for other witnesses who fail to appear. “I’ve never seen a warrant issued for a police officer.” In interviews, several other long-serving pretrial inmates and their families cited police truancy as a factor in prolonged jail stays. Some also said it had contributed to a feeling of pressure to give up on getting their day in court and simply enter a guilty plea in order to return home from jail. Falandis Brown, a former security guard, spent 16 months in Cook County Jail awaiting trial on a burglary charge, accused of taking a GPS device from a Ford Explorer parked along the Midway Plaisance near the University of Chicago campus. Brown says that the failure of a police officer to appear at his trial was part of why he pleaded guilty this past January, despite privately maintaining his innocence, in order to free himself from jail. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors allowed Brown’s 488 days of pretrial detention to count toward his sentence, which would also include several weeks in state prison. (CPD declined to comment on Brown’s case, and a spokesperson for the University of Chicago Police Department, which assisted Brown’s arresting officers, said that its officers appeared at all of Brown’s court dates.) “They told me the police weren’t there, and they weren’t ready for trial, and I was looking at, I think, a 94-day continuance,” Brown says. “I couldn’t sit any longer, man. I just took the plea.” Twenty-nine-year-old Chante Johnson has been awaiting trial for more than five years—2,040 days as of press time—facing charges in connection with the armed robbery of a liquor store in the suburb of Blue Island. His family cites no-show police as one of many factors delaying his trial; court records document multiple notations of “witness ordered to appear,” though they don’t
specify which witness. “What about Chante’s right to a speedy trial, what about the prosecutor proving and presenting a case without all these holes in it?” his grandmother, Gloria Johnson, asked in a 2015 letter to chief judge Timothy Evans. “They have taken four and a half years of his life away, and it’s like nothing to them.” Johnson is scheduled to appear in court again Thursday. Meanwhile, late last July, Bruno finally appeared in court in Robinson’s case. Robinson says that, under questioning from lawyers, Bruno provided answers regarding Robinson’s arrest that left Judge Davy visibly unsatisfied. After Bruno’s testimony, Davy granted Robinson’s motion to quash arrest, meaning the police had no grounds to take him into custody in the first place. Two weeks later, the state dropped all charges against Robinson. After being held in jail for more than 1,500 days, Robinson was free to leave. The Reader attempted to contact Bruno for comment, both directly and through the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, the police union. Bruno didn’t respond, and the FOP said it was unable to reach him. CPD also declined to make Bruno available, but provided a statement to the Reader about the larger issue of police absenteeism. Between January 2010 and August 23 of this year, CPD recorded 11,698 instances of officers failing to appear in court, according to department spokesman Sergeant Michael J. Malinowski, although the department doesn’t distinguish in its record-keeping between instances when the officer has permission to be absent and instances where he or she does not. “Whether it be an excused absence, their presence was required in another courtroom at that time, maybe the officer wasn’t notified etc. There are a number of reasons” why an officer might legitimately miss a court date, Malinowski said in a statement. Still, Malinowski says, the department “takes court absentees very seriously,” and investigates each instance. But when asked what portion of these absences had been investigated and found to be impermissible, and what the consequences were for officers found in violation of the department’s court policy, Malinowski declined to comment. J
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n extreme cases, defendants have spent years in pretrial detention waiting for their arresting officer to appear in court. This was the case for 56-year-old Kermit Leaks, who on April 20, 2012, was arrested in North Lawndale for having allegedly stolen two semiautomatic rif les the previous day. The rifles and other gear, it turned out, had belonged to then-CPD SWAT team member Johnny Quinones, who says he’d left them in the car. In Leaks’s arrest report, police allege that they found Leaks and his codefendant, Michael Calvin, in possession of the stolen guns. By the time Leaks had spent six months in jail, he was already fed up and filed a complaint with the state. In the letter, Leaks argued that his prolonged pretrial detention appeared to be a tactic on the part of the prosecution that his public defender was doing little to oppose. “It’s only [an] effort to drag their case out in hopes of getting a plea,” Leaks wrote. “My due process is being violated.” But for Leaks, who was never able to afford his $30,000 bond, this was only the beginning. After more than three and a half years awaiting trial, Leaks sent me a letter. Over the past two years, one obstacle had prevented him from getting his case to trial, he says: Leaks’s arresting officers repeatedly failed to appear at more than a dozen of his pretrial hearings, setting off a seemingly endless cycle of continuances. Court records document 15 continuances after unnamed witnesses failed to appear. (More than a dozen officers are listed on Leaks’s arrest report, but because there are no subpoenas in Leaks’s available court records and the Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to comment, the Reader was unable to determine which officer or officers had failed to appear in court.) This past November, in a letter to the public defender’s office, Leaks again pleaded for help. His court-appointed attorney seemed unable to get his case moving, he said. “Could you please! have a talk with my public defender about assigning her some help?” Leaks implored the state.
Over the span of his lengthy pretrial incarceration, Leaks’s life had changed significantly. He had been beaten by jail guards and forced to sleep on a filth-covered cell floor for weeks at a time, he alleged in a federal complaint. And he had been diagnosed with leukemia. He was on the brink, he wrote me, of admitting guilt to a crime he still insists he didn’t commit—known among inmates as “copping out”—in order to free himself from jail. “I wake up every day wanting to [plea],” Leaks wrote, “but my first mind tells me don’t cop out for something you know you didn’t do.” An attorney in the Cook County public defender’s office, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because he feared that speaking on the record could cause judges to disfavor his cases, said that Leaks’s “storied past”—a criminal record that included convictions for drug charges and manslaughter—would pose a tough hurdle at trial for a defendant many jurors would assume was guilty. The attorney confirmed that there had been an unusually long wait for Leaks’s police officer to appear in court. “We’re trying to get him in,” the attorney said. “He isn’t coming to court, and that delays the case, but it’s not sufficient to dismiss the case.” “When you can’t get an officer to come to court, you have to keep trying,” he added. “Nobody is issuing bench warrants for cops who don’t show up.” Starting on February 11, 2014, Leaks’s case entered a spiral of repetition. That date marked the beginning of hearing after hearing recorded in Cook County courtroom logs with the bare notation: “Witnesses ordered to appear,” indicating that a hearing has been postponed while a no-show witness is subpoenaed. On January 26, 2016, after two years of these circular court appearances, I sat in Judge Kevin Sheehan’s courtroom to watch one of Leaks’s hearings. It turned out to be typical. Leaks entered in shackles, and less than a minute later—after an inaudible exchange took place between Sheehan, Leaks’s defense attorney, and the prosecutor—Leaks was led back to jail without having said a word. In courtroom logs, the hearing is recorded as yet another “witnesses ordered to appear.” Sheehan set Leaks’s next court date for eight weeks hence, in the spring.
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11,698
The number of times CPD officers failed to appear in court—with or without permission—between January 2010 and August 23, 2016
That June, after Leaks’s arresting officers finally came to court, the state offered Leaks a deal: If he would plead guilty to the state’s charges, the years he’d served in jail would account for his entire sentence, and he could walk free. So, on June 23, after more than four years of resisting, Leaks entered a guilty plea. (His codefendant, Michael Calvin, with whom Leaks was arrested in 2012, is still incarcerated in Cook County Jail awaiting trial.) The Reader attempted to contact all of Leaks’s arresting officers for comment, both directly and through the FOP. They didn’t respond to our requests. Upon his release in late June, Leaks moved in with a lifelong friend, Ray Yarbrough, who says he attended dozens of Leaks’s hearings. They had another friend who owned a trucking company across town, and Yarbrough and Leaks talked about going to school together to get truck-driving certification to take advantage of the company’s available jobs. But life on the outside proved difficult for Leaks. The jail had sent him home with only a week’s worth of medicine for his leukemia, Yarbrough recalls, and after this ran out, Leaks struggled to obtain refills on his own. As his days without medication ticked by, Leaks began complaining of pain throughout his body. Just over a week after Leaks was released, he was found dead at a friend’s house in North Lawndale. According to county records, Leaks had overdosed
on a mixture of heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl. “He was in a tremendous amount of pain,” Yarbrough said. “I think that led him to go get the drugs.”
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lthough the failure of police to appear in court was central to Leaks’s frustrations, for many defendants, it’s just one in an array of factors that drag their cases on for years. Several attorneys cited the Illinois State Police’s overburdened crime lab as another routine contributor to unnecessary delays. The problem is so bad that a March 2016 investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times revealed a backlog of nearly 3,100 cases with biological evidence—such as hair, blood, or semen—that were either untested or in the process of being tested more than 30 days after they had been submitted to the lab, up from just 130 in 2009. The state often takes months to turn around DNA evidence for serious cases involving murder and rape, says Eric Bell, a criminal defense attorney who has practiced in Cook County for nearly 20 years. “It can take more than a year.” In an e-mail to the Reader, the Illinois State Police defended its handling of the backlog, asserting that a state law passed in 2010 mandating the testing of rape kits from old investigations had contributed to significant delays. As those kits have been cleared, the ISP is working, according to agency spokesperson Sergeant Matt Boerwinkle, to reduce its current backlog. “The total ISP Lab backlog statistics have decreased each year for the last five years,” Boerwinkle said, citing a drop from more than 17,000 total backlogged cases pending in 2012—including not only biological evidence, but evidence related to drugs, guns, prints, tracks, and other matters—to 12,568 at the end of last year. (The Sun-Times found that the subset of cases with biological evidence waiting more than 30 days had actually risen by 19 percent from 2015 to 2016.) Still, state crime lab backlogs have remained severe enough that some Illinois cities have recently delegated funding to outsource their evidence testing to private firms rather than
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wait hundreds of days for results from the state. Daniel Coyne, the clinical professor and defense attorney, says he recently represented a man who had been held for five and a half years awaiting trial for murder. (Through Coyne, the client declined to comment, and Coyne declined to share his client’s name or records, saying he wanted to protect him from reputational harm.) Coyne says in that case, it took the state lab more than 11 months to conduct DNA tests and produce reports. At trial in December 2015, Coyne’s client was finally acquitted, he says. However, “he lost five and a half years of his life waiting to go to trial.” Several defense attorneys also argue that the state drags its heels during the discovery process, during which time the defense’s hands are tied. Going to trial without the ability to review the state’s full set of evidence would imperil any defendant. Sometimes prosecutors take more than a year to complete discovery, even for defendants awaiting trial in jail, according to several attorneys. “After a number of years of practicing in Chicago, I thought that was the norm,” says defense attorney Rodney Carr, “until I started going to seminars in California or other jurisdictions and hearing how quickly things are wrapped up, go to trial and discovery is tendered.” In October 2013, Timothy Hooper, now 64, was arrested in his car and charged with more than 100 counts of identity theft: police alleged that he’d been making fake IDs. Hooper claimed that he was innocent of all charges but, unable to afford his $50,000 bond (later reduced to $25,000), he was booked into Cook County Jail. Hooper has an extensive criminal record dating back to the early 70s, including, most recently, a 2010 fraud case in Michigan. He’s also an army veteran who suffers from degenerative arthritis, and his arrest came after his wife, Darryl, had undergone a double mastectomy for breast cancer—a time when Hooper said they had come to rely heavily on each other. At first, Hooper says, he believed there had been some mistake, and hoped to be out of jail within days. But weeks turned into months as Hooper waited for the state to turn over any evidence against him to his public defender. Every so often, Hooper and his lawyer would meet, but instead of discussing his
defense, Hooper claims she would encourage him to accept the prosecution’s offer and plead guilty to all 105 felony charges in exchange for a reduced sentence, which he recalls was more than ten years. Insisting on his innocence, Hooper refused. “I’m 64 years old,” he said. “That’s like a bullet in the head.” A year passed as Hooper waited in jail. Hearing after hearing ended in continuances as the prosecutor repeated that the state needed more time to gather and process evidence, Hooper says. Court records show that Hooper made two motions for discovery. “The judge told me to not fight the case without having all of my discovery,” Hooper recalls. “So I said, ‘Your honor, it’s been two years—I’m ready for trial, but the state keeps saying they’re still getting stuff together. Don’t they have a time period they have to meet? Or can they just go on?’ It didn’t make sense to me. I was saying, ‘I only have so much time, why don’t they only have so much time?’” The chief judge’s office declined to make the judge in Hooper’s case available for comment. Court records show that, in December 2013, Hooper fired his public defender and began representing himself. (In a statement, the Cook County public defender’s office said it was unlikely that Hooper’s attorney would’ve encouraged him to plead to all 105 charges.) Then, in May 2015, after Hooper had spent 18 months in jail, the state’s case
THESE ARE NOT “WITNESSES LIKE
OTHERWITNESSES. I’VE NEVER SEEN A WARRANT ISSUED FOR A POLICE OFFICER.
”
—Keith Ahmad, Cook County public defender’s office
began to falter. Hooper still doesn’t know exactly what changed, but suddenly, in the middle of that month, prosecutors dropped 104 of the 105 charges against him, according to court records. With his wife struggling at home, Hooper says he felt he had no choice but to plead guilty to his final charge—an admission he claims was false—in order to return home to help her. Last December, after serving seven months in the Centralia Correctional Center, he arrived home. Such delays are not always the fault of the state, some attorneys argue. As cases stretch on, defendants sometimes run out of money to pay a private attorney, necessitating a potentially time-consuming switch to a court-appointed attorney, as happened with Robinson. Although there has been little documentation of this in Cook County, intentional delays by defense attorneys have been detailed on the part of certain defense attorneys in Bronx criminal courts. In fact, defense attorneys may benefit from delays, since “state witnesses can disappear, die, or their memories can fade,” says Darren O’Brien, a former prosecutor who spent 30 years in the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. But O’Brien, now a private defense attorney, insists that defendants frustrated by long waits in jail can request a trial using the state’s speedy trial law. “The fact is that the defendant holds the key to how long he stays locked up,” he says. “Because if he says those words, then 100 percent of the time the case will go to trial or be dismissed.” Numerous other defense attorneys interviewed for this story, however, say that it’s almost impossible for the defense to demand trial without jeopardizing a client’s interests. Once the defense has demanded trial, judges may not allow defense attorneys to pursue the pretrial motions that are often essential to get a defendant’s case dismissed, to get the charges reduced, or to properly prepare for trial. And even if defendants do get to a point where they are ready to demand a speedy trial, they can potentially expect blowback from the prosecution or judges, according to several defense attorneys who practice in Cook County. “Demanding trial is like calling the state’s attorney’s mother a bad name,” says the public defender who requested anonymity. “Prosecutors take it very
personally when you demand trial.” A trial demand means that an already busy prosecutor must put everything else aside and focus on preparing for trial, he explained, or else face potentially serious repercussions for exceeding the term. “It’s considered the nuclear option,” Coyne says. “In my 32 years of practice, I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve demanded.” One of the stipulations in Illinois’s speedy trial law is that, once a defendant begins the 120-day clock on a trial demand, the defendant and his or her attorney must appear in court for all scheduled appearances; if a defense attorney misses a single court date, the speedy trial clock can stop. To prevent these constitutional demands from advancing, several public defenders and private defense attorneys allege, some prosecutors will purposely schedule a trial on a date when they happen to know that the defense team has an irreconcilable conflict. Even a former prosecutor acknowledges that this happens. “I have heard of that and I always thought that was a rotten thing to do,” O’Brien says. “I’ve heard guys saying they’ve done it or are going to do it. I’ve never seen it done, and I’ve never done it.” In rarer instances, some Cook County judges have reacted to defendants’ use of the speedy trial law with hostility, according to several public defenders. They say that these judges have sometimes required an inmate who makes such a demand to return to court with his or her attorney every single day, first thing in the morning, for the entire 120-day duration of the demand. This forces an inmate to be dragged out of bed at 4:30 AM daily to go wait in the courthouse’s underground holding pen for hours to appear at one useless hearing after another. For public defenders, with their packed schedules, such a time commitment is simply untenable. It’s meant to “punish the inmate in order to dissuade them from demanding or to make them back off the demand,” according to Carr, the Cook County public defender. “I have seen that happen.” “The speedy trial is more of a fiction than anything,” said Murphy, the private defense attorney, who says prosecutors’ moves to thwart a trial demand are inevitable. “It just can’t be done.” J
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eaning into a small conference table in his fifth floor corner office—with its floorto-ceiling tinted windows overlooking a lunar expanse of cell blocks—Peter Coolsen, the administrator of the criminal division of Cook County’s court system, cautioned against oversimplifying the issue of trial delay. “It’s not any one thing,” Coolsen said of the problem’s causes. “It’s the whole combination of factors working together.” Coolsen’s job is to help the division’s presiding judge, LeRoy Martin, come up with ways to efficiently move thousands of cases through the court system each year. Coolsen says the issues that lead to trial delays—including the changing of defense attorneys and prosecutors on a case, the backlogged state crime lab, and no-show police officers—have been the subject of much discussion within the court system. (The chief judge’s office didn’t respond to a request for an interview with Martin.) “I’ve been absolutely preoccupied with this for the past few years,” Coolsen says. “The culture of the judiciary is really important,” he adds. “Everyone has to feel a sense of urgency.” The Chicago Community Bond Fund’s Suchan, who’s studied the court system extensively, agrees with Coolsen but singles out judges as the players with the most power to effect the necessary reforms. “The chief judge and the presiding judge of the criminal division—both of those judges have the ability to push back on this culture of disregarding the urgency of how long cases take,” Suchan says. He also emphasizes that judges have a disproportionate influence over the pace at which a case moves through the system. “The judges set the schedules for the courtroom,” he says. “They can say: this is when something must happen.” In charge of a judicial bench that oversees more than a million pending criminal and civil cases on any given day, the job of Cook County’s chief judge, Timothy Evans, certainly has its challenges, and Evans’s tenure has not been an easy one. In September, after a judicial
misconduct scandal and a critical assessment from the state supreme court on the county’s criminal case management, Evans narrowly prevailed in a judicial election that the Chicago Tribune characterized as unusually acrimonious, fueled by widespread discontent with Evans’s leadership. A 2010 study on pretrial delay in Cook County published by the Chicago Appleseed Foundation, a court-reform advocacy organization, found that “no internal policy enforces the use” of informal standards created by the chief judge’s office on how quickly various types of cases should be resolved. In its recommendations, the report focused on the role of judges. In particular, the study suggested that judges receive mandatory training and mentorship to become better at moving cases with appropriate speed. In a statement to the Reader, Evans’s office emphasized the shared responsibility of all parts of the court. “In order for case delays to be reduced in this complex, interdisciplinary criminal justice system, it would take more than the judges of the Circuit Court of Cook County to effect significant changes,” said spokesman Pat Milhizer. “All stakeholders in the system would need to examine their internal processes as they relate to case-flow management.” Milhizer also touted several initiatives intended to speed up cases, including efforts to reduce time from arrest to arraignment and the streamlining of aspects of bond court, as well as recent grants the court has received to study and improve its case management. Citing the results of a 2013 review initiated by the chief judge, Milhizer indicated that CPD has itself acknowledged, and is taking steps to solve, its contribution to case delays. “The Chicago Police Department is addressing issues that can cause delays,” Milhizer said, “such as the time needed for producing 911 tapes and video, prompt notice to the court by officers who are witnesses of schedule conflicts with dates for testimony, assuring officers bring required evidence to court, and the time needed to produce final police reports.” Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, an assistant criminal justice professor at Temple University who has extensively studied the Cook County Court system,
18 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
THE SPEEDY “TRIAL IS MORE OF
A FICTION THAN ANYTHING. IT JUST CAN’T BE DONE.
”
—Bill Murphy, private defense attorney
believes that the police department could do a better job enforcing its rules of conduct when it comes to court absences, a problem that she says prosecutors can find themselves helpless to address. “This really impacts people’s lives and liberty, and one would think that such power would be concentrated in the hands of prosecutors,” she said, “but what we see is that police officers wield a lot of power, and there’s certainly not enough consequences coming from the police department itself when these types of violations occur.” Coolsen stopped short of criticizing the police department, but suggested that a more robust system of communication between prosecutors and police precincts about court dates could be a starting point in addressing police absenteeism. Yet even if this solved the problem of police absences, it would constitute only a sliver of the reforms necessary to tackle pretrial delay in Cook County. Coolsen says the sprawling court system will need to adopt new, lasting attitudes and practices guided by the need to fulfill the constitutional imperative of a speedy trial. He also claims the court is already taking steps to tackle the problem. Last July the court received federal funding for a wide-ranging study of case-flow management in its criminal division. Part of this will include testing the efficacy of a judge giving an order at the outset of some cases, laying out how
much time it should take to be resolved based on how complex a given case is, according to Coolsen. “[T]he main emphasis is on the court building an expectation among the various players that cases will take as much time as they need for a fair and just resolution of a case, but not more,” Coolsen said in an e-mail. “It is that ‘culture of expectation’ that we are trying to build in the Criminal Courthouse.” “We can certainly do better,” Coolsen added. “But it’s only going to happen if we get a regular, sustainable, and systemic approach where we’re all sharing the same vision.” But while potential fixes to Cook County’s court system crawl forward, they may not be fast enough for the hundreds of inmates stuck in jail for years awaiting trial. In 2013 Robinson’s younger sister died in a house fire. His inability to mourn with his family remains one of the worst traumas he says he suffered during his grim years awaiting trial. After his release in August, Robinson moved in with his girlfriend on a quiet block in South Chicago, just across the street from the grassy, overgrown expanse of the old U.S. Steel South Works plant. When I met Robinson at their home in September, he mentioned that one of the only places he’d ever been outside of Chicago was the downstate penitentiary where he spent the last two years of his teens. Now that he’s free again, he hopes to eventually travel the country, perhaps to visit New York City and get his first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean. For now, however, Robinson’s focus is getting back on his feet in Chicago. He says he plans to reenroll in college—at Columbia, he hopes. But his most immediate priority is earning a living: in recent weeks, Robinson has applied for a cashier job at a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts and for several temporary positions at janitorial agencies. He’s also been attempting to make up for lost time with his children, now four and five years old. “I’ve been through a lot,” Robinson says. “I’m just happy to be back here.” v Marc Daalder, Maya Dukmasova, Jack Ladd, Jaime Longoria, and Sharon Riley contributed reporting to this story.
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FLEA ANTIQUE MARKET (COUNTY FARM & MANCHESTER)
o COURTESY THE ARTIST
By MATT DE LA PEÑa
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• DuPage County Fairgrounds •
Off the grid with the innovators of Khecari
just a gimmick? Over the course of a single evening, The Retreat goes from dance concert to intimate social hour to slumber party, its underlying intention seemingly to show that dance is, in its own way, a spiritual practice around which people can coalesce, maybe something like Buddhism, Hinduism, or even animism. Nature is a big theme. The set, for example, is reminiscent of cavernous rock formations, and is given a warm glow from lighting designer Kat Sirico. Percussionist Joe St. Charles, a frequent Khecari collaborator, roves back and forth from one end of the room to the other, plucking at strings and filling the space with a range of brooding sounds (Native American?) that inspire a wistful form of meditation. In developing this performance three years ago, Meyer and Antonick decided to give people a choice between a two-hour evening-length experience, a four-hour longform experience, and an overnight experience. The longer you stay, the better the perks: the long-form and overnight groups are treated to a midnight snack that consists of cheese and homemade vegetarian soup; the overnighters get all that and are subsequently asked
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DANCE
he dancers of Khecari picked as good a time as any to get off the grid. Last Thursday, two days after the presidential campaign came to an end, I made my way to Indian Boundary Park Cultural Center in Rogers Park for a pseudo-getaway called The Retreat. Upon arrival, I was asked to relinquish my phone for safekeeping and put my mind to rest for at least a few hours. I was assigned a “ranger” who’d help guide me throughout the night. I was given a mug, a notepad and a pencil and instructed to doodle, grab a cup of tea, lounge. The lights were dim, the music soft—the idea here was to get comfy. You could be forgiven for thinking that none of this has to do with a dance, but it does, and judging from the faces of my fellow audience members, much of it turned out to be therapeutic, even if only subconsciously so. The Retreat, the first installment of Teem, a new multipart performance project from Khecari’s creative duo of Jonathan Meyer and Julia Rae Antonick, is a test of will, an endurance exercise that comes packaged with the bells and whistles of some kind of spiritual resort. It’s beautifully arranged and designed. But is it all
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to participate in a “hypnagogic movement workshop,” then in “nesting,” which I was told is less like a form of sleep than slipping in and out of consciousness. This is to say nothing of the actual movement, developed from an improvised “duet investigation” of Meyer and Antonick’s called Orders From the Horse. But the dancing comes across, perhaps intentionally so, as more of an afterthought than a focal point. Meyer and Antonick are typically steady and lucid in their pacing; when Meyer’s grows quicker, dancer Chih-Hsien Lin wraps him in a tarp, as if to say “slow down.” The few choreographed sections draw the audience even further into what apears to be a state of hypnosis, the ensemble sliding and rippling across the floor like pools of water. But all the while you’re given the freedom to do as you please. At one point, my so-called ranger told me I should feel free to fall asleep at any time—no judgment. I took him up on it and dozed off for a few minutes before a crawling Meyer happened to bump my feet. I noticed others snoozing too, tucked under blankets. Surprisingly, the attendees who were awake looked refreshed, even enthralled by what was happening. At nearly every stage of the performance (which for me spanned from 8 PM to midnight) someone was moving. When the dancers, who double as rangers, directed their respective charges to tables for a brief pause, a member of my dinner group remarked that watching felt like falling asleep with the TV on. With The Retreat, Meyer and Antonick have once again productively, ingeniously messed with our environment and our senses to inform our thinking about what dance is and what it can be. Two years ago, in Oubliette, the ensemble negotiated the confines of a five-byeight-foot pit in a tiny 12-seat “microtheater” consisting of two benches overlooking it. In last year’s The Cronus Land, they set up shop in the decrepit ballroom of the former Shoreland Hotel in Hyde Park. Site-specific choreography and radical thinking have taken them to some very weird and unconventional places, but none of their productions so far, I would argue, have been as altogether mind-bending and strangely rejuvenating as The Retreat. At midnight, when a ranger quietly escorted me to the front of the building to retrieve my belongings, I was saddened knowing that my getaway had come to an end. v R THE RETREAT Sat 11/19, 8 PM, Indian Boundary Park Cultural Center, 2500 W. Lunt, 773-764-0338, khecari.org, $10-$270, sold out.
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NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 19
ARTS & CULTURE
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Delia Kropp o MICHAEL BROSILOW
THEATER
Surviving oppression in sensible heels DOUG WRIGHT’S CLUNKY, disjointed Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner presents isolated fragments from the singular life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a cross-dressing German antiques collector who survived Nazi and Communist oppression in sensible heels. Wright unwisely makes himself a central character in the play, dramatizing his struggles to cobble together her story (oh no, another grant ran out!) as though they matter beside her travails. Unwiser still, he spends nearly two hours venerating her courageous, eccentric life only to suggest she may have made most of it up. Although the play was written as a one-person show, director Andrew Volkoff casts four actors for this “reimagined” About Face revival—an improvement insofar as the 40-something characters aren’t all stuck in the same dress. Transgender actor Delia Kropp’s measured, mystifying turn as Von Mahlsdorf saves the evening. —JUSTIN HAYFORD I AM MY OWN WIFE Through 12/10: Wed-Sat 7:30 PM (no shows Wed 11/23 and Thu 11/24), Sun 3 PM; also Sun 11/27, 7:30 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, aboutfacetheatre.com, $40, $20 students and seniors.
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ARTS & CULTURE Christopher Wheeldon o JAMES FOSTER
LIT
What we learned at the Chicago Humanities Festival By READER STAFF
Speed isn’t about hastiness—it’s about taking action. Some spend years writing books, but Grant Faulkner proposed a radical suggestion to an audience at Francis W. Parker: Do it in a month. That’s the gist of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo): each November, a growing number of people commit to writing 50,000 words in 30 days. Some succeed, some fail; mostly, it’s about taking that first step. The theme of this fall’s Chicago Humanities Festival was “speed,” but Faulkner advocated speed as a strategy—life is short, and the important thing to do first is to get it done. Maybe the novel will be good. Most likely, it will be pretty bad. But you can’t know either way if it only exists in your mind. —TAL ROSENBERG Dance is changing fast. During the “Ballet in Conversation” panel, choreographer Christopher Wheeldon said he’s strived to combine “classical ballet with Broadway spectacle” for Joffrey Bal-
let’s modernization of The Nutcracker, which makes its debut this season. He’s working with a team of Tony-nominated set designers, costume designers, writers, and even a puppeteer to pull off the unprecedented $4 million production. The result includes a new setting (Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition), a new narrative written by Brian Selznick, and the replacement of the traditional Sugar Plum Fairy—now a representation of the statue of Columbia. On the same day, Dorrance Dance, a New Yorkbased contemporary tap company, explored the future of the art form in ETM Double Down. Instead of relying on backing tracks, the dancers tapped on a series of boards connected to drum machines and synthesizers to create an electronic score. It was a mesmerizing performance that pushed the boundaries of traditional tap into the realms of hip-hop and break dancing while still highlighting what dance is all about: rhythm. —BRIANNA WELLEN
The “rules” of sleep apply to different people differently. So said Benjamin Reiss, a cultural historian and author of Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World, forthcoming in March. The ideal of sleeping on a regular schedule in a private room is one that only emerged in the 19th century and was reserved solely for “civilized” people; slave owners justified depriving their slaves of sleep because, they said, some races required less rest than others. They also believed that the cure for “laziness” brought on by lack of sleep was more work. The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass recalled that slaves were whipped more for oversleeping than any other reason, and that he himself was so exhausted he spent all his free time dozing mindlessly under a tree. Even now, you can see disparities in sleep privilege: Reiss pointed out how during Hurricane Katrina relatively well-to-do New Orleanians (like himself and his family) were able to escape to hotel rooms, while the less well-off had to snatch whatever sleep they could in basketball arenas and airports. —AIMEE LEVITT Helmut Jahn’s dream project, and the advice he got about working with Donald Trump. The restoration of the much-maligned Thompson Center, which Jahn designed in the early 1980s, is the current project of desire for the renowned Chicago architect. In the wake of Governor Bruce Rauner’s announcement that the building is to be sold and will likely be demolished, Jahn is itching to work with a private developer to restore it to its intended function as a “real” public center. “The building’s in a deplorable state,” Jahn said. “It hasn’t been maintained since almost the beginning.” But, he added, “people have been in contact with me about it. They are waiting for the day when they could make of this building something more.” Speaking three days before the presidential election, Jahn also recalled his one attempt to work with Donald Trump as a client, and the advice
he got about it, before eventually bowing out: “Robert, [Trump’s] brother, said, ‘You’ve got to stop that shit and tell Donald what he cannot do.’” —DEANNA ISAACS
David Bowie and Prince are timeless. This year’s William and Greta Flory concert, “We Can Be Heroes,” focused on the careers and artistic output of recently departed rock stars Bowie and Prince. Hosts Rob Lindley and Bethany Thomas guided the audience through a musical journey—featuring flamboyant and powerful performances from JC Brooks, Mark Hood, Evan Tyron Martin, Andrew Mueller, and Malic White—following Bowie and Prince’s differing names, personas, and musical styles. Despite the disparities between them, both similarly explored race, sex, gender identity, and celebrity at all stages of their careers in a way that remains relevant today. Maybe it was just the timing (the concert took place the night before the election), but a mash-up of Prince’s “Sign o’ the Times” and Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans” hinted that these otherworldly figures knew exactly what was coming once they left this planet. —BRIANNA WELLEN
Things are not going to be OK. “People are going to die,” author and feminist folk heroine Lindy West said the Saturday after the election. “People’s lives will change, and it’s not preventable.” The panel “Loud Women Speak” was intended to be a discussion between West and Jessica Valenti, who attained her own folk-heroine status by becoming the Guardian columnist to have received the most death threats—but neither Valenti nor the moderator, the hilarious and wise essayist Sam Irby, was able to be there. Instead journalist Britt Julious joined West onstage, and the talk turned into a form of group therapy: during the Q&A, many women stood up to speak about how sad and angry and frightened they were. West struggled to identify a few “tiny shreds of OKness”: that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, that progressive candidates and causes did well in some local elections, that Chicagoans had the energy to march in protest for four straight days, that the demographic maps indicated the country is moving toward what West called “a future of people of color.” Still, she said, “I am struggling with the notion that we have to vote for destruction and bigotry. The solution is not to find a middle ground. That racism is bad is not up for debate.” —AIMEE LEVITT v
NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 21
ARTS & CULTURE
LIT
The bureaucracy of boating
By TAL ROSENBERG
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s it the water in Lake Michigan that makes Chicago such a politically corrupt city? That might sound like an outlandish theory, but R.J. Nelson’s Dirty Waters: Confessions of Chicago’s Last Harbor Boss makes a compelling case. Between 1987 and 1994, Nelson held two positions with the Chicago Park District, superintendent of special services and director of harbors and marines. A former chaplain, Nelson took what he calls a “pneumacratic” approach to his positions—he drew on his spiritual training to deal with the clout-heavy MO, unethical behavior, and tedious bureaucracy of Chicago politics. His predecessor,
22 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
Gerald Pfeiffer, was a gun-toting chain-smoker sentenced to three years in prison for taking bribes and helping local politicians gain access to the city’s yacht clubs and permits to dock in lakefront harbors. Nelson was appointed by then-mayor Harold Washington to reform the office, which at the time had a notorious reputation for corruption. Dirty Waters, a fine chronicle of Nelson’s tenure as a city employee, begins with his first day on the job and concludes not long after he was ignominiously terminated by Forrest Claypool, then the Park District’s general superintendent. What Nelson encounters during that time will be familiar
to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of local government: parks department supervisors who demand permits for their personal boats, inept public-sector employees who receive high salaries due to political connections, and obfuscatory paperwork designed to deaden the enthusiasm and limit the geographic and civic access of ordinary boaters. If it was just a play-by-play account of Nelson’s time as harbor boss, Dirty Waters might get bogged down by inside-baseball accounts of bygone local politics. But there’s a certain Chicagoness to Nelson’s storytelling that’s highly entertaining—the book reads like a series of anecdotes being told by a lifelong resident of the city. Nelson can veer off on tangents, sometimes excessively so, but more often than not the asides keep the narrative interesting, provide valuable context, and in some instances add unexpected depth. A chapter titled “Harold” is ostensibly about Washington, but Nelson spends most of it describing racism he’s encountered in his lifetime, from his bigoted father to his partic-
ipation in an early-1960s protest against the mistreatment of African-Americans. What also keeps things lively is the tone of Nelson’s writing, a chili bowl full of corner-tap talk, sensitive memoir, and detective fiction. At times the gumshoe similes soar: “New furniture and carpeting were ordered, but like reform in government the process took time while the stench of chain-smoked corruption lingered.” And there’s plenty of new information that should delight local readers, from the physical makeup of the harbors to the ins and outs of local yacht clubs to the secret laboratories under Soldier Field set up to study surface waves. Next time when someone asks why Chicago’s so corrupt, tell them it must be something in the water. v R DIRTY WATERS: CONFESSIONS OF CHICAGO'S LAST HARBOR BOSS By R.J. Nelson (University of Chicago). Nelson speaks, with cash bar and complimentary snacks, Tue 11/22, 6 PM, Cliff Dwellers’ Club, 200 S. Michigan, 22nd floor, 312-922-8080, cliff-chicago.org. F
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ARTS & CULTURE A silicon torso designed by Tin-Tin, a French tattoo artist o THOMAS DUVAL
VISUAL ART
Written in ink By TAL ROSENBERG
I
s tattooing an art form? Answers vary. People who work at tattoo parlors will respond in the affirmative without batting an inked eyelid. My parents would adamantly disagree; not only does Jewish law forbid the practice (Leviticus 19:28: “You shall not etch a tattoo on yourselves”), but many Jews of my grandparents’ generation associate tattoos with the Holocaust and don’t care for any kind of reminder. “Tattoo,” a new exhibit at the Field Museum, doesn’t provide any kind of resolution, which is part of what makes the show so worthwhile. The Field tends to water down its exhibitions for children and mass audiences, but to its credit “Tattoo” displays a broad and complicated subject in all its messiness. At the same time, the show is approachable and easy to follow: it’s possible that someone who objects to tattooing will leave the Field with a new under-
standing and perhaps even an appreciation of the craft. The central conflict in “Tattoo” is one that has surrounded tattooing for centuries—the tension between tribalism and individualism. Throughout their history the role of tattoos has vacillated between these two tendencies. One of the first objects visitors of “Tattoo” see is a silicon bust of a naked human’s backside draped in tribal tattoos. These designs, which resemble an interlocking pattern of whale tails rendered in the thick lines of Native American art, are the work of Leo Zulueta, a tattoo artist based out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who’s known as “the father of modern tribal tattooing.” Though this piece was made in 2013, it’s based on the traditional techniques of practitioners in Borneo and inspired by the tattoos of Fais Island in Micronesia. “Tribal tattoos” may be a trendy statement of rebellion, but they’ve historically served as an ethnic identifier. The extensive time line of tattooing and its sweeping geography are established early on. An image captured by Charles Carpenter, the Field’s first official head photographer, at the 1904 World’s Fair focuses on Shirake Osawa, a member of the indigenous Ainu people of northern Japan, who has a thick tattoo around her mouth. Another photograph depicts a Mojave girl, whose tattooed chin reflects a Mojave tradition passed on to women once they entered adolescence. There are carvings that depict the scarification tattooing technique of the Makonde people in Tanzania and Mozambique. Visitors learn that European tattoo artists date back as far as the 17th century. Before the 20th century tattoos were more often considered to be signs of tribal membership, but afterward the practice increasingly became a symbol of exclusion and oppression. During the Armenian genocide many women were forced into prostitution, and tattoos were used to identify them as such. A haunting black-and-white photo from 1919 shows an Armenian woman staring mournfully into the camera, with blurred text and indiscriminate shapes on her face and chest. The exhibit also cleverly and thoughtfully addresses tattooing’s relationship to the Holocaust: for example, there’s a photograph of one man standing next to his grandfather, both flashing the concentration camp number tattooed on the latter’s arm in what is at once a reminder of the atrocity and a gesture of solidarity. In this
case, the oppressed subvert the evil legacy of the oppressors. That notion informs a revelatory section of “Tattoo” that deals with the considerable role prisons and prison culture play in contemporary tattooing. Tattoos were used in 19th-century Europe to mark prisoners as a danger to society, but in time incarcerated people came to use them as decorative badges of honor. One panel features various drawings used in gulags, such as a wolf in a soldier’s uniform groping a naked woman. There are photographs taken by Irina Ionesco of nude yakuza, enshrouded in full-body tattoos, sitting stoically in public baths. Toward the end of “Tattoo,” museumgoers witness the emergence of body art as a significant cultural force. Sailor Jerry (real name, Norman Keith Collins) was a Hawaiian tattoo artist whose incorporation of southeast Asian imagery proved a massive influence on contemporary tattooing. His frequent use of snakes, skulls, knives, and roses can be seen everywhere from the Grateful Dead’s album covers to the green-and-red arms of your neighborhood bartender. In 1976, the world’s first tattoo convention in Houston spawned a newfound resurgence in body art. The final section showcases noteworthy present-day tattoo artists. (A rotating cast of local artists is inking visitors who’ve made appointments in a makeshift parlor at the end of the exhibit.) The standout designs of Montreal-based Yann Black are rigid and sophisticated geometric patterns that wouldn’t be out of place in the Art Institute’s Moholy-Nagy show. But because of the ways in which the works are layed out on body parts, there are noticeable pockets of untattooed flesh; it reminded me of Miles Davis’s famous observation about Ahmad Jamal’s piano playing, that the spaces between the notes are just as important as the notes themselves. Today, in a return to tribalism, tattoos have become a distinguishing feature of the creative class in every region of the Western world. But thanks to Black and other tattoo artists, people will continue to get idiosyncratic body art that’s as unique as their own bodies. By the end of “Tattoo,” one can’t help but come to the conclusion that existing as an individual and as part of a community aren’t mutually exclusive. v R “TATTOO” Through 4/30/2017: 9 AM-5 PM daily, Field Museum, 1400 S. Lake Shore, 312-922-9410, fieldmuseum.org, $22, $19 seniors and students, $15 children 4-11.
ß @talrosenberg NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 23
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ARTS & CULTURE
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merican Honey, now playing a sixday encore engagement at Facets Cinematheque, is a hypnotic road picture about a crew of wayward young people selling magazine subscriptions across crumbling middle America. After winning the Jury Prize at the Cannes film festival in May, this fourth feature and first U.S. production from British writerdirector Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights) met a slightly weaker reception stateside, where some critics dismissed it as overlong and self-indulgent. Dusty Somers of the Seattle Times described the film as “vividly rendered but increasingly repetitive and aimless,” while Adam Graham of the Detroit News went so far as to call it “the most indulgent movie of the year, and the one in most need of a serious trim.” What’s most remarkable about the work, however, is how Arnold dares the viewer to sit and process American squalor, postadolescent recklessness, and the acuity of her female gaze. Unlike most mainstream films, American Honey is radically subjective: its success depends on how long the viewer is willing to follow the protagonist, Star (Sasha
Lane), and see the world through her eyes. Fortunately, Lane is enthralling. Arnold discovered the Texan, then 19 years old, partying with friends on a Florida beach. Like the majority of the young “mag crew,” Lane had never acted before. Yet her photogenic face and natural performance, enhanced by the mystery inherent in an unknown lead, inspire curiosity from the outset. In the opening scenes Star tires of babysitting her younger siblings, delivers them to their shiftless mother, and hits the road. Who is this girl? Where is she going? What will become of her? The film works in large part because of Lane’s anonymity, and also because of Arnold’s nonjudgmental framing. A lesser director might have mounted Star’s story as a morality play, while a more prurient male filmmaker (such as Harmony Korine, whose Spring Breakers is similar to this film) might have viewed her as a sex object instead of the agent of her own story and owner of her own desires. Despite an implied history of sexual abuse and neglect, Star never seems like a victim of circumstance. Nothing about her is passive, affected, or cliched. She is irreducible, and thus interesting.
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ARTS & CULTURE Arnold embraces repetition, normally a vice in cinema, and turns it into a strength. Star’s new family of runaways, played mainly by teens whom Arnold met in strip-mall parking lots and on rural state fairgrounds, pride themselves on their routine, rules, and rituals. They drive from town to town in a dilapidated van, while their ringleader, Krystal (Riley Keough), and her second-in-command, Jake (Shia LaBeouf, not as distracting as one might think), ride ahead in her mysteriously obtained convertible. They stay in cheap motels and canvass local neighborhoods, using sob stories to sell subscriptions to bored Christian housewives. Every week brings “Losers Night,” complete with a bonfire, fireworks, and a fistfight between the two lowest earners, though it’s really more of a release, for both the fighters and the observers. While driving through economically depressed swaths of Oklahoma, Missouri, and South Dakota, they play their favorite songs, mostly rap and country, and repeat the lyrics as if they were mantras. The kids find safety and comfort in routine, which helps to prolong an aimless adolescence. Digression, another device storytellers often avoid, leads to key turning points in Star’s development. After an argument with Jake, who has become her secret lover, Star impulsively hitches a ride with three middle-aged cowboys who squire her to a stately ranch home and test her mettle with several shots of mescal. Later she rides shotgun with a cattle-truck driver who asks her if she has a dream in life. “I’ve never been asked
that before,” she replies, revealing that she’d like to raise children in a little house in the woods. When the crew rolls into a moneyed oil town, Star agrees to a $1,000 “date” with an oil-field worker and, in his car that night, lit by a brilliant natural-gas flare, awakens to her own sexual power. Finally, her sales route takes her to a derelict home where young children try to cope with a meth-addicted mother on the nod. Each vignette strengthens Star’s purpose and inner power, and every time she returns to the mag crew and her romantic dalliance with Jake, she’s one step closer to breaking free. As a director, Arnold has a measured, lingering style well suited to long-form storytelling, and she seems to recognize the power of accumulated detail to evoke mood and motivation. Some of the most haunting imagery springs from the prolonged sequences in the crew’s van: the skeletal back of a teenage boy undulating as he grinds against a seat; a tiny girl taking a bong hit and leaning down to kiss the sleepy stray dog in her lap; the kids’ wistful faces as they sing along to Lady Antebellum’s “American Honey” on the radio. This last scene makes clear that Star, quietly and resolutely, has decided to leave for good. All the details and detours have led to this moment, yet saying good-bye to her may feel strange and abrupt, even after 163 minutes. v AMERICAN HONEY ssss Directed by Andrea Arnold. R, 163 min. Fri-Wed 11/18-11/23, Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton, 773-281-4114, facets.org, $10
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MUSIC
CHICAGO’S GRASSROOTS ROCK BANDS BRIGHTEN THE CORNERS THEY’RE IN
BLEACH PARTY ENDLESS BENDER
Reviews of new releases by Bleach Party, Coaster, Fake Limbs, Lala Lala, Strawberry Jacuzzi, and Swimsuit Addition
By LEOR GALIL
Bleach Party Endless Bender (Tall Pat)
Bleach Party’s Endless Bender EP doesn’t come out till Friday, but you may already have heard the serrated surf-rock guitars of the tightly wound, garage-inflected “Single Summer”— this bonus track from the EP’s digital version appeared in a national radio spot for the McDonald’s value menu that aired for a few weeks over the summer. The ad put “a little extra dough” in the band’s pockets, says bassist Richard Giraldi, but he’s much more excited about Endless Bender. “This is the biggest record release I think I’ve ever been a part of.” Giraldi, who founded local blog-turnedpodcast Loud Loop Press, launched Bleach Party with vocalist-guitarist Meghan MacDuff and guitarist Bart Pappas in 2012. The previous year, when Giraldi was looking for someone to record a split between his band Rodeo and MacDuff’s group Velocicopter, he recruited Pappas. Giraldi was used to hearing MacDuff howl and scream on Velocicopter’s swinging, spiky songs, but at the sessions he heard more of her talents. “In between the takes, she would just sing regularly—it’s like, ‘You can actually really sing. You don’t have to scream all the time—you can sing really well,’” Giraldi says. “She’s like, ‘Yeah, I used to sing in the other bands.’”
26 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
Eager to explore a pop-friendly sound, Giraldi contacted MacDuff through Facebook to float the idea of playing together, and they recruited Pappas on guitar. “I liked having this other outlet that wasn’t this sort of hard-rock thing—it was more fun,” Giraldi says. “It was more danceable—it’s a little more accessible to anybody.” After recording with onetime Swimsuit Addition member Susan Volbrecht on drums, Bleach Party recruited Kaylee Preston of psych-rock misfits Rabble Rabble to replace her. These days Bleach Party is the main vehicle for most of its members: Rodeo broke up in 2014, Velocicopter called it quits in January (MacDuff launched a new band called Montrose Man earlier this year), and Rabble Rabble bowed out last month. They recorded Endless Bender in August 2015, then shopped it around before finding a home for its rambunctious boogie with Tall Pat, the upstart local rock label run by Reader contributor Patrick Sullivan and his wife, Dana Horst. Giraldi is looking forward to seeing his music released on vinyl for the first time. “To us this is really big—this is what we’ve been waiting for,” he says. “We’ve been holding back on posting all these songs to our Bandcamp—we really wanted to make sure this was a big celebration of this record.” SWIMSUIT ADDITION, BLEACH PARTY, CLEARANCE, JOLLYS Fri 11/18, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $8, $5 in advance, 21+
Coaster Deuces
COASTER DEUCES
(Community/Sooper) Coaster have been around for less than five years, but 26-year-old guitarist Seth Engel talks about the pop-rock tunes on their flamboyant new Deuces EP like he’s fondly recalling something that happened decades ago. The band’s playful mix of boisterous rock and sugary power pop doesn’t sound especially dated, but it takes Engel back to cruising around with his old bandmates—he mentions former bassist Michael Byrnes and former drummer Tom Graham. “There’s all sorts of sentimental stuff attached to each song,” he says. Coaster started with a Columbia College songwriting class in 2012. Byrnes and singerguitarist Matt Kissinger teamed up for a project, writing the easygoing “Chewy,” which would eventually appear on their debut release, the 2013 single Fetch. They pulled in Graham and Engel to play on the recording, though Engel already had his hands full. (He usually has several projects going; currently he records and performs emo-tinged rock as Options, drums in underground emo supergroup Lifted Bells, and plays guitar in experimental group Bathing Resorts). “I was like, ‘I don’t wanna do it unless I’m not singing and blah blah blah blah,’” Engel says.
FAKE LIMBS MATRONLY
LALA LALA SLEEPYHEAD
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MUSIC These days Coaster’s rhythm section consists of bassist Dillon Kelley and drummer Marcus Nuccio (Pet Symmetry, Mountains for Clouds), but Byrnes and Graham stayed long enough to record their parts for Deuces in summer 2015, after the band returned from a few weeks on the road with Kansas emo heroes the Appleseed Cast. They knocked out the rhythm tracks in about a day at Minbal in Humboldt Park, but Engel and Kissinger tracked the guitars in Coaster’s practice space, and they took their time— their piecemeal sessions stretched into early 2016. “There would be nights where we’d be like, ‘All right, cool—we’re ready to go, let’s do it!’” Engel says. “We would come in, and there’d be a band practicing next door.” On “Cool,” the lead single from Deuces, a stop-time twin-guitar riff gathers woolly noise till it sounds like it’s about to disintegrate, especially at the end. Engel wrote his part at the Flowershop, a defunct DIY spot where he once lived with Kissinger and Byrnes. The tune has since become a favorite of his to play live: “The R&B vocal thing Matt does at the end is always a blast.”
Fake Limbs Matronly (Don Giovanni) Stephen Sowley’s lurching howls on Fake Limbs’ new third album, Matronly, sound a little more wild and ragged than on the postpunk band’s previous records, and with good reason. “I think I was bleeding out a little emotion about my partner of ten years being gone,” he says. Fake Limbs recorded Matronly at Electrical Audio in March, and his partner, Jes Skolnik, landed an editorial job at Bandcamp and moved to New York around the same time. Whether despite or because of the pain Sowley felt, he delivered a magnetic madman’s performance that’s perfectly in sync with Fake Limbs’ assertive assault. Fake Limbs sound so cohesive on Matronly in part because they road tested and refined its material on two tours with Nashville alt-rock outfit Bully—one late last year, and another this winter. “We got in a certain zone with how we wanted the new songs to sound, how we wanted the album to feel—all the trappings of making a record,” Sowley says. Five years
of playing together have also taught Sowley, guitarist Bryan Gleason, bassist Mat Biscan, and drummer Nick Smalkowski how to hash out their ideas. “We as a band were able to communicate more, and allow a little bit more vulnerability from our lives into the creative process,” Sowley says. Perhaps the biggest change for Sowley involved the lyrics for Matronly. For Fake Limbs’ 2012 debut, Man Feelings, he wrote apart from the group. But for their 2013 follow-up, The Power of Patrician Upbringing, he consulted his bandmates, and for Matronly his process was almost collaborative. “This felt like there was more of a conversation within the band about what the lyrics were gonna be about, as opposed to me just doing it and being like, ‘Here it is,’ and they find out later on what the song is about,” Sowley says. And when he lost confidence in his performances on the road, or when he had writer’s block, his bandmates encouraged him. “They were the ones who were like, ‘Maybe you should write some love songs,’” he says. “Like, ‘OK, I’ll try that.’” Sowley not only came up with idiosyncratic love songs (the spindly “Lil Bit” and the distended “Murderbar”) but also worked with his bandmates on their most overtly political number: “Inconvenience,” provoked by Sowley overhearing a guy at a Logan Square bar complain about the Laquan McDonald protests ruining his Black Friday s hopping plans. “It’s about having to deal with jerks that start off a conversation with, ‘I don’t want to sound racist . . . ,’” Sowley says. “We really were very conscious about how we wanted to present the lyrics for that song, and what it’s like having to listen to somebody like that talk.” Fake Limbs honor their progressive outlook in other ways too: “We try to be inclusive with who we want to have on the bill,” Sowley says. “We don’t want to be booked with assholes—we try to be very cautious about that.” FAKE LIMBS, BREATHING LIGHT, BEAT DRUN JUEL Wed 11/23, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $8, 21+
TNK
WE ARE SCIENTISTS
CAROLINE SMITH
12/01
01/13
THE NOISE FM + HIGHCHAIR KINGS
SAM ROBERTS BAND
WHITE LIES
01/27
02/06
HOLLERADO
GUEST
TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS J A N U A R Y 11 T H -15 T H W W W .T N K F E S T. C O M
HOMESHAKE
ATTLAS
PAUL CHERRY
EVAN IRELAND
DEAD HORSES
PUBLIC ACCESS T.V.
12/14
01/26
12/07
THE CRANE WIVES
Lala Lala Sleepyhead
OVERCOATS
12/09
SPLASHH + THE BRITANYS
(self-released) Lala Lala front woman Lillie West prefers simplicity in musical expression, and she’s J
NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 27
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UPCOMING SHOWS 1833 PRESENTS
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11.20 BADXCHANNELS (FEAT. CRAIG OWENS) COLOURS / MARINA CITY
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11.23 SPRING KING
IZZY BIZU / SUNDARA KARMA SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS
11.26 THE FUNK HUNTERS CHALI 2NA
12.02 KEVIN DEVINE
PET SYMMETRY / PETAL
12.03 GIRAFFE TONGUE ORCHESTRA 12.04 HANDS LIKE HOUSES / OUR LAST NIGHT THE COLOR MORALE / OUT CAME THE WOLVES FREELANCE WRESTILING PRESENTS
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12.14 AGAINST THE CURRENT BEACH WEATHER / CRUISR
12.15 FOR TODAY
NORMA JEAN / SILENT PLANET / MY EPIC
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DEADSHIPS / WORLD WAR ME / SIOUM / TANZEN SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS
12.17 MAIN SQUEEZE 12.22 BUKU
SULLIVAN KING / STRANGUH / JAMES MEYERS
12.28 VIMIC
THE BLOODLINE
01.28 P.O.S 02.07 J BOOG
JO MERSA MARLEY / JEMERE MORGAN
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28 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
equally direct when she describes what she went through while working on the band’s new album, Sleepyhead. “I had a really tragic year,” she says. “I was hit by a car, lost a close friend, and someone broke my heart.” In an effort to sort through her grief, West turned to her bandmates—bassist Karla Bernasconi and drummer Abby Black. West’s bare-bones approach arises as much from pragmatism as it does from aesthetics— she’s only been playing guitar for a few years, and she began working on the band’s ragged, minimal postpunk while she was still very new to the instrument. “I was writing songs a little bit, and then my roommate at the time, Lyla [Taube], started messing around on drums with me,” she says. When they landed their first gig, they struggled to pick a name—and ended up going with one that was right in front of them. “When we would introduce ourselves together, for some reason it was really confusing for people—Lillie and Lyla—and sometimes it would just devolve into them saying ‘lala lala,’” West explains. “So we just decided to call it that.” Taube didn’t stay in the band for long, but the lineup with Bernasconi and Black seems more or less settled. West steers the ship, helping set the mood and nudging the band to release material at a steady clip. “I work very, very quickly,” she says. “I get bored really fast, and when I make something I want it out in the world.” Her bandmates appear well suited to West’s need for speed—when she brought them the song “Okie Dokie Doggy Daddy,” she says they finished it in about 14 minutes. The tunes on Sleepyhead feel fully realized, in part due to their occasional shambolic turns. The music has some of the barren chill of northern UK postpunk, though West’s forlorn, near-monotone vocals aren’t quite frozen over—and her straightforward, magnetic melodies give the songs some approachable warmth. Often it feels as if she’s focusing her positive energy to push through the suffering she endured while making Sleepyhead. But on “Okie Dokie Doggy Daddy,” she confronts her misfortunes head-on. “It’s about recognizing yourself in tragedy, what to do with that energy, and taking ownership of your state of mind,” she says. “That’s something that I was definitely struggling with and learning over the course of the year—how to navigate adversity and remain true to yourself.” DEHD, BUNNY, LALA LALA Sat 11/26, 10 PM, Cole’s, 2338 N. Milwaukee, free, 21+
Strawberry Jacuzzi Watch the Clock (Grabbing Clouds/Some Weird Sin) Strawberry Jacuzzi’s second album, Watch the Clock, begins with some of their oldest material: the cascading ripper “Bitch Jam” has its roots in the 2013 rehearsals that eventually gave birth to the band. “That’s an old riff that [guitarist-vocalist] Nikita [Word] and I used to jam on the first couple times we met up to write music together,” says guitarist-vocalist Shannon Candy. Strawberry Jacuzzi soon added bassist Ross Tasch and drummer Devon Press to the lineup, and in 2014 they released their first album, Love Is for Suckers, on local label Grabbing Clouds Records & Tapes. With its driving rhythms, gushing guitars, and alternately sweet and snarling vocals, Watch the Clock sounds like the work of a band that’s been around for more than three years. Candy thinks it’s mainly because she and her bandmates have better learned how to integrate a lead guitar. “When we started this band, it was a struggle at first to figure out how to do what we do, and then also still have that cool lead part come in,” Candy says. “I’ve gained that as a strength—I’ve gotten a little bit better at writing lead parts and complementing what Nikita’s doing. And Nikita’s really branched out in terms of her songwriting.” Like Love Is for Suckers, Watch the Clock has songs about relationships—bad ones, collapsing ones—but on “Astronaut, Girl” Strawberry Jacuzzi also look to the stars for inspiration. “I’m fascinated by outer space
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MUSIC and love science fiction,” Candy says. “Sometimes being on earth can feel really terrible, and wouldn’t it be great if we could all just go to another planet and be really far away from all the problems that are here.” Aging is also a recurring theme, and it hangs over the tense “Batman and Princess Leia.” “That’s a song I wrote about the idea of growing up and realizing that all the dreams and exciting adventures you thought you’d go on when you were a kid—as an adult, it’s not so easy to achieve those things,” Candy says. “And it’s about the sacrifices we make as adults.” The tune includes a sample of a 1950s PSA about menstruation, which can also be read as a reflection on adulthood and its demands—but for Candy “watching the clock” means something bigger than that. “My interpretation of it is there’s only so much time that we’re all given here to do something important—or something that we’re gonna be remembered for,” she says. “You have no idea how much time is left. So just keep going, do your best, and hopefully make things that you’re proud of—and have a good time.” ABSOLUTELY NOT, STRAWBERRY JACUZZI, PEACH FUZZ, SO PRETTY Mon 11/21, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, free, 21+
Swimsuit Addition Killin Time (Tall Pat) When Swimsuit Addition headline Tall Pat Records’ fourth Cuddlestock mini fest on Friday, the spunky punk group’s members will likely have a little more on their minds than simply celebrating the release of their Killin Time EP. “It’s a big night for us,” says vocalistguitarist Jen Dot. “To put out this seven-inch and just say, ‘Hey, we’ve been playing for a while, and we’ve been playing a lot, and we are kind of needing a little bit of space from the live element of the band.” Though they won’t be playing shows for a while, Swimsuit Addition have recorded a new full-length, Dumb Dora, and are figuring out how they want to release it—they already know it’ll be accompanied by a graphic novel by Dot and Indiana-based artist Brett Manning. Dot says Swimsuit Addition feels like a family these days, an identity that’s slowly evolved since 2011, when Dot began tinkering on songs with bassist-vocalist Sam Westerling. “We’ve had a couple different people
come and play with us—when [guitarist] Becca [Nisbet] joined, it’s just been us as, like, a trio,” she says. Swimsuit Addition recorded the A side of Killin Time—the snaggletoothed doo-wop of the title track and the enginerevving “I Need U”—as a three-piece, with Westerling on bass and drums. By the time Swimsuit Addition moved on to the tracks for the B side, they’d recruited a fourth member, Dot’s longtime friend Mike, to play drums. (His last name in the band—not his real one— is Signal.) The B side includes “Cartoon,” a new version of a song from their 2012 Kittyhawk EP—an original number titled “Cartoon Paper Cup.” It’s now cleaner and more exact, and it’s acquired a new meaning for the band. “It means looking through your reality,” Dot says. “Seeing through that, figuring out what you really want and what you want to make happen, despite any of the illusions set in place.” Those ideas mesh well with the theme of the title track. “We’re trying to figure out how to spend our time wisely,” Dot says. “Like what we need to put our energy into to accomplish our goals.” Though Friday is a record-release show, Swimsuit Addition dropped Killin Time on cassette in August— the seven-inch format means the artwork will have more room to breathe. “The cover is a picture of Becca’s grandmother—she’s drinking a cocktail in the summer,” Dot says. “I feel like that’s our character right now.” SWIMSUIT ADDITION, BLEACH PARTY, CLEARANCE, JOLLYS Fri 11/18, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $8, $5 in advance, 21+ v
ß @imLeor NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 29
4544 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG • 773.728.6000
JUST ADDED • NEW SHOWS ON SALE FRIDAY! 1/15/2017 1/21/2017 3/30/2017
Peter Asher Dale Watson & Ray Benson Agnes Obel
MUSIC IN ROTATION
A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Sia o TONYA BREWER
VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG TO BUY TICKETS! SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19 5 & 8PM
Carrie Newcomer In Szold Hall
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19 8PM
Mary Gauthier, Eliza Gilkyson and Gretchen Peters Three Women and the Truth
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20 7PM
Lloyd Cole
Playing the Classic Lloyd Cole Songbook 1983-1996
Anderson & Roe in the video for their version of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off”
That says “Void Meditation Cult” up there.
o FROM THE ARTISTS’ YOUTUBE CHANNEL
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20 7PM
Sunnyside Up / Red Tail Ring In Szold Hall FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25 8PM
Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26 8PM
Irish Christmas in America
Featuring Oisín Mac Diarmada, Niamh Farrell, Samantha Harvey and Séamus Begley
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27 2 & 5PM
Rabbi Joe Black and the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band Eight Nights of Joy! A Hanukkah Warm-Up and Family Concert
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3 5 & 8PM
Funkadesi 20th Anniversary Family Show at 5PM ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL
4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL
11/18 Global Dance Party: Hermanos del Tambor with Arawak'Opia 11/28 PigPen Theatre Co. Residency 12/2 Global Dance Party: ¡ESSO! Afrojam Funkbeat
WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE
11/23 Los Soberanos 11/30 Tuelo
30 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
PHILIP MONTORO
BILLIE HOWARD Pianist and violinist
KATHRYN SATOH
Void Meditation Cult, Utter the Tongue of the Dead On Halloween this Ohio group released the first full-length of its plodding, filthy, ragged black metal—you can almost smell the centuries-old cerecloth trailing behind these songs. The drop-tuned guitars have a fat, bristly tone, like a band saw slowing down as it chews into gristle, and the vocals are even better: sometimes they’re a cadaverous, aspirated hiss, and sometimes they’re a gurgling growl that sounds like a Lovecraftian nightmare spraying bloody phlegm from all three of its throats. Is it possible for a record to be so evil that it becomes funny?
Formidable Dreams by Sara Zalek and Eugene Sun Park Sara Zalek and Eugene Sun Park’s recent “expanded cinema” performance filled Silent Funny with immersive sound and visuals exploring the search for identity through the “shadow self.” Dancers turned movement into sound (and vice versa) with great restraint, using silence and stillness to transport the rapt audience into a dream state. Handmade instruments by Jason Soliday shaped the organic yet futuristic atmosphere. It’ll be interesting to see how Zalek, Park, and their collaborators evolve this project.
Anderson & Roe Squeezed between the need to revitalize classical music’s audience and respect its conventions, Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Roe have found a niche in music videos. Featuring Mozart or Vivaldi as well as self-published arrangements of Taylor Swift or Michael Jackson, this piano duo’s efforts are hardly typical YouTube recitals (though they have plenty of quality concerts recorded too). Written, produced, and edited by the ensemble, they’re consistent in their artistic integrity—and help make fabulous classical music “cool” in this thumb-swiping technology age.
Julie Christmas, The Bad Wife At first listen, the catalog of metal queen Julie Christmas is an aggressive beast, all full-body screams and a band playing so hard it’s no wonder they rarely tour. Christmas gives her entire self to her music, with vocals ranging from a ghostly whisper to an immense, almost operatic howl. And surprisingly, beneath all the music’s harsh extremity are carefully crafted art songs.
Kaia String Quartet If you like tango, this is your group. The Chicago-based Kaia String Quartet works to promote composers and music from Latin America. Their second album, Quartango (2016), creates a portable milonga with the collaboration of composer and bandoneon player Richard Scofano. Each piece oozes with a perfect combination of sensuality and class—the only drawback to this record is that you may find yourself stepping some ochos down a CTA platform.
Reader music editor
“Playing” dry ice with metal I’d seen Michael Colligan do this in the Friction Brothers, so of course I screwed around with the unattended blocks of dry ice at Arriver’s Comfort Station gig last month. Touch a block with a piece of metal, and the sublimating gas trapped beneath it buzzes, screeches, and howls as it rushes out. The aluminum hoods of the venue’s shop lights worked great! Steve Coleman & Five Elements at Constellation Coleman often composes his distinctive avant-garde jazz by transcribing his own improvisations, and its hall-of-mirrors grooves can be a challenge to parse—the electric bass might cycle every 17 pulses, but nobody else will be in that meter. I’ve never spent an entire two-hour set trying and failing to get a handle on music that uses regular tempos and repeated patterns—I can’t help but think of how ordinary trees create essentially infinite complexity with nothing but branches and leaves.
for Akosuen and Aperiodic
Sia’s Nostalgic for the Present Tour When Sia’s Nostalgic for the Present Tour stopped here last month, it was a chance to see an artist craft the presentation of her work with a refinement not often shown by 21st-century pop musicians. All she needed was a pristine, white-box set to fill the United Center with her creative intention—rather than focus on her status as a celebrity. Modern dancers in minimalist costumes and lush lighting changes helped give this evening of storytelling and community an emotional arc. Props to Sia for making us second-guess the reality we see.
Violinist for Bow & Hammer
Kishi Bashi Kishi Bashi transports his violin into ultimate looping heaven, creating a full electronica/indie-rock production in front of your eyes. He beatboxes, sings, and dances while playing legit shredding licks. Having toured with established artists, started a rock band (Jupiter One), and survived music school (Berklee) before going solo, he’s well-rounded and puts together amazingly balanced shows, videos, and albums—they’re smart, wacky, original, lyrical, and danceable.
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MUSIC
THURSDAY17
PICK OF THE WEEK
Loscil Benoit Pioulard opens. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15. 18+
Though trailed by the specter of death, Noname’s Telefone is full of life
Scott Morgan named his long-standing electronic project Loscil after a looping oscillator function in the audio-programming language Csound. But even though it bears a name derived from code, Loscil’s music is an organic mixture of electronic textures, acoustic instruments, and field recordings. Morgan, who also soundtracks video games and drums with indie-rock band Destroyer, developed his new album, Monument Builders (Kranky), from sounds he recorded around his house in Vancouver; teapots, synthesizers, electronic beats, and French horns blur into one another as his multilayered, open-ended pieces churn on, sounding like Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas project might have if it included horn charts written by Philip Glass. Loscil, who’s been associated with the formerly Chicago-based Kranky label since 2001, is touring with labelmate and fellow oneman band Thomas Meluch, who records under the name Benoit Pioulard; the latter’s latest record, The Benoit Pioulard Listening Matter, reconciles the pixilated ambient textures that dominated its predecessor, Sonnet, with earnest songs built around his reassuring croon, kitchen-sink percussion loops, and briskly strummed acoustic guitar. —BILL MEYER
o BRYAN LAMB
RP BOO, NONAME, JAMILA WOODS, HOMME, ADACHI TAIKO
Sat 11/19, 7 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, sold out.
AS THIS YEAR’S Lollapalooza came to a close, 25-year-old Chicago rapper Fatimah Warner—better known as Noname—dropped her debut mixtape, Telefone, and if memory serves, it began trending on Twitter just as LCD Soundsystem played their ballyhooed headlining set. Whatever the case, Telefone certainly arrived at the right time, its gently rustling percussion, sparkling synths, and humming organs exuding summer at its most ideal. Warm and easygoing, the record conveys the quixotic notion that a moment can feel never-ending even when the finish line is in sight. And though Telefone is trailed by the specter of death, Noname’s affable presence and open-ended lyricism pump her work full of life: the tape is about finding shelter when the lights go dark before they should (“Diddy Bop”); about carrying on when the people you loved are no longer there to share your joy and pain (“Yesterday”); and about finding the strength to live when neighbors, friends, and strangers who share your skin tone—and maybe even a love for your favorite childhood breakfast cereal—continue to perish (“Casket Pretty”). Telefone is so potent it led New York Magazine to call Noname “Chicago Rap’s Next Big Thing,” but that’s not the best lens through which to appreciate the rapper. Who cares about status updates when music feels like an intimate conversation with a lifelong friend? —LEOR GALIL
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Rock, Pop, Etc Bongzilla, Wizard Rifle, Something Is Waiting, Blunt 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Bouncing Souls, Flatliners, Cayetana 7 PM, also Fri 11/18, 6 PM, Double Door, 17+ Contorno, Cousin Dud, Jaime Rojo 9 PM, Burlington Dickies, Queers, Usuals, Double Feature, Headless Honchos 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ DZ Deathrays, Dune Rats, Vamos 9 PM, Empty Bottle FIDLAR, Swmrs, Frights 7 PM, Metro, sold out, 18+ Frontier Ruckus, Anthony Jay Sanders, Minihorse 9 PM, Schubas Gary Gulman, Paul Farahvar 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Robyn Hitchcock, Emma Swift 8 PM, City Winery b Hoops, Stef Chura 9 PM, Hideout Gavin James, Matt Simons 7:30 PM, Subterranean b Seu Jorge 6 and 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Tony Molina, Wildhoney, Delmar & the Dedications 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Hip-Hop Snow Tha Product, Woke, Fool Boy Marley 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Dance Alfonz Delamota, Dioptrics, Romance, Zala, Sincerious, Rifle MC, Fonz MC 10 PM, Smart Bar F Snowmass, Colin Tyler Is Dead, Inzo, Tehj, Richie Olivo, Will Wylin 10 PM, Primary Nightclub Folk & Country Devil in a Woodpile 6 PM, Hideout Dar Williams 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Blues, Gospel, and R&B Mark Hummel’s Golden State-Lone Star Revue 8 PM, SPACE b Jazz Larry Coryell Trio 8 and 10 PM, also Fri 11/18 and Sat 11/19, 8 and 10 PM; Sun 11/20, 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase
J NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 31
MUSIC continued from 31
Fred Jackson, Ishmael Ali, Eli Namay, and Phil Sudderberg; Marc Riordan & Tim Daisy 9 PM, Elastic b Joel Paterson Trio 9:30 PM, California Clipper Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Denis Kozhukhin Emmanuel Krivine, conductor (Liszt, Prokofiev, Dvorak). 8 PM, also Fri 1/18, 1:30 PM; Sat 11/19, 8 PM; and Tue 11/22, 7:30 PM, Symphony Center
FRIDAY18
Alejandro Escovedo Jesse Malin opens. 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, 6615 W. Roosevelt, Berwyn, $25.
The title of the gorgeous “I Don’t Want to Play Guitar Anymore,” from Alejandro Escovedo’s superb new album Burn Something Beautiful (Fantasy), bluntly choreographs the theme of the track: “When there’s no stories left to say / That’s the end of everything.” Those lyrics tell a poignant tale, and it’s just one of many tunes where mortality is on the mind of the 65-year-old rocker. In the four years since his last record, the uneven Big Station, Escovedo has married, overcome his decades-long struggle with hepatitis C, suffered PTSD after enduring a hurricane in Mexico on his honeymoon, and moved away from his longtime home in Austin to relocate in Dallas. His new record, made with Peter Buck of R.E.M. and Scott McCaughey of the Minus Five, taps a gritty, in-your-face attack that draws liberally from the groove-heavy vibes of T. Rex and the Stooges, though the grind is leavened by Escovedo’s beautiful melodic sense and poetic touch. The band also includes Fastbacks guitarist Kurt Bloch, and he, together with some stunning harmony singing from Kelly Hogan, provides a solid foundation for the singer, who laments relationships he’s destroyed, somberly celebrates kicking deadly habits, and poeticizes the power of a simple kiss. Turning cliche into truth, Escovedo puts faith in the redemptive power of rock—witness his unfettered homage to the sneering passion of Lou Reed on “Johnny Volume,” which makes the case that age is no impediment to powerful music. —PETER MARGASAK
32 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
Sara Serpa & Andrew Matos
Purling Hiss, Axis:Sova Purling Hiss headline; Axis: Sova and the Funs open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $8. On their latest album, the in-the-red High Bias (Drag City)—which is often defiantly and noisily low bias—Philadelphia’s Purling Hiss survey the wreckage of late-80s and early-90s indie rock, serving it up at such a remove that it feels plenty contemporary. I don’t know anything about singer-guitarist Mike Polizze’s driving habits, but if he steps on the gas with the overactive force he uses with his various effects pedals, I’d stay out of his way—while he imparts a touch of melodic tenderness to the jangly “Follow You Around,” more often than not he’s reviving the acid-drenched ghosts of early Dinosaur Jr. or Hüsker Dü. On the new record Polizze and the scrappy, unhinged rhythm section of drummer Ben Leaphart and bassist Dan Provenzano inject a needling energy inspired by Krautrock’s motorik grooves (as the titles of “Teddy’s Servo Motors” and “Ostinato Musik” may indicate) and the hectoring nasality of early PIL-era Johnny Lydon. The ragged bricolage generates something urgent and dare I say, fresh—clearing out the cobwebs and leaving my ears ringing like few things I’ve heard this year. —PETER MARGASAK If you’re not sure what tool Chicagoan Brett Sova prefers to use in Axis: Sova, a bit of trivia about his project’s name should clear things up. When 90s Chicago outfit Mantis asked him to open a reunion show back in 2009, he decided to name his solo outfit after the album he had in heavy rotation at the time: the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Axis: Bold as Love. So, yes, the guitar is central to Sova’s one-man psych freakout, and it snakes, shimmies, and shouts its way through Axis: Sova’s recent third album, Motor Earth (Drag City/ God?), thanks in part to guitarist Tim Kaiser, who was recruited to lend a hand to the more intricate riffing. The most subtle touches on Motor Earth also provide the backbone for its most alluring flourishes; engineer Cooper Crain (Cave, Bitchin Bajas) helped out with percussion, and the drum-machine sounds during the spiking, motorik bounce of “Emoticog” are rendered with flawed grace, creating a sense of warmth that allows more colors to seep into the ax loop-the-loops. —LEOR GALIL
o JOSÉ SARMENTO MATOS
Sara Serpa & Andre Matos Sun Speak open. 8:30 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $10. Portuguese jazz singer Sara Serpa possesses a preternatural cool, injecting weightless sophistication and melodic grace into everything she touches. Her voice first worked its way into my head through her minimalist collaborations with pianist Ran Blake, where she tackles standards with stunning directness in response to her accompanist’s harmonic obliqueness, but her duo with guitarist André Matos (who’s also her husband) shows a very different side of her imagination, though the clarity and chill precision of her delivery remain consistent. The latter pair’s first album, 2014’s Primavera (Inner Circle Music), kept one foot in jazz tradition while pursuing icy ethereality through meticulous arrangements in which voice and guitar connect to generate crystalline sonic objects. And they make a huge leap with their remarkable second album All the Dreams (Sunnyside), for the most part ditching lyrics in favor of wordless explorations that convey both the airy fragility of bossa nova and the easy-listening gloss of the Free Design. The melodies are stunning in their frosty eloquence, and the floating layers of guitar, piano, and percussion convey a world of depth and complexity belied by the honesty of the performances—this is music both hauntingly familiar and completely otherworldly. —PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Bouncing Souls, Flatliners, Cayetana 6 PM, also Thu 11/17, 7 PM, Double Door b Carl Broemel, Dave Simonett 9 PM, SPACE, sold out b Andra Day, Chloe & Halle 9 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Dr. John with Nicholas Payton 8 PM, Symphony Center
El Ten Eleven, Bayonne 10 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Sully Erna 8 PM, Park West, 18+ JJ Grey & Mofro, Parker Millsap 8 PM, also Sat 11/19, 8 PM, the Vic 18+ Highly Suspect, Slothrust 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, sold out b S. Joel Norman, Veseria 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Parlour, Courtesy 9 PM, Burlington Radio Shaq, Bigjoy, New Drugs 10 PM, Cole’s F Alanna Royale, J.J. & Dre 10 PM, Schubas, 18+ The Soil & the Sun, Owel, Campdogzz 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Swimsuit Addition, Bleach Party, Clearance 9 PM, Empty Bottle This Will Destroy You, Young Widows, RLYR 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Hip-Hop Artifakts, Marvel Years, Lwky, Blue Future 9:30 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Dance Cash Cash 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Chip E, Acidman, Frankie Vega, Czboogie 10 PM, Primary Nightclub DJ Heather Noon, Randolph Cafe, Chicago Cultural Center F b DJ Sneak, Mark Farina 10 PM, the Mid Flosstradamus, Slushii, Towkio 9 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 18+ Hot Chip (DJ set), Chrissy 10 PM, Smart Bar Kate Simko 10 PM, Spy Bar Nick Warren, Davi, Nick Stoynoff 10 PM, Sound-Bar Folk & Country Clayton Anderson 10 PM, Joe’s Bar Flatlanders 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Jason Isbell, Robbie Fulks 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, sold out b Blues, Gospel, and R&B Vance Kelly & the Backstreet Blues Band 9 PM, also Sat 11/19, 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S.
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Kinsey Report, Joanna Connor Blues Band 9 PM, also Sat 11/19, 9 PM, Kingston Mines Vino Louden, Sonic Soul 9 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Brian McKnight 7 and 10 PM, also Sat 11/19, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery b Claudette Miller, Tenry Johns Blues Band 9 PM, Blue Chicago Jimmy Vivino & the Kate Moss 4 9:30 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Jazz Big Bad Bones 9 PM, also Sat 11/19, 8 PM, Green Mill Douglas R. Ewart & Inventions 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Potash Twins 9 PM, also Sat 11/19, 9 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club Experimental Alejandro Acierto, Allen Moore 8 PM, Experimental Sound Studio b International Hermanos Del Tambor, Arawak’Opia 8:30 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b
SATURDAY19 Arriver Starless and Burned or Buried open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10. A new release from Chicago art-metal quartet Arriver is always an event, in part because their music is always spectacular and challenging, and in part because their choice of theme and subject matter is always surprising and deep—this is, after all, the band that devoted a whole album, 2012’s Tsushima, to a significant sea battle in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Their third full-length, the new Emeritus (Scioto), features hypnotic cover art by Karolina Kowalczyk and focuses on the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which by now seems like a dystopian science-fiction story, and gives it a folkloric, mythic spin—in short, the wrath of a horribly malevolent nuclear godling wreaks havoc on hubristic mankind. Arriver bring the musical muscle to brace their ambitious conceits, and Emeritus is the most powerful union of sound and theme they’ve managed yet. The Sullivan brothers, Rob and Dan, plus guitarist Dan MacAdam and drummer Joe Kaplan layered each track with architectural care and precision, grounding the heroic-but-doomed charge of “Liquidators” and the shimmering, shivering oncoming horror of “The Demon Core” in a nightmarishly detailed sonic hyperreality. By the time we reach the epic ending track, “Emeritus: The Zone of Exclusion,” the sheer technical dazzle of the playing represents a grand and vivacious counterpoint to the death and decomposition it paints. —MONICA KENDRICK
Sarah Davachi 8 PM, Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island, free with RSVP at sarahdavachi.eventbrite.com. b Over the last few years Canadian sound artist and composer Sarah Davachi has demonstrated a broad command of tools in her music, using a wide variety of instruments and synthesizers to arrive at a place where her sonorous long tones slowly undulate, coalesce, and resonate in gorgeous drones. Her aesthetic sensibility seems
shaped largely by the exquisitely patient work of French electronic music composer Éliane Radigue, but Davachi has forged her own style, occasionally moving more rapidly and opting for compositions that reach their destinations in less time. Her brand-new album Vergers (Important) was created primarily with an EMS Synthi 100, an early 70s analog synth of which only 40 were ever manufactured, though recordings of her voice and violin shade the hypnotic pieces as they float through space in luxurious fashion, casting a kind of sensual light. Another new album, called All My Circles Run (due from Students of Decay early next year), turns to electronically manipulated acoustic instruments with results that are every bit as texture rich and mesmerizing even as shards of melody and harmony billow from each work; on “For Voice” sustained, wordless vocalization overlap
and curve to create haunting shapes, while on “For Piano” Satie-esque fragments are slowly subsumed by a buzzing drone that grows more serrated with every passing moment. For her Chicago debut Davachi will present a new work for analog synth, harmonium, and cellos that promises to explore the sonic properties of the Stony Island Arts Bank. —PETER MARGASAK
Aaron Lee Tasjan Lydia Loveless headlines. 9 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $23, $21 in advance. 18+ Considering the string of shitty bands journeyman singer-guitarist Aaron Lee Tasjan has played in—from glam-rock doofuses Semi Precious Weapons to imported rock mopes Alberta Cross—there was really no reason to expect a solo album from
him like this year’s Silver Tears (New West). But he decamped from New York to Nashville in 2013, and something seems to have changed; this entertaining record, cut earlier this year in Los Angeles, conveys a personality split between those two cities. The first track, “Hard Life,” summons the kooky side of Harry Nilsson, evoking the vibe of his novelty hit “Coconut” as Tasjan sings about hiding behind a haze of weed. But then the collection opens up with a series of gorgeous, luminescent roots-pop songs that fall somewhere between Roy Orbison and Rodney Crowell, toggling between twang and the blues, and are each marked by Tasjan’s beautifully limpid quaver. As the album winds down he tosses in a throwaway called “12 Bar Blues,” which is, yup, about 12 different bars and sung in a talking blues style that’s closer to Arlo than Woody Guthrie. But hey, it’s still a million times better than what J
3855 N. LINCOLN
martyrslive.com
THU, 11/17
FINE SUBTERRENEANS, MANNY TORRES BAND, ASTRO SAMURAI FRI, 11/18
EVEN THIEVES, NICE MOTOR, BLOOD PEOPLE SAT, 11/19
CORNMEAL, MELK MON, 11/21
LOUDER THAN A MOM TUE, 11/22
PROGGER, FUZZZ, MELISSA MCMILLAN WED, 11/23
HODIE SNITCH, WABASH CANNONBALLS, COCHINO Y LOS PISTOLEROS FRI, 11/25
ENGINE SUMMER, THE AVANTIST, MAMMOTH CANNON
SAT, 11/26 - 6PM - ALL AGES
NORTHERN LIGHTS, NO CURRENCY, BOYS NOISE SAT, 11/26 - 9PM
THE PRIVATE INSTIGATORS, COBALT & THE HIRED GUNS, FANTASTIC MAMMALS
Winterlude 2017
The Chicago Theatre Feb. 22, 23 & 25 ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 11AM Buy tickets at Ticketmaster.com • by phone: 800-745-3000 or The Chicago Theatre Box Office • 4 ticket limit strictly enforced wilcoworld.net
®
NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 33
Aaron Lee Tasjan o CURTIS WAYNE MILLARD
MUSIC continued from 33
he was putting down a decade ago. Lydia Loveless, who seems headed in the wrong direction with her slick and bloodless new album Real (Bloodshot), headlines. —PETER MARGASAK
Noname See Pick of the Week on page 31. RP Boo headlines; Noname, Jamila Woods, Homme, and Adachi Taiko open. 7 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, sold out. Thee Oh Sees See also Sunday. Running and Grun Wasser open. 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, sold out. 17+ Thee Oh Sees may be one of the most prolific rock bands around, spitting out stone-cold killer albums annually since 2006—and sometimes dropping two in the same year—but that’s much less impressive than the restless mind of John Dwyer, the band’s sole constant member. August’s A Weird Exits (Castle Face) begins as a scorching mix of massive, loping Krautrock grooves bashed out by a pair of drummers and complemented by wiggy spasms of guitar noise and psychedelic melodies. Following the snarling punk aside “Gelatinous Cube,” the record transforms into something much different, ending with a proggy, tranced-out instrumental and an even spacier organ-stoked ballad.
Three months after A Weird Exits comes the new An Odd Entrances (Castle Rock), which was cut during the same sessions as its predecessor but is certainly no B-reel assemblage. The record picks up with Thee Oh Sees more introspective, proggy sound as vocal chants and ascending organ licks embroider the hovering groove of “You Will Find It Here,” while the tender “The Poem” dispatches beats altogether. “At the End, on the Stairs” likewise captures a new kind of delicacy in Dwyer’s music with the emergence of lovely doubled guitar leads. The album concludes with a lurching instrumental that seems to take a slew of Jimi Hendrix tricks and string them out in a discursive feast of blammo weirdness. A decade into their run, Thee Oh Sees seem more inspired than ever. —PETER MARGASAK
On their 2008 self-titled debut LP, Texas band True Widow play dark, smoky, stripped-down shoegaze full of slow-motion beats and brittle guitars. Over the past eight years, True Widow have allowed Sabbath riffs to trickle into the fold, and on September’s Avvolgere (Relapse), they dive headfirst into stoner metal, beefing up and fuzzing out the guitars while adding bulk to the stomp. Oftentimes with bands that blend sludgy riffs and dreamy atmospher-
ON SALE FRIDAY 11/18 AT 10AM LEWISBLACK.COM
The Chicago Theatre provides disabled accommodations and sells tickets to disabled individuals through our Disabled Services department, which may be reached at 888-609-7599 any weekday from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Ticketmaster orders are subject to service charges.
34 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
SUNDAY20 Thee Oh Sees See Saturday. The Blind Shake and Torture Love open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, sold out.
True Widow Mary Lattimore opens. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $15.
TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE CHICAGO THEATRE BOX OFFICE OR THECHICAGOTHEATRE.COM
Brian McKnight 7 and 10 PM, also Fri 11/18, 7 and 10 PM, City Winery b Dave Specter Band with Jimmy Johnson 10 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Jazz Nolatet 8:30 PM, Hungry Brain International Dos Santos: Anti-Beat Orquesta 10:30 PM, California Clipper Classical Duo Raiz 7 PM, PianoForte Studios Lyric Opera’s Don Quichotte 7:30 PM, also Wed 11/23, 2 PM, Civic Opera House
ics, impact and punch get lost in the ether; all the same, True Widow’s direct and present tracks aim a beam straight at your brain. If there’s one drawback to Avvolgere it’s a lack of variation—at times it feels like you’re listening to four riffs on a repeat loop. But they happen to be four really excellent riffs, and nothing’s going to make you want to hit stop. —LUCA CIMARUSTI Rock, Pop, Etc Ashanti 7 PM, Portage Theater Christopher the Conquered, Church Booty 9 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Direct Hit!, Tenement, Typesetter, Pkew Pkew Pkew 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Emarosa, Anarbor, Cold Collective 6 PM, Beat Kitchen b JJ Grey & Mofro, Parker Millsap 8 PM, also Fri 11/18, 8 PM, the Vic 18+ Frank Iero & the Patience 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Jason Isbell, Robbie Fulks 7 PM, FitzGerald’s, sold out Molehill, Tara Terra 10 PM, Schubas One Season, Ray Wild, Suspicious Fires 9 PM, Red Line Tap Ono, Shop Talk, Casper Skulls, No Men 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, Blind Staggers, Devil In a Woodpile 9:30 PM, Subterranean Split Single, the Kickback 8 PM, SPACE b Vronk, Aped, Savagery 10:30 PM, Beat Kitchen Dance 3Lau 8:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 18+ Gene Farris, Weiss, RJ Pickens, Phil Rizzo 10 PM, Primary Nightclub Ali Khalili, Inphinity, Dustin Sheridan 10 PM, Spy Bar Simon Patterson, Johnaskew 10 PM, Sound-Bar Psycho Bitch, Teri Bristol 10 PM, Smart Bar Slander, Nghtmre, Habstrakt, LDRU 8 PM, also Sun 11/20, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, sold out, 18+ Folk & Country Mary Gauthier, Eliza Gilkyson, and Gretchen Peters 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Carrie Newcomer 5 and 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Blues, Gospel, and R&B Scott Holt, Cash Box Kings 9:30 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends
Rock, Pop, Etc Axons, Fauvely, Born Days 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Badxchannels, Colours, Marina City, When We Was Kids, As Giants 5 PM, Bottom Lounge b Jonatha Brooke 8 PM, City Winery b Lloyd Cole 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Mike Gordon 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Mayday Parade, Modern Chemistry 7 PM, Lincoln Hall, sold out b Other Colors, Richard Album, Dave Fell, Michael Albert 9 PM, Hideout Rivvrs, Walcotts, Woodrow Hart & the Haymaker 8 PM, Schubas The Sounds, Zipper Club, My Jerusalem, Dark Wave Disco DJs 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Starfucker, Gigamesh, Psychic Twin 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Natalia Zukerman, Zoe Lewis 7 PM, SPACE b Dance Jason Kendig, Micheal Serafini, Garrett David 10 PM, Smart Bar Slander, Nghtmre, Habstrakt, LDRU 8 PM, also Sat 11/19, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, sold out, 18+ Folk & Country Sunnyside Up, Red Tail Ring 7 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Jazz Wills McKenna Quintet 9 PM, Whistler F Experimental J. Soliday, Amanda Gutierrez & Anthony Janas, Mukqs 9 PM, Elastic b Classical Music of the Baroque “The Family Bach.” 7:30 PM, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Skokie Skokie Valley Symphony Orchestra Christopher Ramaekers, conductor. 3 PM, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Skokie Jennifer Woodrum 8:30 PM, Constellation
MONDAY21 Rock, Pop, Etc Absolutely Not, Strawberry Jacuzzi, Peach Fuzz, So Pretty 9 PM, Empty Bottle F Roy Ayers 8 PM, also Tue 11/22, 8 PM, City Winery b
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Ratboys, Meristems, New Holland, Options 8:30 PM, Hungry Brain F Red Sweater Lullaby, Mountains for Clouds, Forfeit, Close Kept 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Hip-Hop Atmosphere, Brother Ali, Dem Atlas, Plain Ole Bill, Last Word 7 PM, also Tue 11/22, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Rdgldgrn, Ric Wilson, Nams Homeless 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Folk & Country Robbie Fulks & Gerald Dowd 7 PM, Hideout Jazz Jarod Bufe Quartet, Further Definitions 9 PM, Elastic b Twin Talk 9:30 PM, Whistler F Classical Alexander Ghindin Piano. 7 PM, PianoForte Studios Musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Alan Pierson, conductor (Reich). 7 PM, Harris Theater In-Stores Ally Reith 7:30 PM, Myopic Books F b
TUESDAY22 Wretch Sierra and anging Gardens open. 8 PM, Livewire Lounge, 3394 N. Milwaukee, $12, $10 in advance.
Born from the ashes of famed Indianapolis doom merchants Gates of Slumber—and named for the latter’s final album—Wretch is a portal for guitarist-vocalist Karl Simon to keep on keepin’ on with torpedoing Sabbath super-riffs and to pay homage to his longtime best friend and former GoS bassist, Jason McCash, who passed away in 2014. The band’s recent self-titled debut, out on Bad Omen Records, is more trudging, slow-swinging rhythms and hefty guitar sustains than lyrics and vocals— as is true with the very best doom bands—allowing Simon to carve out the groove extradeep on a behemoth track like the eight-minute-plus “Icebound” while also encouraging him to venture into psych-guitar freak land, as he does during the track’s recalibrated interlude four minutes in. Wretch begins a new canon of doom metal for Simon, and hopefully one that sees a legacy as long as the 16 years Gates of Slumber pounded the midwest. —KEVIN WARWICK Rock, Pop, Etc Daniela Andrade, Gia Margaret 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall b Roy Ayers 8 PM, also Mon 11/21, 8 PM, City Winery b Bugbear, Hobbyist, Step Slow, Well Yells 9 PM, Burlington Manwolves, Burns Twins X Kaina, Swill 7 PM, Schubas b Hip-Hop Atmosphere, Brother Ali, Dem Atlas, Plain Ole
Bill, Last Word 7 PM, also Mon 11/21, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall 17+ Joe Budden, Q-Lasalle, Yung Huncho, Vex the MC, Tops 8:30 PM, the Promontory 18+ Chris Rivers, Urbanized Music, Words, Sarcastik, Keenan Coke, Mood Swangz, DJ Handz Solo 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Folk & Country Gaelynn Lea, Minor Moon 7:30 PM, SPACE b Jazz Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society & Hamid Drake; Joshua Abrams, Hamid Drake, Edward Wilkerson, and Josh Berman 9 PM, Hideout Marcus Evans & Ensemble TBA 9 PM, Hungry Brain F Quin Kirchner Group 9:30 PM, Whistler F Classical Music of the Baroque “The Family Bach.” 7:30 PM, Harris Theater b
WEDNESDAY23 Rock, Pop, Etc Fake Limbs, Breathing Light, Beat Drun Juel 9 PM, Empty Bottle The Falcon, Kyle Kinane, Arms Aloft 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Jezabels, Surf Rock Is Dead 8 PM, Double Door, 18+
Howard Jones 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Poster Children, Alex & the XOs 7 PM, Schubas Poster Children, Domestica 10 PM, Schubas Sad13, Vagabon 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Straight Arrows, Sueves 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Sundara Karma, Spring King, Izzy Bizu 6:45 PM, Bottom Lounge b White Mystery, Safes, Flesh Panthers 9:30 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Hip-Hop Tory Lanez, Kranium, Vee Cee 7 PM, the Vic b Dance Derrick Carter, Joe Greenbaum 10 PM, Smart Bar Cashmere Cat 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Hot Since 82 10 PM, the Mid Sharam 10 PM, Sound-Bar Blues, Gospel, and R&B Ginuwine 7 and 10 PM, City Winery b Marc Ford, Neptune Blues Club 8 PM, SPACE Jazz Makaya McCraven 9:30 PM, California Clipper International Los Soberanos 8:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music F b Classical Lyric Opera’s Don Quichotte 2 PM, also Sat 11/19, 7:30 PM, Civic Opera House Yehong Shi Piano. 12:15 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center b v
NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 35
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Double Oaked is twice barreled to produce a rich flavor with purposeful emphasis on sweet aromatics. Uniquely matured in separate charred oak barrels – the second with a lighter char and deeper toast to extract additional soft, sweet oak character.
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PURCHASE TICKETS AT CHICAGOREADER.COM/RESERVEYOURSEAT
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Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 45.2% Alc. By Vol., The Woodford Reserve Distillery, Versailles, KY ©2015
36 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
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Coda di Volpe is a splash of southernItalian spice on the Southport corridor But Billy Lawless’s latest spot would struggle to stand out among the horde of new Italian restaurants in town. By MIKE SULA
Chicory and persimmon salad with candied hazelnuts and Castelfranco cheese o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS
CODA DI VOLPE | $$$
3335 N. Southport 773-687-8568 cdvolpe.com
A
s a food writer, I’m beginning to view the appearance of every new Italian restaurant with existential dread. In terms of word slinging, the battle between steak houses and Italian spots for Chicago restaurant hegemony throughout the last few years has me running low on ammo. While there are fresh things to write and be excited about (Osteria Langhe, Animale), I fear the oversupply of new, formulaic, pan-Italian pizza-pasta-piattini pushers might be creating an impression among unseasoned eaters that one of the world’s greatest cuisines is molto repetitivo. My instinct is to disregard these restaurants in favor of any kind that smells even remotely original. But when a restaurateur as seasoned as Billy Lawless (the Gage, the Dawson) goes Italian, as he did at the nontraditional Mag Mile crowd-pleaser Acanto, duty calls. Lakeview’s Southport corridor is the scene of his second Italian effort, Coda di Volpe, which unlike the generalized Acanto at least specializes in something—southern Italian. Lawless, along with partner Ryan O’Donnell (Gemini Bistro), brought in chef Chris Thompson, who for two years helmed the celebrated A16 in San Francisco, which focuses on the food of the southwestern region of Campania. Here, a long dining room divided by spacious clamshell booths sits between a bright and busy bar in the round (where a chummy bartender complimented a pal’s inaccurate pronunciation of chitarra) and one of those hulking tiled wood-burning ovens that have become compulsory for anyone wishing to sell Neapolitan pizza. If you find yourself overfed on them, a fun-house mirror above the steps leading to the bathroom will reinforce your bloated form, something that might have a negative cumulative effect on dessert tickets. It’s in this environment that Thompson presents a familiar menu template: small plates, antipasti, nine pizzas, five pastas, and a short selection of customary secondi (roasted branzino, chicken diavola, and a dino-size 16ounce pork chop). One thing that clearly sets this menu apart is the presentation of a bottle of house-made Calabrian chile oil. It shows a remarkable lack of ego in an accomplished chef that he would arm his guests with the unlimited ability to alter the flavor of his food. Or maybe Thompson errs on the side of caution, suspecting the default Lakeview palate has a capsicum tolerance well below the southern-Italian J
NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 37
A UTH E NTI C PH I LLY C H E E S E STEA KS!
S P DR EC INK IA LS
T F A ER R C BE
PI
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A
4757 N TALMAN · 773.942.6012 · ILOVEMONTIS.COM ·
W
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FOOD & DRINK
S G N
@ILOVEMONTIS
Pumpkin spice brioche stuffed with dense, creamy sweet potato gelato on a pool of pumpkin creme anglaise, all showered with sweet toasted pecans ! DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS
continued from 37
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chicagoreader.com/early 38 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
standard. Either way, there was little I ate at Coda di Volpe that wasn’t improved by it. With it I doused my margherita di bufala pizza—the baseline variety for evaluating any pizza operation. It’s a commendable version: a high, blistered crust descending to a thin plain of pliable dough leading to a soft, gooey center, with a judicious application of fatty cheese and acidic sauce riding the surface. Textbook. I applied that oil to nearly every little plate I tried: the seared spice-crusted tuna, topped with a cool celery-heart salad, already fragrant with orange oil; the smoky, charred grilled octopus, as tender as its accompanying fingerling potatoes; the soft but pliable mortadella and prosciutto meatballs; the crispy deep-fried bucatini pasta fritters. The oil added an interesting element to the bittersweet balance of a chicory and persimmon salad with candied hazelnuts and Castelfranco cheese, and it perked up the earthy bass notes of a generous plate of roasted carrots and parsnips not much boosted by a dull sheep’s-milk cream sauce. About the only dish that didn’t seem to beg for that chile oil was the aforementioned chicken diavola, a perfectly roasted half bird lacquered in a light sweet-and-spicy glaze. Thompson is also rolling a few uncommon pasta shapes: horn-shaped trombette in a Sicilian-style pesto of tomato and crushed
almond with fennel sausage and sharp Caciocavallo cheese; fettuccine made with chickpea flour, topped with pork ragu and salty dried ricotta. More conventionally, string-shaped chitarra nestle among vaguely manky clams with meaty nduja, preserved lemon, and the minty herb nepitella, while fat bucatini swim in the rendered juices of roasted cherry tomatoes. On the dessert menu, which includes an apple crostata and a chocolate-almond mousse cake, autumn saw a dense buffalo ricotta cheesecake with preserved blueberries give way to a lurid version of the Sicilian breakfast of champions: a pumpkin spice brioche stuffed with dense, creamy sweet potato gelato on a pool of pumpkin creme anglaise, all showered with sweet toasted pecans. Don’t hate. It’s decorative gourd season, motherfuckers. A short list of Italian reds and whites and a few Italian craft beers is overshadowed by a decent cocktail list featuring a marvelous “slushie cocktail”—made with vodka, prosecco, crema di limoncello and given a savory note with saltwater—along with more basic but optimally executed standards like a negroni and an old-fashioned. Coda di Volpe is hardly reinventing Italian. It would struggle to stand out among the downtown throng of high-Italian concepts. But in Lakeview it’s a little splash of chile oil on the relatively mild Southport corridor. v
" @MikeSula
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Chicago has always been a city of distinct neighborhoods with their own sense of identity and tradition — and each with stand-out bars and restaurants that are worthy of a haul on the El or bucking up for parking. Explore some local faves here, then head out for a taste of the real thing!
LINCOLN HALL // LINCOLN PARK $8 Modelo Especial Tallboy + shot of tequila
MONTI’S // LINCOLN SQUARE Monday: $1 off Beers, Friday: $5 Martinis
EATALY, LA PIAZZA // RIVER NORTH Tues: 5-9 pm, $15 housemade beer + Margherita pizza alla pala
L H - S T. C O M
I LOV E M O NTI S .CO M
E ATA LY . C O M / C H I C A G O
MOTOR ROW BREWING // NEAR SOUTHSIDE Thu, Fri, Tue, Wed: Happy Hour noon-6pm, $2 off all beers
REGGIES // SOUTH LOOP $5 Absolut & Bacardi Cocktails Every Day special
SCHUBAS // LAKEVIEW $7 Modelo Especial + Don Julio shot
MOTORROWB REWI NG .COM
REGGIESLIVE.COM
L H - S T. C O M
FITZGERALDS // BERWYN Everyday: $6 Firestone Walker Opal pints
ALIVEONE // LINCOLN PARK Wednesday: 1/2 price aliveOne signature cocktails
PHYLILIS’ MUSICAL INN // WICKER PARK Everyday: $3.75 Moosehead pints and $2.50 Hamms cans
FITZGERALDSNIGHTCLUB .COM
ALIVEONE .COM
7 7 3 . 4 8 6 .9 8 62
DOWNTOWN
WEEK OF ITALIAN CUISINE IN THE WORLD // CHICAGO CHICAGO NOVEMBER 14-18 The Week of Italian Cuisine in the World is an annual event promoting the quality and excellence of Italy’s gastronomic culture abroad. Italy takes pride in featuring its food brands, and its cuisine is one of the essential components of Italian cultural identity. The Week of Italian Cuisine will feature a screening of “La cena” (The Dinner) at the Italian Cultural Institute, a walking tour, a lecture and demonstration on ancient Roman food, and wine and food tastings. FOR MORE DETAILS, VISIT
suntimes.com/italian NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 39
First Week Of Italian Cuisine In The World
CHICAGO, NOVEMBER 14-18 Screening of “La cena” (The Dinner) by Ettore Scola November 14 Italian Cultural Institute 500 N Michigan Avenue SQMM IK O RQMM IK
Walking Tour & Tasting of Protected Designation of Origin Products November 16 Eataly 43 East Ohio Street WMQUM NK O WVQMM IK
Masterclass on Wine and Food Pairing featuring PDO & PGI Wines from the Campania Region PJXTKLTH WR School of Comics 1651 West Hubbard St SQUM IK O RQUM IK
Lecture on Food in Ancient Rome with Demonstration & Tasting November 18 Eataly 43 East Ohio Street WQMM IK O UQMM IK For more information: Consulate General of Italy
segreteria.chicago@esteri.it 40 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
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○ Watch a video of Ryan Pfeiffer working with Branston Pickle in the kitchen at chicagoreader.com/food.
JOBS
SALES & MARKETING TELE-FUNDRAISING: FOR YEAR END HOLIDAY CAMPAIGN. American Veterans helping Veterans. Felons need not
apply per Illinois Attorney General regulations. Start ASAP, Call 312-2565035
KEY INGREDIENT
OFFICE SCHEDULING, MARKETING PERSONS wanted.
In a pickle
Part-time, flexible hours. Pleasant, cheerful phone manner. Some computer skills a plus. Evanston office. Next to Train. nikitsitsis@yahoo.com, or 847-875-6463.
By JULIA THIEL
HOME REMODELING COMPANY seeks enthusiastic telemarketers. $10/ hour plus 1% commission. Must have good phone skills. Bonuses for top producers. Call Jim after 2:30pm, 773-227-2255.
General SENIOR CONSULTANT Analytics 8, LLC Chicago, Illinois
Cured and poached fluke, turnip greens, Branston Pickle-glazed roasted turnips, creamed greens, and Branston Pickle cream sauce o JULIA THIEL
B
ritish food is famously bad, and British potato chips (or “crisps,” as they call them) are famously weird. When Lay’s started introducing flavors like cappuccino and southern biscuits and gravy a couple years ago, the company must’ve known that the Brits don’t even blink at chip flavorings such as prawn cocktail, beef and onion, roast chicken, ketchup, oyster and vinegar, and Marmite. So it’s not particularly surprising that the UK brand Walkers once introduced a potato chip flavored like BRANSTON PICKLE, a pickled chutney first made in Branston, England, in 1922. BLACKBIRD chef de cuisine RYAN PFEIFFER, challenged by the Betty’s Rachel Dow to create a dish with the condiment, didn’t come across the potato chips (they’ve been discontinued), but he did track down a couple jars of Branston Pickle on Amazon. “It’s a jar of root-vegetable puke,” Pfeiffer says of the chutney, which consists of diced rutabaga, carrot, onion, cauliflower, and gherkin pickled in a sauce made from vinegar, tomato, apple, and spices. “It looks like shit, but it tastes good. People see a bunch of chunky stuff in a brown, viscous liquid, they’re going to be like, that looks fucking gross, and assume it tastes bad. I think that’s an American thing. They’re not really worried about being bright and vibrant in England as far as I know.” Branston Pickle is traditionally served in a cheese sandwich or as part of a ploughman’s lunch (which consists of cheese, bread, and pickle—sort of a deconstructed cheese sandwich). Pfeiffer went a bit more highbrow, basing his dish on Escoffier’s sole Florentine: sole fillet with spinach, Mornay sauce, and cream.
He substituted fluke for the sole and turnip greens for the spinach; the Branston Pickle he strained to separate the thick sauce from the diced vegetables, combining the former with maple syrup, sherry vinegar, and brown sugar to make a gastrique that he used to glaze roasted turnips. Pfeiffer cooked the diced vegetables a bit to soften them, then blended them with cream cheese to replace the Mornay sauce, which he cooked with the turnip greens to make creamed greens. He cured the fish briefly in salt and sugar, then poached it in beurre monte (a combination of butter and water that remains emulsified at higher temperatures than butter alone). To plate the dish, Pfeiffer started with his poached fish, adding the Branston Pickle cream sauce and creamed greens before putting it under the salamander broiler to let the cheese brown a little. In addition to the glazed roasted turnips, he added raw turnips, pear, chestnut chips, garlic flowers, and fresh horseradish. The finishing touch was a smoked chestnut consomme that he poured over the dish. The result tasted like Branston Pickle, Pfeiffer said, but not overwhelmingly so. “You get it in the gastrique, it blends in with the consomme. You get it in the greens,” he said. “It tastes like Worstershire, vinegar, things you usually use to season things.”
WHO’S NEXT:
Pfeiffer has challenged DAN SNOWDEN of BAD HUNTER to create a dish with OLIVE LOAF, the olive-studded lunch meat. v
ß @juliathiel
Manage the scope/cost/timeline of single Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehousing (DW) projects for clients. Assisting in the development of Proposals and Statements of Work. Performing comprehensive BI and DW systems evaluations and writing high-quality recommendations documents. For individual projects perform the following: Analyze and evaluate the business operations of the client; assess the data production and vital needs of the client; identify current and future report generation needs; build reports and dashboards; developing a strategy for integrating software and systems; and assist and train the client in the use, application and methodology of data warehousing. Candidate must demonstrate the grant of: Master’s degree in Computer Science or an Engineering discipline and two (2) years of progressive experience as a Consultant. Moreover, the position requires two years of experience with BI/DW development methodologies, dimensional modeling, standards and procedures. Must also have two (2) years of experience using one of the following Data Integration Tools: Informatica, AbInitio, SSIS, Datastage or Stratajazz Data Integration Manager. Additionally, must have two (2) years of experience with one the following Business Intelligence Products: BusinessObjects, Cognos, Microstrategy, Stratajazz Excel Reporter, Stratajazz Adhoc Reporter or Stratajazz Dashboards. The position includes long-term on-site deployment activities at customer locations when required for project completion. If you are interested in applying for the career opportunity listed above, please e-mail your resume to us at application2016@ analytics8.com and reference SC1116. SR SOFTWARE ENGINEER (FULL STACK) - Devel applications and tools utilized internally (staff) and externally (clients) in collaboration with project mgrs, domain specialists, and other developers, to ensure consistent and timely implementations. Contribute to requirements gathering, architecture, design, and implementation of enterprise class UI and web portals. Deliver on software projects using proven development processes (Agile/ SCRUM). Develop continuous improvements to implement front-end best practices and web application layer implementation for usability, performance, scalability and security. Requd: Bach degree or equivalent in Computer Science or MIS. Equiv considered based on 1 yr of univ educ equals 3 yrs work exp. Must also have 3 yrs exp with PHP, MySQL Database, Python. Also requd are exp in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), MVC standard, modern coding security practices, and hosting industry (employment or ownership of server/vm) and perm US
work auth. Send cvr ltr and resume to D. Swanson, HR Dir, SingleHop, LLC, 500 W Madison St Ste 801, Chicago, IL 60661 BUSINESS MU SIGMA, INC. has multiple openings for the following positions in Northbrook, IL & various, unanticipated sites throughout the U.S.
ENGAGEMENT MANAGER (11089.65) to conduct organizational studies and evaluations, design systems and procedures.
ENGAGEMENT MANAGER (PHARMA) (11089.66)
to conduct organizational studies and evaluations, design systems and procedures; understand various aspects of the drugs and drug delivery system researched and manufactured by the end client.
REGIONAL HEAD (11089.64)
responsible for overall delivery of organizational studies and evaluations, design systems and procedures and work simplification and measurement studies to assist in operational efficiency. Must be available to work on projects at various, unanticipated sites throughout U.S. To apply, send resume to recruitmentgc@mu-sigma. com. Must reference title & job number to be considered.
SOFTWARE ENGINEER (BUFFALO Grove, IL) Develop custom-
based modules of the Microsoft Dynamics ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system using X++ and .NET technologies. Perform batch server setup, EDI implementation and integrate OLAP multidimensional reports in Microsoft Dynamics AX. Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent in Computer Science or closely related field and 2 years’ work experience required. Must be proficient in X++ and .NET technologies; must be able to perform batch server setup, execute EDI implementation and integrate OLAP multidimensional reports in Microsoft Dynamics. Must be able to develop AX integration technologies such AIF (Application Integration Framework) and Business Connector. Mail resume to Dynamics Resources Inc., 1425 McHenry Rd., Suite 102, Buffalo Grove, IL, 60089
CHICAGO
SHAKESPEARE
THEATER seeks an experienced full time custodian. Knowledge of cleaning equipment, chemicals and floor care required. Must be able to lift 40+ pounds. Email cover letter and resume to jobs@chicagoshakes. com with subject line of “custodian position”. No phone calls please
HDI GLOBAL INSURANCE CO.
is seeking a Software Developer in Chicago, IL with the following requirements: BS in Software Technology or Computer Science plus 2 years experience. Must have the following skills: design and develop Windows and Web applications based on platforms including ASP. NET, VB.NET, C#.NET; develop customized software applications that work on multiple platforms, focusing on Microsoft .NET technologies; design and build windows/web controls and enhancements, and test and maintain internal company-wide web applications to meet specifications; prepare documentation for requirements, project specifications, system architecture and User Manuals. Submit resume to IT.employment@ us.hdi.global and reference Code #071781
PRESIDENT: EXEC OVERSIGHT of all ops for NA sales sub-
sidiary of global provider of packaging & assembly automation solutions, w/focus on clients in pharma & med devices, food & confection, cosmetics & packaged optical media. Arlington Hts, IL location. Req’s B.S. in any Engin’r’g field & 6 yrs exp as Sales Mgr or related. Exp must incl: a) developing accounts w/US based global customers; b) generating at least $40 million in annual revenue; c) at least 6 months exp developing NA sales for global provider of packaging & assembly automation solutions. Send resume to: Kyoto America, Inc., 752 W Algonquin Rd, Arlington Heights, IL, 60005. Attn: E. Harrington.
ADVISORY, OPERATIONS & STRATEGY MANAGER (MULT. POS.),
PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Provide strategy, mgmt., tech. & risk consulting services to help clients respond to their most complex bus. challenges. Req. Bach’s deg or foreign equiv. in Bus Admin, Engg, Ops, Supply Chain or rel. + 5 yrs post-bach’s, progressive rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg or foreign equiv. in Bus Admin, Engg, Ops, Supply Chain or rel. + 3 yrs rel. work exp. Travel up to 80% of the time is req. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1037, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.
D F Wireless, Inc. is seeking a purchasing administrator w/ two yrs exp and high school diploma. Job duties include negotiating with oversea suppliers, formulating the policies and procedures, and monitoring all shipments. Worksite in Chicago. Resume to D F Wireless, Attn: Kyu Choi 5244 N. Elston Ave, Chicago, IL 60630.
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ANALYTICS MANAGER,
JOBS
Advisory, PricewaterhouseCoopers
General TECHNOLOGY Salesforce.com Manager (Mult. Pos.),
PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Provide strategy, mgmt., tech. & risk consulting services to anticipate & address the client’s most complex bus. challenges. Req. Bach’s deg or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, Info Sys or rel. + 5 yrs post-bach’s, prog. rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, Info Sys or rel. + 3 yrs rel. work exp. Travel up to 80% req. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1036, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.
TECHNOLOGY MANAGER, TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY AND TPM (MULT. POS.),
PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Assist with the mgmt. of tech. strategy & trade promotion mgmt. engagements. Req. Bach’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Bus Admin, Comp Systms Engg or rel., + 5 yrs post-bach’s, prog. rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Bus Admin, Comp Systms Engg or rel., + 3 yrs rel. work exp. Travel req. up to 80%. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1043, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.
LLP, Chicago, IL. Analyze large & complex data to provide insight & solve complex bus. challenges, helping clients realize competitive advantage from operations. Req. Bach’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Bus Admin, Econ, Stats, Comp Sci or rel. + 5 yrs post-bach’s progressive rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Bus Admin, Econ, Stats, Comp Sci or rel. + 3 yrs rel. work exp. Travel up to 80% req. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1039, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.
Part-time, day-time hours. Evanston office. Valid driver’s license a plus. Use company cars. Next to Train. Honest, Reliable. nikitsitsis@yahoo. com or 847-875-6463.
RENTALS
STUDIO $500-$599 Chicago, Beverly/Cal Park/Blue Island Studio $575 & up, 1BR $665 & up, 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Prkg. 708-388-0170
ROGERS
LAW OFFICES OF IRINA KAMERISTY, LLC (Bu f falo Grove, IL) seeks Legal Research Analyst to assist legal team in preparing for court/ trials/ briefings/hearings/other leagal prosedures & prepare affidavits/ other documents & organize/ maintain documents in paper/ electronic system. Submit resumes to: ikameristy@yahoo.com
7500 SOUTH SHORE Dr. Brand New Rehabbed Studio & 1BR Apts from $650. Call 773-374-7777 for details.
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
72ND/VERNON, small Studio
STUDIO $600-$699 PARK! 7455 N . Greenview. Studios starting at $675 $695 including heat. It’s a newly remodeled vintage elevator building with on-site laundry, wood floors, new kitchens and baths, some units have balconies, etc. No security deposit! For a showing please contact Samir 773-627-4894 Hunter Properties 773-477-7070 www. hunterprop.com
EDGEWATER!
1061 W. Rose-
mont. Studios starting at $695 to $725, All Utilities included! Elevator building! Close to CTA red line train, restaurants, shopping, blocks to the lakefront, beaches and bike trails, laundry onsite, remodeled, etc. For a showing please contact Jay 773835-1864 Hunter Properties, Inc. 773-477-7070 www.hunterprop.com
basement apt. $400/month plus sec. dep. utilities incl. Call Albert 773-742-7620
CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,
CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188
CHICAGO - HYDE PARK 5401 S. Ellis. 1BR. $600/mo. Call 773-955-5106
1306 N CICERO, beautiful 1 BR apt, with kitchen & bath, $750/mo. All appliances & utilities included. 773-354-2819
Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200
CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms US VETERANS NEEDED with
HOUSE CLEANERS WANTED.
REAL ESTATE
chronic low back pain. Researchers at Rush University Medical Center are studying effects of morning bright light therapy on pain, sleep and mood. Study does not involve drugs or blood draws. You will be compensated for your time. If interested, call 312-942-1529
Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone, cable ready, fridge, private facilities, laundry avail. Start at $160/wk Call 773-493-3500
MARQUETTE PARK: 6315-19 S California, Studios, 1beds, 2beds from $600-$800, Free heat, no deposit. 773.916.0039
1 BR UNDER $700 QUALITY
APARTMENTS,
Great Prices! Studios-4BR, from $450. Newly rehabbed. Appliances included. Low Move-in Fees. Hardwood floors. Pangea - Chicago’s South, Southwest & West Neighborhoods. 312-985-0556
FALL SPECIAL: STUDIOS starting at $499 incls utilities. 1BR $550, 2BR $599, 3BR $699. With approved credit. No Security Deposit for Sec 8 Tenants. South Shore & Southside. Call 312-4463333 7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-
bly Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030
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)
CHICAGO - South Shore Large 1BR, $660/mo. Free heat. Near Transportation. Section 8 Welcome. Call 708932-4582 CHATHAM, 1140 E. 81st Pl. Lrg 1 BR Quiet building, hrdwd flrs throughout, Heat incl, $625/ month + security Sect 8 ok. 773.835.9743
WEST PULLMAN (INDIANA
Ave) RENT SPECIAL 1/2 Off 1 month rent + Sec dep. Nice,lrg 1BR $575; 2BR $650 & 1 3BR $850, 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 CHATHAM 80TH & St. Lawrence. Lrg studio $525, 1BR $585-$630. 113th & Indiana, XL 1BR heat incl. $640. 773-660-9305
Newly remod 1BR & Studios starting at $500. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat /hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773-619-0204 CHICAGO W. SIDE 3859 W Maypole Rehabbed studios, $425/ mo, Utilities not included. 773-6170329, 773-533-2900 76th & Phillips 1BR $650-$700; 2BR $750-$800. Remodeled, Appliances available. FREE Heat. 312286-5678 5701 W. WASHINGTON. 1BR
Apts. $680-$700/mo. Heat Incl. Parking available, appls incl No Pets. 773-907-0302
Retail
Newly updated, clean furnished rooms, located near buses & Metra, elevator, utilities included, $91/wk. $ 395/mo. 815-722-1212
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 now have the following retail opportunities available in multiple locations to qualified persons over 21 years of age:
NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $130/wk & up. 773-275-4442
ADULT SERVICES
BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970
1 BR APT, new paint & carpeting nr North & Cicero $770 inc heat / water, coin op w/d on site, No Sec dep/credit ck 877-350-5055
û NO SEC DEP û
BURNHAM 1 BR, w/w cpt,
6829 S. Perry. 1BR. $520/mo. 1431 W. 78th St. 2BR. $605/mo. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106 HYDE PARK -SGL.FURN.RMS. With Refrig & Microwave, Utils. Inc. Close to Lake and Trans.$515-$550. Ldry&24hr sec. 773-577-9361
1 BR $700-$799 7338 S. PAULINA, totally remod bldg, 2BR, 2nd flr, $850/mo +move-in fee, Tenant pays utils. Sec 8 OK. Laundry room on site. 773-803-7235 HUMBOLDT PARK. ONE bed-
room apartment for rent. Newly remodeled. Next door to food store. $750 per month plus security deposit. Near shopping area. Monica, 773592-2989.
8324 S Ingleside: 1BR $660, Studio $600, 1st flr, newly remod., lndry, hdwd flrs, cable. Sec 8 welc. 708-308-1509, 773-4933500
Balcony, appl, Heat, AC, Ldry rm, $700 + 1 mo sec., credit check. 773619-3587
8001 S COLFAX; 1BR $650, 2nd flr, newly remod, hdwd floors, cable. Great location! Sec 8 welcome. 708-308-1509, 773-493-3500
AUSTIN AREA 1-2 BR apts, $750-1000, heat & appliances incld Section 8 OK, close to transportation 708-267-2875
1 BR $800-$899 LAKESIDE TOWER, 910 W
Lawrence. 1 bedrooms starting at $875-$925 include heat and gas, laundry in building. Great view! Close to CTA Red Line, bus, stores, restaurants, lake, etc. To schedule a showing please contact Celio 773-3961575, Hunter Properties 773-4777070, www.hunterprop.com
2BRS. 4865 W. Concord Pl. 2nd
Fl. Stov/Refrig. Incl. ten pays util. No Pets. $890/mo + sec deposit. Call 708-503-0817. Well kept!!
AVAILABLe NOW SENior citizENS 62+ yEarS Section 8 Eligibility-Low Rents 1 Br & Studio aptS
bright, across from park, heat/ gas included. Miniblinds/ ceiling fans. Free laundry, private porch, block Montrose Harbor. $895. 773-9733463.
6921 N. GREENVIEW, 1 Bdrm
$875. Heat included. Call Daniel, 773875-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
1 BR $900-$1099 LARGE ONE BEDROOM apart-
ment near Loyola Park. 1341 W Estes. Hardwood floors. Heat included. Cats OK. Laundry in building. Available 12/ 1. $925/ month. Small one bedroom apartment available for $750/ month. 773-761-4318, www. lakefrontmgt.com
ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT
near Warren Park and Metra, 6802 N Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Heat included. Laundry in building. Cats OK. $900/ month. Available 12/1. 773761-4318, www.lakefrontmgt.com
1-BEDROOM
5525 N. Winthrop Ave., Chicago. $900/mo. Heat included. Washer/dryer in-unit. 2 blocks from the EL, short walk to the lake. Move-in/out fee. Contact Gloria via email: gtabaya@yahoo.com
SOUTH 4800 S. Lakeshore Dr. 1BR, 19th floor, on Lake front, newly remodeled, appliances incl. $1,000. 773-717-6092
3708 N. MARSHFIELD, 1 Bdrm.
$950. Heat included. Call Daniel, 773875-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
2511 W. SUNNYSIDE, 1 Bdrm.
$965. Heat included. Call Daniel, 773875-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
3939 S Calumet Ave 773-373-8480 or 373-8482 6225 S Drexel Ave 773-955-6603 or 955-7162
1 BR OTHER
Offering Quality services for Senior Citizens 62 years and older • Wellmaintained, secure-gated parking • Close to shopping, restaurants, public transportation • On-site Internet center • Computer training • Movies • Arts & Crafts classes • Bible classes • free weekly transportation for grocery shopping • Coin-operated laundry machines • Vending machines • Secure mail system and more Get more information at the website: www.trinityseniorapartments.com
ADULT SERVICES
MONTROSE/ CLARENDON VINTAGE one bedroom. Sunny/
ADULT SERVICES
APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN! OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $750.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000*** CHICAGO, CHATHAM NO SECURITY DEPOSIT Spacious updated 1BR from $600 with great closet space. Incl: stove/fridge, hdwd flrs, blinds, heat & more!!! LIMITED INVENTORY ** Call (773) 271-7100 **
ADULT SERVICES
STORE ASSOCIATES
Lakeview * Lincoln Park * Grand Ave/Downtown * South Loop Skokie * Lincolnwood * Elmwood Park * River Grove We are seeking energetic, customer-oriented individuals to perform a variety of store functions. Qualified persons must be able to lift 40-50 lbs. and be available to work flexible hours. Previous retail experience a plus, with cashier or stock experience preferred. Candidates must be able to work nights & weekends.These are part-time positions with potential for full-time.
WINE SALES
Lincoln Park * South Loop * Logan Square Candidates will have good working knowledge of wine varieties, countries and regions. Qualified persons must be able to taste wines in a professional manner as allowed for educational purposes, as well as continue to develop knowledge of wine and other products.
DELIVERY DRIVER/STORE ASSOCIATE South Loop
We are seeking an energetic, customer-oriented individual to perform a variety of store and delivery functions. Qualified person must be able to lift 40-50 lbs. and be available to work flexible hours including evenings, weekends and holidays. Valid IL driver’s license with a clean driving record is essential.
Meet sexy friends who really get your vibe...
Try FREE: 312-924-2066 More Local Numbers: 1-800-811-1633
In return for your skills, we offer growth opportunities and attractive compensation.
THE HOTTEST GAY CHATLINE
1-312-924-2082 More Local Numbers: 800-777-8000
Please apply online at www.binnys.com/careers EOE
42 CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 17, 2016
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APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. TIME TO TURN THE FURNANCE ON!!! Most units Include.. HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $545.00 1Bdr From $575.00 2Bdr From $745.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled. Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫ ONE OF THE BEST M & N MGMT, 1BR, 7727 Colfax ** 2 Lrg BR, 6754 Crandon ** 2 & 3BR, 2BA, 6216 Eberhart ** Completely rehabbed. You deserve the best ** 773-9478572 or 312-613-4427 ROOMS FOR RENT. MALES PREF. 6140 S. St. Lawrence. $450/ mo., include all utilIties. Will Go Fast, Call Now! 773-7268263 CALUMET CITY 158TH & PAXTON SANDRIDGE APTS 1 & 2 BEDROOM UNITS MODELS OPEN M-F, 9AM-5:30PM *** 708-841-5450 ***
FREE HEAT, near 73rd & the Dan Ryan on 73rd & Harvard Ave. Lrg 1BR & small 2BR available, w/ appliances. 773-895-7247
EAST CHICAGO, IN 2BR $675 heat incl; 3BR $650, tenant pays utils. 1 mo. free rent w/lease. Call MIKE 773-577-9361
77TH/LOWE. 2BR. 69th/Dante, 3BR. 71st/Bennett. 2 & 3BR. 77th/ Essex. 3BR. New renov. Sec 8 ok. 708-503-1366
DOLTON - 144TH St. 2 BR, $690/ mo + 1.5 mo sec. Move-in special 1/2 mo rent at $345. Heat & Appls incl, off-st pkg. 312-231-5481
AUSTIN AREA 55th Block of Gladys, 2.5BR, 1BA, liv rm, din rm $
850/mo, plus 1 mo sec & 1 mo rent 773-378-0710
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
Water included. Call Daniel, 773875-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597
SEC-
OND floor. Jumbo, extra large, 4.5 sunny rooms, remodeled, hwfl, 1-2 bedrooms. Two blocks Brown Line. Near Kennedy Expressway. $840 heat included. 773-710-3634.
FREE HEAT No Sec Dep or Move-in fee! Sec 8 ok. 1, 2 & 3 BR. Elev bldg, laundry, pkg. 6531 S. Lowe. Call Gina 773-874-0100
CHICAGO 5246 S. HERMITAGE: 2BR bsmt $400. 2BR 1st floor, $525. 3BR, 2nd floor, $625. 1.5 mo sec req’d. 708-574-4085.
SPACIOUS-SAFE 773-4235727. BRONZEVILLE, 3BR, heat included. Englewood, 1,2 & 3BR, heat incl. Dolton, 2BR, Gated Parking.
7000 S. Merrill 2BR, hdwd flrs, lrg FR/sunrm, new remod., cable ready, lndry, O’keefe Elem, $800/ mo. Section 8 welcome. 708-3081509, 773-493-3500
W. AVALON, 1 & 2BR Newly decor. 8059 Ellis & 11200 S. Vernon. Hdwd floors, heat & appliances incl, $600 & $700. 708-406-2718
LOGAN SQUARE 2 bedroom apartment, 2-flat building, modern kitchen & bath, balcony, washer & dryer. $750/mo. Near Blue Line. 773-235-1066
CHICAGO, 134TH & Brandon, 1, 2 & 3BR, 1BA Apts for Rent. $ 950/mo, incl all utilities & appliances. Call 708-986-8123
RIVERDALE, IL 14141 S. School St. Newly Renovated 2 BR, 1 Bath avail. No Pets. Rent $800/mo. 312-217-6556
RIVERDALE, IL 1 Bedroom
CALUMET PARK 2BR, 1BA,
Condo, newly decorated, off st. parking, gated community. $750 + sec. Call Mr. Jackson 708-846-9734
ADULT SERVICES
quiet area, tenant pays utils. $785/ mo. Heat Incl. Sec 8 Welcome. 708-203-8455
ADULT SERVICES
2 BR $900-$1099 OLD IRVING PARK! 4146 N.
2 BR UNDER $900 SPECIAL!
ALSIP: LARGE 2BR, 1.5BA, $875/mo. Balcony, appliances, laundry & storage. Call 708-268-3762
2153 N. BELL, 2 Bdrm. $825..
MOVE IN SPECIAL B4 the N of this MO. & MOVE IN 4 $99.00 (773) 874-3400
NOVEMBER
VICINITY 65TH AND St. Lawrence, modern, tenant heated, 2BR Unit. $725/mo. No Sec Deposit Agent Owned, 312-671-3795
Avers, 2 bedrooms at $1095 including heat and cooking gas. Just completed remodeling, new kitchen, new batch, dishwasher, hardwood floors, walking distance to grocery store, restaurants and public transportation, laundry in building. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT! For a showing please contact Saida 773-407-6452, Hunter Properties 773-477-7070
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
DLX 1ST FLR, 2.5BR, hdwd flrs, ceiling fans, lg LR/DR & ktchen, 3 car gar. 83rd & Maryland. $850, Free heat & appl incl. Sec 8 welc. 773412-0541
948 N. DAMEN AVE. unfurnished apartment for rent. 2BR, stove & refrigerator. Neat & clean. Newly painted. $1000/mo. Call 847-9624818 or Email: nsrjh6@yahoo.com
ADULT SERVICES
CHICAGO, 2BR in home near 80th & Ashland, share kitchen & bath, $800/mo. No drugs, no drinking References req’d. 773-530-5298
2 BR $1300-$1499
LYNWOOD, 2BR, 1BA, c -fa n s, heat, appliances, A/C, $1000 /mo. Credit check, security deposit, no pets. Call 773721-6086
CHICAGO, 9307 S. Saginaw, Newly rehabbed, 2BR, carpet, stove & fridge, heat not incl, $950/ mo. Sect 8 welc. Mr. Johnson, 773294-0167
DOLTON, 1107 E 151st St, new appl, stove, & fridge, free heat, 2 BR, on-site laundry, Sec 8 ok. $950/mo. New reno 773-723-2063
WEST AUSTIN AREA. 2BR, 2nd
floor, living/dining/laundry room, heat incl. secure building, $1,000/mo. Donnell. 773-584-1833
2158
W. BELLE P L A I N E , 2 Bdrm $1100. Water included. Call Daniel, 773-875-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
73rd & Dorchester, 2BR, carpet, $1150; 119th & Calumet, 3BR, 2BA, carpet, $1250. No Sec Dep. Sec 8 ok. 773-684-1166.
AUSTIN AREA 2BR, 1BA, 1st flr,
2 flat building, newly remodeled, brand new appls, central air/heat. $1100/mo + sec. 708-616-7127
1151 W. LILL 2 Bdrm. $1225. Water
included. Call Daniel, 773-875-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-2818400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
2250 W. AINSLIE 2 Bdrm. $1175.
Heat included. Call Daniel, 773-8758085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
Large Two bedroom large living and dining room eat in kitchen stove,refrigerator,hooded microwave new white cabinet hardwood floor air/heat alarm system internet access Laundry (coin op) well secured property cctv cameras access $1550.00 plus utility (312-498-1040)
LARGE TWO BEDROOM, two
PILSEN AREA - R E M O D ELED Large 2 Bdrm, 2 Bath
Split level. Hardwood floors in Lv Rm & Dn Rm. Carpet in Bedrooms. AC & ceiling fans thru out. One Bdrm & Bath on 2nd Fl, One Bdrm & Bath in 3rd Fl with separate exit. Great for roommates. Pet friendly. Unit has its own furnace. Laundry & Storage room on 3rd Fl. Art Gallery on 1st fl. Electric, garbage, water & laundry facilities included. Rent $1,450/mo plus securities AVL immediately. Lease. Call Karly @ 574-806-1049
bathroom apartment, 3820 N Fremont. Near Wrigley Field. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. Laundry in building. Available 12/1. $1595/ month. Parking available. $150/ month for single parking space. $250/ month for tandem parking space. 773-761-4318, w ww.lakefrontmgt.com
2 BR OTHER BEAUTIFUL NEW APT! 62nd and King Dr. 2BDRM 72nd and Evans. 3BDRM 6150 S. Vernon. 4BDRM Stainless Steel!! Appliances!! Hdwd flrs!! Marble bath!! Laundry on site!! Sec 8 OK. 773- 404- 8926
Water included. Call Daniel, 773-8758085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
CHICAGO, PRINCETON PARK HOMES. Spacious 2-3 BR Townhomes, Inclu: Prvt entry, full bsmt, lndry hook-ups. Ample prkg. Close to trans & schls. Starts at $844/ mo. w w w . p p k h o m e s . com;773-264-3005
ADULT SERVICES
ADULT SERVICES
2 BR $1500 AND OVER
4165 N. LINCOLN 2 Bdrm. $1650.
2 BR $1100-$1299
4738 W GEORGE St. 1st floor
COLLEGE GIRL BODY RUBS $40 w/AD 24/7
224-223-7787
THE LATEST ON YOUR FAVORITE
RESTAURANTS AND BARS
FOOD & DRINK
Try FREE: 773-867-1235 More Local Numbers: 1-800-926-6000
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
CHICAGO, ELED, 2BR 3BR, 55th & ies not incl. 595-6151
NEWLY REMOD71st & Halsted, $660. Ashland, $850. UtilitSec Dep Req’d. 773-
WEEKLY E-BLAST GET UP TO DATE. SIGN UP NOW. CHICAGOREADER.COM
CHICAGO, 7028 3BR, lrg living room, hardwood flrs, 1.5BA, mo + heat. Section 708-204-9881
block of Langley, Sec 8 Ok. $1160/ Mo. Mr. Johnson 630-424-1403
3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499
S. GREEN, dining room, 3 unit, $895/ 8 Welcome.
6114 S. MORGAN, 1st floor, newly renov 2BR. $725/mo, utilis separate. References & sec dep req’d. Please call for appt, 312835-6667 MATTESON, 2BR, $990$1050; 3BR, $1250-$1400. Move In Special is 1 Month’s Rent & $99 Sec Dep. Sect 8 Welc. 708-748-4169 NEAR BEVERLY Huge 2BR apt, with bonus room on 1st floor. Sect 8 Welc 312.809.6068
3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 80TH/PHILLIPS, Beautiful, lrg newly renovated 3BR, 1.5BA, hdwd flrs & appliances incl. Quiet apt. $950/mo & up. Call 312-8180236 CHICAGO, 7053 S. Winchester, 3BR, 2 full bath, 2 story home, backyard, unfinished basement, avail 12/1. $ 950/mo + 1 mo sec. 773-230-9250
NR 87TH & STONY ISLAND, 3BR Apt, $1000 + heat, 2 mo sec + 1 mo rent, rec renov ba & kit, gar space avail. Not Sec 8 reg 773771-0785 70TH AND DORCHESTER. 3BR, 1st flr, tenant pays utils, Sec 8 welc. $800/mo + 1 mo sec & 1 mo rent. Ready Dec 1 773-7444603 6018 S. ST. Lawrence, 3BR Apartment, 2 full bath, newly painted, blocks from the Univ. of Chicago. $995/mo. Call 630-4520163
CHICAGO, 1945 S. Drake, 2nd floor, 3BR, 2BA, newly renovated, hardwood floors, storage, no dogs, $1050/mo. Call 773-485-3042 NORTHWEST CHICAGO AVE
and Cicero. 3BR updated unit, tenant pays utils, no pets. $925/mo + sec. 708-249-6668
CONGRESS AND CENTRAL
Area. Large 3BR, hdwd flrs, tenant pays utils, no pets. $1150/mo + sec 708-249-6668
CHATHAM 80TH EBERHART,
3br, 2ba, newly decorated, $975/mo + 1 Mo sec, no pets. AVAIL NOW, 773-766-7039. Leave Msg.
71ST/ABERDEEN. Newly Rehabbed 4BR, 2BA. $1150/mo. Sec 8 Welcome. Call Keith 708-921-7810
AUSTIN AREA Huge 6 rooms, 3BR, 1.5BA, 3rd floor, hardwood floors, heat incl. $1050/mo + move-in fee. Call 773-419-3014 CHICAGO, 1138 N. WALLER, 3BR, 2nd floor, newly decorated, hdwd floors throughout. $950/mo. Section 8 welcome. 630-915-2755 CHICAGO - 5246 S. Hermitage, 4BR Coach House -$750. 1.5BA LR, lg kit & lg DR, fam rm & rec rm. fenced yrd. Sec 8 ok. 708-574-4085 VICINITY OF 61ST & King Dr,
Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+
CHATHAM-3BR 1.5BA, REF/ HEAT incl, laundry in bsmt, 7900
NORTH LAWNDALE, 2BR Apts, Multiple Units Available. New construction, next to park and elementary school. Sec 8 welcome. 972-256-1141
CALUMET CITY, 3BR, 2 car garage, fully rehab w/ gorgeous finishes & hdwd flrs. Beautiful backyard. Sect 8 ok. $1175/mo. 510-735-7171
ADULT SERVICES
REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.
ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar
modern 3BD, 1BA, tenant heated apt, 1st flr, $1100/mo, no sec dep, Sec 8 Welc agent owned 312-671-3795
AVAILABLE NOW! 90th & Jus-
tine, 2nd flr, 3bedroom, hardwood floors, $1100/heat not included +security Sec 8 Ok. 773-476-7335.
CHICAGO BEVERLY AREA
- Classic 3 Bedroom Apartment. Quiet Block, Steps from Starbucks, Metra and Local Beverly Shops, Large Living Room, Formal Dining Room, Hardwood Floors, Eat-In Kitchen & Pantry, New Windows, Gleaming Hardwood floors. Stainless Steel Refrigerator and Stove. Great Neighborhood. $1,250.00 month for rent Includes Cooking Gas, Smoke Free Apartment. Tenant pays Heat and Electrical. No Pets Call Michelle at 773.456.7471 or e-mail mbhob26@gmail.com
**HOME FOR CHRISTMAS ** IN CHATHAM 7752 SO. EVANS 4 BEDRMS - 2 CERAMIC BATHS LVNG RM, OPEN DINING/KITCHEN AREA, WOOD FLOORS, APPLIANCES, FIN BSMNT, FENCD YARD W/PATIO , 2.5 CAR GARAGE. TENANT PAYS UTILITIES. $1350/ MONTH jd@ 708 238 2873 6200 BLOCK OF S. GREENWOOD. (2) 3BR Apts, separate DR, all new kitch, $1350/ mo. Close to UofC Hospitals, H.S & public trans. W/D on site. No pets. Application Fee applies. 773-858-7551
BRAND NEW, TWO rehabbed 3BR apts with new everything. Just $1250/montly. 55th & Carpenter. A must see! Call 919-5200753
114TH/ ABERDEEN BEAUTY 4
Bd HSE! SEC 8WELC! appliances,garage, finish bsmt, gates 312-375-7909
PARK FOREST: 3BR, 2BA, frig, stove, micro, D/W, W/D, Extra storage, $1400/mo. Call. English 773-2130563 or Espanol 773-259-0140 1521 W. WINNEMAC, 3 Bdrm.
$1350 Heat included. Call Daniel, 773875-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
AUBURN GRESHAM Remod Spacious 4BR, gated, encl private back porch Sec 8 OK. $1200. 773-419-1126 TWO SFH 3BR & 4BR, on 126TH Between Michigan and Wentworth. Sec 8 Welcome. $1275-$1475/mo. 773-410-8706 SECT 8 OK, 2 story, 4br/2ba w/ bsmt. New decor, crpt & hdwds, ceiling fans, stove/fridge, $1465. 11243 S. Eggleston, 773-443-5397
HARVEY 15020 S Marshfield. Freshly Updated 4BR, 2 full BA. Stove /fridge incl. Quiet blk. $1200 /mo. Sec 8 wel 773-501-0503
EAST ROGERS PARK apartments
3 bed 2 ba $1,400 & 4 bed 2 ba $1,500 Available NOW call 773-968-8512
3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 LARAMIE AND HARRISON.
Unique design 5BR House, 2BA tenant pays utils, no pets. $1600/mo + sec. 708-249-6668
NOVEMBER 17, 2016 | CHICAGO READER 43
$1650. Water included. Call Daniel, 773-875-8085 or Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
10742 S LaSalle, Section 8 Welcome 4BR, 1BA, hdwd flrs, tenant pays utilities, $1400/mo no security dep 773-221-0061
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.
3 BR OR MORE OTHER
CHICAGO, 59 S. HONORE, 5BR home, 3BA, full finished basement, $1550/mo. Section 8 Welcome. Call 773-919-7730
RICHTON PARK, 3BR TH, 1.5BA, stainless steel appls, hdwd, full fin bsmt, pool & parking. Tenant pays electric & water. Must verify income. Bad Credit OK. 708-6336352
1300 W. 68TH, Newly remod. Large 3 & 4BR, hdwd flrs, appls. Sect 8 OK. 1 & 2BR Voucher welc. $800+/mo + utils. 773-895-9495
Chicago Style Bungalow , 4 BR, 2 full BA, freshly decorated, new carpet, modern kit & bath, $15 00/m +1 m sec/1m rent Larry, 708529-3836
NEWLY REHAB 5BR $1500,
84th & Peoria; 4BR, $1300 97th & Oglesby; 3BR, $1200, 98th & Yates. Section 8 Welcome 312-804-3638
SOUTHSIDE, 10218 S. PERRY. 3 Bedroom House, tenant pays gas & electric. Section 8 OK. Call 773-759-4472
RETAIL/OFFICE NEAR HIP
Mall 1100, 2200 sf, walk-in cooler, stove, exhaust hood. Profitable. Unlimited Options Joe 847-640-9490
6308 N. MILWAUKEE AVE.
Storefront 952 Sq. Ft. $985. Heat included. Call Paul J. Quetschke & Co. 773-281-8400 (Mon.-Fri 9-5)
GOODS
CHICAGO S: Newly renovated, Large 3-5BR. In unit laundry, hardwood flrs, very clean, No Deposit! Available Now! 708-655-1397 HUMONGOUS 3BR/1BA LEFT. New floors, ceramic tile, Central Air, blinds, nr transportation, 773-410-3892
MASSAGE TABLES, NEW and
used. Large selection of professional high quality massage equipment at a very low price. Visit us at www. bestmassage.com or call us, 773764-6542.
FOR SALE
EDGEWATER BEACH 5555 N.
Sheridan Rd. Unit 1904 - $130,000 1 bedroom, 1 bath, new kitchen & new bathroom, hardwood floors, wonderful views, garage, indoor pool, fitness center, outdoor gardens, door man, beautiful lobby. Call 847-724-0743 or 847-204-8022
BEAUTIFULLY REDONE HOME with modern kitchen & bath, hdwd flrs, finished basement, 3BR, 2 full BA, den, new appliances 708529-3836 HEART OF CHATHAM
$134,000. Liv space, 4 levels, hdwd flrs T/O, 4BR, 2BA, fam rm, fin bsmt, 2 car gar. Cynthia Frye. 312-560-5455
INSTRUCTION ESL TUTOR. TOEFL and conversation. Downtown + Wrigleyville office and via phone. "Top Tutor 2016" award from the Literacy Chicago. Dennis A. Jose 312-371-4301
MUSIC & ARTS
BRUCE RILEY ART Sale After 15 years in the same studio I have to move. There are several hundred pieces dating from 1980 to the present. Prices range from $2.00 to $1,000.00. November 18th 6 pm to 10 pm. November 19th 1 pm to 10 pm. November 20th 1 pm to 6 pm. 4929 South Campbell Ave. Chicago, IL 60632. Images of the sale can be seen at; https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ i5peyqffeaolv69/AAChybcEj-q_ EM_BsfmJrr9Ha?dl=0
NOTICES EDUCATION SLOWS INTERRACIAL. tinasmallrobertapedon.
GENERAL
Rogers Park – 1700 W Juneway 773.308.5167. 3-4 bedrooms from $1175 Free heat. No deposit
We’re always here for you 24/7. Relationship, Intimacy & Gender Issues. Totally Private & Confidential Call Now: 213-291-9497. http://drsusanblockinstitute.com
PULLMAN AREA, Newly remodeled 111th St., East of King Dr. $450-$550. Close to shopping & 1/4 block to metra. 773-468-1432
MARKETPLACE
HEALTH & WELLNESS
com
FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90
special. Russian, Polish, Ukrainain girls. Northbrook and Schaumburg locations. 10% discount for new customers. Please call 773-407-7025
FOR A HEALTHY mind and body.
European trained and certified therapists specializing in deep tissue, Swedish, and relaxation massage. Incalls. 773-552-7525. Lic. #227008861.
UKRAINIAN MASSAGE. CALLS in/ out. Chicago and sub-
urbs. Hotels. 1250 S Michigan Avenue. Appointments. 773-616-6969.
44 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
BUSINESS OPS
NEED TO TALK?
roommates
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
Blue Island , 2423 W. 123rd St, 2BR, 1.5BA, freshly decor, modern BA & kitch, A/C, heat incl. $900/ mo+1 mo sec. Larry, 708-529-3832
ADULT SERVICES
legal notices 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: D16148537 on October 25, 2016, Under the Assumed Business Name of CULTURED LIFESTYLE with the business located at: 4151 N. SHERIDAN RD. 1N, CHICAGO, IL 60613. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: JAMES BARRA 4151 N. SHERIDAN RD. 1N, CHICAGO, IL 60613, USA
FOR SALE. NICE neighbor-
hood bar for sale in central Wisconsin. Located in Adams County, WI. Adams County is know for it’s rural charm and year round tourist activities. The bar is located on a county highway within minutes of Castle Rock Lake and the Northern Bay Golf resort and Marina. Snowmobile and year round ATV access. This bar has been in continuous operation since the end of prohibition. The current owner has been here for 14 plus years. Building is 1600 square feet includes dining area, pool table,bar, video poker machines, full service kitchen and back storage room with ice maker.. Large walk in cooler and smaller tap beer cooler. Separate 8x12 storage shed. 4 lots about 1.2 acres with two horseshoe pits and sno wmobile/ATV route.. New furnace installed in October 2016. Commercial 3 tank septic system installed in 2010. Roof in 2013. Owner says ’This is a great business with a steady local crowd of mostly retired folks. WE also do well with all the weekenders who have cabins within a few miles of town and the folks who come to visit from Northern Bay Resort. Snowmobilers in winter, ATV riders, fisherman and boaters on the lake spring summer and fall.. This is a family place and would be great for someone looking to get into the business of fun. My son is off to college now and it is time for me to do something different. Asking $224,900. For more info or interest contact: barback63@gmail.com
legal notices 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: D16148636 on November 2, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of STIGMA SKIN SOCIETY with the business located at: 2008 S. PRAIRIE AVENUE, CHICAGO, IL 60617. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner(s) /partner(s) is: GEORGE TSIOTSIOS 3730 LAKE ST., LANSING, IL 60438, USA NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pur-
suant 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: D16148662 on November 7, 2016 Under the Assumed Business Name of MOON HILL ACUPUNCTURE with the business located at: 3717 N RAVENSWOOD STE 213, CHICAGO, IL 60613. The true and real full name(s) and residence address of the owner (s)/partner(s) is: ASHLIE MARTIN, 5308 N GLENWOOD AVE UNIT 2, CHICAGO, IL 60640, USA
STRAIGHT DOPE SLUG SIGNORINO
3144 N. SEMINARY, 3 Bdrm.
By Cecil Adams q : Out of the thousands of different
ungulate species on this planet, horses are among the very few that have neither horns nor antlers. Obviously the development of such bony headwear conferred a distinct evolutionary advantage on the other fleetfooted herbivores, so how did horses manage to evolve and survive without them? —COWBOY KEN
A : Whoa up there, Ken. Yes, horses are ungu-
lates—literally, hooved mammals—and so are all those horn- and antler-bearing herbivores you’re picturing. But past that you’re on the wrong trail. Plenty of ungulates besides horses don’t have horns, and horses aren’t as closely related to many of their horned kin as one might think to look at them. When 19th-century taxonomists were sorting out the animal kingdom, they tossed horses into the biological order Ungulata along with the cattle, deer, et al. on the not-crazy assumption that their hooves (ungulae in Latin) and overall leg structure were evidence of kinship. But the fossil record soon complicated matters. Paleontologists did discover evidence of a common ancestor for all critters with hooves or hooflike nails, but that same ancestor, it appeared, had also evolved into a lot of other things—including dolphins— meaning the ungulate concept had to expand beyond hooves and even feet. The experts are still arguing about what species go where (one genome-based proposal from 2006 put horses in a group with cats, dogs, and bats), but the current understanding says deer and antelopes are more closely related to whales than they are to horses. But save the whales for another day; for now we’ll stick with true ungulates, plant-eating quadrupeds with hooves or something like them. These are grouped into two orders that have evolved in parallel for more than 50 million years. Artiodactyls, which have an even number of toes (think cloven hoofs), include sheep, goats, cows, deer, and antelopes but also pigs, hippos, camels, llamas, and a few others. Perissodactyls, with an odd number of toes, fall into three subgroups: horses and their cousins, the asses and zebras; tapirs, which don’t have horns either; and rhinoceroses. So the question isn’t why horses don’t have horns, but instead why, unlike their closest relatives, rhinos do. Early rhinos thrived in a variety of hornless forms, resembling modern tapirs or hippos or pudgy horses. Some grew to immense proportions (15-plus feet tall, 20 tons), the better to
browse on tree leaves, until elephants edged them out of their habitat. The rhinos that ultimately made the cut stayed closer to the ground, ate grass, and along the way developed one or more horns. Unlike the headgear of the even-toed ungulates, rhino horns sprout from just above the nose rather than from the sides of the forehead, and consist solely of keratin, the stuff that makes up fingernails and sheathes the bony core inside the horns of cattle, antelopes, etc. (Antlers are constructed along different lines: they’re all bone, and grow in a single two-sided unit from the front of the head.) Meanwhile, the proto-horse called eohippus was making its way through the wild. Around two feet tall, this guy had complicated extremities: four toes on the front feet, three on the hind feet, each toe ending in its own small hoof. Its descendants eventually became the horse we recognize today, as the need to escape carnivores rewarded more streamlined hooves and a longer stride. Whatever other obvious benefit they confer—African rhinos are huge and mean enough that they have no natural predators— horns play a notable role when rhinos, largely solitary otherwise, convene for courtship and mating, when they’re used for sparring with rivals. Horses, by contrast, have evolved to live in herds, with well-defined hierarchies governing mating. Natural selection didn’t always go easy on horses. They died out in North America before being reintroduced in domesticated form by Europeans, and it’s hard to see how horns would have helped them survive the food shortages brought about by climate change in the late Pleistocene era. Back here in the present, humans have become a factor in the ongoing development of rhinos, whose horns continue to attract the poachers that have already wiped out certain subspecies. A hornless rhino, you have to think, might have a better shot at survival. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.
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SAVAGE LOVE
By Dan Savage
Mourning in America
Sex and other consolations postelection
Q : I’m a longtime fan and
part of the 47 percent of white women who did NOT vote for Donald Trump. I’m disappointed, horrified, scared, and mad. That said, I wanted to share that on election night I had one of the most weirdly charged, hottest, and sexiest orgasms of my life. A little buzzed (dealing with those election results) and sad, my boyfriend and I turned to each other for consolation. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, we were fucking as Trump came on the TV to give his acceptance speech. It was the perfect way to say, “Fuck this. Now fuck me.” I encourage all your readers to fuck out the stress from this election. Because love trumps hate, and fucking trumps . . . well, I’m not sure what fucking trumps. But it sure makes life better.
—JUSTIFIABLY UNSETTLED LASS INTENSELY EMOTING
A : It’s important to practice good self-care in the wake of a traumatic event like Donald Trump’s electoral victory, and going by the definition of self-care at GoodTherapy. org—“activities that an individual engages in to relax or attain emotional wellbeing”—fucking the living shit out of someone certainly qualifies. So I want to second your recommendation, JULIE: sex, partnered or solo, makes life better—and people shouldn’t feel guilty about fucking someone at this uncertain and fearful moment in our nation’s history. Yes, we must donate and volunteer and protest and vote. And we must commit to defending our friends, neighbors, and coworkers who are immigrants, Muslims, and everyone and everything else Trump has threatened to
harm, up to and including the planet we all live on. But we must also make time for joy and pleasure and laughter and friends and food and art and music and sex.
Q : My boyfriend is
undocumented. His sister married a U.S. citizen and may receive a green card. We had hoped to someday do the same. But next year, the extreme right will control all three branches of the federal government. Deportation will surely come for my boyfriend. Additionally, we’re a gay couple, and Donald Trump has pledged to repeal marriage equality, if not ban it outright. So even if we did marry, that marriage is likely to be invalidated in the coming years. Is it still worth it to try? What do I do if the government takes away the love of my life? —KEEP HIM HOME
A : You should marry your
boyfriend immediately, KHH, and do so with confidence. “There is no realistic possibility that anyone’s marriage will be invalidated,” said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which has taken marriage-rights cases to the US Supreme Court (and won). “The law is very strong that if a marriage is valid when entered, it cannot be invalidated by any subsequent change in the law. So people who are already married should not be concerned that their marriage can be taken away.” And Minter says the court is unlikely to overturn Obergefell, the decision that legalized same-sex marriage across the country. “The doctrine of stare decisis—which means that courts generally will respect and follow their own prior rulings—is also very strong,
and the Supreme Court very rarely overturns an important constitutional ruling so soon after issuing it,” said Minter. “Even the appointment of an anti-marriage-equality justice to replace Justice Scalia would not jeopardize the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling on marriage equality, and the great majority of Americans still strongly support the freedom of same-sex couples to marry.”
ADMIRAL ★★ #$!%#"! ★★
Q : I’m heartsick about
the election. Today I made a donation to Planned Parenthood, which asked me if I wanted my donation to be in honor of anyone and noted they’ll send a card to that person to let them know I’ve donated in their name. Why yes, I thought, I’d like to make my donation in honor of Mike Pence, vice presidentelect. Until January 20, his address is 4600 N. Meridian St., Indianapolis, IN, 46208. After January 20, his address will sadly be 1 Observatory Circle NW, Washington, D.C., 20008. If any of your readers are inclined to join me in honoring our VP-elect, they can donate at plannedparenthood.org.
3940 W LAWRENCE
OPEN 7PM TO 6A M ADMIRALX.COM (773) 478-8111
'-.,'& 1',)!% 1+#1"& -) %/, '-(/%2 0$% %/," 1', 1+#1"& *'1(-+,2
—GENEROUS INVESTMENT VERIFYING EQUALITY
A : In addition to donating to Planned Parenthood—which everyone should do—please donate to the American Civil Liberties Union (aclu. org). Better yet, become a card-carrying member. With Trump in the White House, and Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, freedom and decency need to lawyer the fuck up. v
Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at thestranger.com. ß @fakedansavage
Check our website for road sharing tips.
0/-#0!"&0,0/%*(!$'.)&'-+
ota.org
orthoinfo.org
NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 45
b Luke Wade 1/31, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/17, noon b Wailers 1/19, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM, 17+ Wilco 2/22, 2/23, and 2/25, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM Roy Woods 12/4, 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b
UPDATED Mo 3/13, 7 PM, Metro, rescheduled from 11/27 b Red Hot Chili Peppers 6/307/1, 7 PM, United Center, second show added
UPCOMING King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard o JAMIE WDZIEKONSKI
NEW
All Them Witches 3/16, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 11/18, 9 AM Allah-Las 3/16, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 11/18, noon, 17+ Architects, Stray From the Path 3/8, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Assad Brothers 2/23, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/17, noon b Bell X1 2/25, 7 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM Greg Brown 2/18, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM b Hayes Carll 2/16, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM b Vanessa Carlton 2/24, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/17, noon, and 2/25, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM b Tom Chaplin 1/26, 8 PM, Park West, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM, 18+ Cheap Girls 12/14, 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon City of Caterpillar, Planes Mistaken for Stars 1/21, 9 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Rodney Crowell 3/25, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/17, noon b Delicate Steve 4/9, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Lee Fields & the Expressions 2/28, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM, 17+ Flaming Lips 4/17, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM, 18+ Brantley Gilbert, Tucker Beathard 3/2, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 4/8, 9 PM, Metro, 18+
Laura Jane Grace 2/5, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/17, noon b Zach Heckendorf 3/10, 10 PM, Schubas, 18+ Hoka 1/26, 7:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Fri 11/18, noon, 18+ Into It. Over It. 1/13, 7 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 11/18, noon b Jodeci, Siilk 12/2, 8 PM, Arie Crown Theater Juicy J, Belly, Project Pat 3/17, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM, 18+ Ladyhawke 3/8, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM, 18+ Pokey LaFarge 2/14, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM b Albert Lee 2/7, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM b Leftover Salmon 2/4, 8 PM, Park West, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM, 18+ Jens Lekman 3/9, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Lemon Twigs 1/26, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 11/18, 9 AM Less Than Jake, Pepper 2/8, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Lettuce 2/24, 9 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM, 18+ Lil Suzy 4/8, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall Los Campesinos! 3/2, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Bruno Mars 8/16 and 8/18, 8 PM, United Center, on sale Mon 11/21, 10 AM Matoma 2/10, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall Menzingers, Jeff Rosenstock 3/3, 8 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM, 18+ Mest 12/16-17, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Mustard Plug 12/28, 8 PM, Subterranean
46 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 17, 2016
New Kids on the Block, Boyz II Men, Paula Abdul 6/15, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Sat 11/19, 10 AM Patent Pending 12/3, 5 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b Ana Popovic 2/22, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/17, noon b Public Access T.V. 1/26, 8 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 11/18, noon, 18+ Rainbow Kitten Surprise 1/25, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/18, noon b Save Ferris, Baby Baby 3/10, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM, 17+ Secret Space 12/13, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b Ty Segall 5/14, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM, 18+ Senses Fail, Counterparts 3/28, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Thu 11/17, 10 AM, 17+ Sinkane 2/23, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM, 18+ Caroline Smith 1/13, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, part of Tomorrow Never Knows, on sale Fri 11/18, noon, 18+ Sting 3/3, 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, on sale Mon 11/21, 10 AM Suicide Machines 12/31, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Livingston Taylor 2/10, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM b Trapo 12/8, 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b TV Girl 1/28, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Us the Duo 2/8, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 11/18, 10 AM b Verve Pipe 2/18, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 11/17, noon b
J.D. Allen Trio 12/16, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ American Wrestlers 12/11, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Amorphis, Swallow the Sun 3/26, 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Bastille 4/3, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom Luke Bell 11/27, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Taylor Bennett 12/23, 7 PM, Metro b CFM 11/25, 9 PM, Hideout Cherry Glazerr 1/28, 7 PM, Subterranean b Cloud Nothings 2/10, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 18+ Dead Horses 12/14, 8 PM, Schubas Drive-By Truckers 2/2, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Entombed A.D., Full of Hell 1/10, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Alejandro Escovedo 1/26-28, 8 PM, City Winery b Foxygen 3/31, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Frigs 11/30, 9 PM, Hideout Galactic 3/25, 8:30 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Helen Money 12/9, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Helmet, Local H 12/16, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 18+ In Flames, Hellyeah 11/30, 7:30 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Jim James, Twin Limb 11/26, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Jeff the Brotherhood, Chastity 1/14, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, Part of Tomorrow Never Knows, 18+ King Dude 12/17, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen The King Khan & BBQ Show 12/3-4, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Natalia Lafourcade 11/27, 7 PM, Portage Theater Lawrence Arms 12/8-10, 9 PM, Double Door, 17+ Magnetic Fields 4/19-20, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Dan Navarro 2/11, 7 PM, Schubas Phox 1/31, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall
ALL AGES
WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK
EARLY WARNINGS
CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME
F
Never miss a show again. Sign up for the newsletter at chicagoreader. com/early
Real Friends, Knuckle Puck, Mat Kerekes 1/7, 3 PM, Concord Music Hall b Rooney 12/4, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Slaughter & the Dogs 11/26, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Sleaford Mods 4/3, 8 PM, Double Door, 18+ Regina Spektor 3/24, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre Title Fight 1/14, 7 PM, Metro, part of Tomorrow Never Knows b Twenty One Pilots 1/28, 7 PM, United Center Sander Van Doorn 12/24, 10 PM, the Mid Vulgar Boatmen 1/7, 7 PM, Schubas Wand, Acid Dad 1/12, 9 PM, Schubas, Part of Tomorrow Never Knows, 18+ Roger Waters 7/22, 8 PM, United Center Wax Tailor 1/26, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Wedding Present, Colleen Green 4/21, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall The Weeknd 5/23, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Xylouris White 12/3, 10:30 PM, Beat Kitchen White Panda 12/22, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Xeno & Oaklander 1/28, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Pete Yorn 12/8, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Zombies 4/13, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+
SOLD OUT Animals as Leaders 11/25, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Brendan Bayliss & Jake Cinninger 12/10, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Andrew Bird 12/14-16, 8 PM, Fourth Presbyterian Church b Lukas Graham 1/17, 7 PM, House of Blues b Louis the Child 11/25-26, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Marshmello 11/25-27, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Mr. T Experience, Nobodys 12/9, 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint, 17+ Conor Oberst 11/26, 8:30 PM and 11/27, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Run the Jewels 2/17, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Patti Smith 12/30, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Whitney 12/3-4, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ v
GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene NONPROFIT LITERARY and visual arts group Chicago Publishers Resource Center is displaying an exhibit called “Flyerside: A Chicago Punk Scene Exhibition” that includes zines, posters, set lists, flyers, stickers, and other ephemera from the city’s storied punk past. You can visit “Flyerside” at CHI PRC during normal hours—Sundays from noon till 5 PM—or at the CHI PRC events complementing it. On Saturday, November 19, punk label HeWhoCorrupts Inc. hosts a “record and zine grab” from noon till 3 PM, and your $5 donation goes to CHI PRC and Young Chicago Authors; that same day Brown and Proud Press holds a POC zine workshop at 4 PM. On Saturday, November 26, CHI PRC screens Chicago hardcore punk documentary No Delusions at 6 PM. “Flyerside” closes November 27. Speaking of punk, on Friday, November 18, at 7 PM, Quimby’s hosts “Punk Then, Punk Now, Punk Forever: Documenting DIY Culture,” a talk with Daniel Makagon, author of Underground: The Subterranean Culture of DIY Punk Shows; David Ensminger, author of Out of the Basement: From Cheap Trick to DIY Punk in Rockford, Illinois, 1973-2005; and Los Crudos front man Martin Sorrondeguy. Coverage of the president-elect’s sorry ass has been drowning out news from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota, where the Standing Rock Sioux are standing firm against an oil pipeline that threatens their drinking water. At 4 PM on Saturday, November 19, protesters will gather at Loomis and 18th Street and march to the National Museum of Mexican Art for a fund-raiser at 6 PM to benefit Standing Rock’s protectors. It’s givewhat-you-can, but $15 gets you a print by the Speakeasy Press. The event includes sets by local Native American group Red Line Drum and Pawnee/Seminole rapper Quese IMC, an auction of local art, appetizers from La Catrina Cafe, and a workshop by Karakol Screen Printing Collective. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.
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®
JIM JAMES OF MY MORNING JACKET
THIS SUNDAY! NOVEMBER 20
SPECIAL GUEST:TWIN
LIMB SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26
8:00pm • 18 & Over
PARK WEST
8:00pm • 18 & Over
RIVIERA THEATRE
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 27
ARAGON BALLROOM
SPECIAL GUEST:
PARKER MILLSAP
THIS FRIDAY & SATURDAY! NOVEMBER 18-19 • VIC THEATRE
www.peta.org www.true-to-you.net
8:00pm • 18 & Over www.jjgrey.com
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3 • PARK WEST 8:00pm • All Ages
THE VOICE OF KEANE
SATURDAY DECEMBER 3 VIC THEATRE 10:00pm • 18 & Over 7:30pm Show is Sold Out!
THURSDAY DECEMBER 8 PARK WEST
8:00pm • 18 & Over
THURSDAY, JANUARY 26 PARK WEST 8:00pm • 18 & Over
ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!
APRIL 17 • RIVIERA THEATRE
8:00pm • 18 & Over
ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!
BUY TICKETS AT NOVEMBER 17, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 47
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©2016 Goose Island Beer Co., Goose IPA®, India Pale Ale, Chicago, IL. | Enjoy responsibly.