Print Issue of November 24, 2016 (Volume 46, Number 8)

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 2 4 , 2 0 1 6

Politics How Muslims in Chicago are bracing for a Trump presidency 15

Lit The UIC professor who anticipated the fall of Clintonism 22

Shop hyperlocal this holiday with the madein-Chicago gi© guide. 16 Plus: music gi©s you can actually wrap

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

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

FEATURES

IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda The world premiere of Turtle, A John Waters Christmas, the wreathing of the Lions at the Art Institute, Zadie Smith at the DuSable Museum, the film Rules Don’t Apply, and more recommendations

CITY LIFE

8 Space Humboldt House owner Claire Tibbs shows off her cottage.

10 Joravsky | Politics As Chicago panics over Trump, Rahm effectively raises taxes for the Red Line revamp.

11 Transportation Transit and biking will likely lose funding, but some say Trump’s infrastructure plan has merit.

13 Identity & Culture Examining Donald Trump’s “new deal” for black communities

Shop hyperlocal this holiday season.

BY READER STAFF 16

15 Q&A Hoda Katebi from the Council on American-Islamic Relations on how Muslims are bracing for a Trump presidency

45 Restaurant review: Old Irving Brewing Ease your postelection pain with Trevor Rose-Hamblin’s beer and Matthias Merges’s food.

48 Bar review: Estereo Heisler Hospitality’s Logan Square cafe and bar dances to a Latin beat.

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 SUN-TIMES 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.

CORRECTION: THE REVIEW OF THE FIELD MUSEUM EXHIBIT “TATTOO” THAT RAN IN THE ISSUE OF NOVEMBER 17 MISIDENTIFIED THE SUBJECTS OF THE PHOTOGRAPH DANIEL PHILOSOPH AND LIVIA RAVEK.

38 Shows of note Bobby Rush, Eryn Allen Kane, Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 , and more 41 The Secret History of Chicago Music First-wave punk weirdos Silver Abuse released their second reunion album this year.

ARTS & CULTURE

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ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY READER DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

FOOD & DRINK

SHOPPING

The made-in-Chicago gift guide

30 Q&A A conversation with the city’s new arts czar, Mark Kelly 31 Movies Christine stars Rebecca Hall as the Florida journalist who shot herself on the air.

Music gifts you can actually wrap

Digital downloads haven’t yet driven box sets extinct.

BY PETER MARGASAK 33

22 Lit & Politics A talk with UIC professor Walter Benn Michaels, whose ten-year-old The Trouble With Diversity anticipated the fall of Clintonism 27 Theater The intriguing outweighs the dutiful in Steppenwolf’s The Fundamentals.

28 Theater A political dinosaur makes a last stand in Chicago Shakespeare’s King Charles III. 29 Comedy Peter Kim left Second City because of hate speech. Why’d he return?

29 Visual Art Ania Jaworska’s solo show at Volume Gallery is more than just a bunch of black shapes.

CLASSIFIEDS

49 Jobs 49 Apartments & Spaces 51 Marketplace 52 Straight Dope What are the telltale signs of thermonuclear conflict?

53 Savage Love What to do with a fetish about being eaten alive 54 Early Warnings High on Fire, Purity Ring DJ set, the Whispers, and more shows to come 54 Gossip Wolf The Chosen Few DJs honor a bygone house-music club, and more music news.

NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 3

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THEATER

More at chicagoreader.com/ theater Beth in July Every now and then, when reality starts to crumble, a totem can come in handy as a tether to the earth.

Jim and Beth, our fucked-up romantic leads, cling desperately to theirs: Jim (Antonio Brunetti) can see only with his trusty eye patch; Beth (Lauren Demerath) needs the reassuring press of an X-Acto knife against her stomach. Playwright R.J. Tsarov’s new play explores what happens when such measures aren’t enough to keep a fraying world intact—Brunetti’s performance in particular expands into something unstable.

Warning: the actors don’t shy from self-mutilation. —ISABEL OCHOA GOLD Through 12/18: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 773-539-7838, propthtr.org, $20.

Crazy for You This radical update of George and Ira Gershwin’s 1930 hit musical Girl Crazy, a Tony Award winner back in 1992, is the Broadway equivalent of Chicken McNuggets. If you have a taste for Gershwin and can’t find anything better, it will do. The music is great, and it gives the cast many opportunities for extended dance sequences (nicely choreographed in this revival

by Matt Crowle, who also directs), but Ken Ludwig’s book lets us down at every turn, numbing us with ancient jokes, stock characters, and formulaic plot twists. The show is peppered with strong performances—Clyde Alves is a lot of fun as the main character, a poor little rich boy determined to be a Broadway star—but one leaves the show wishing for the real thing. —JACK HELBIG Through 1/8: Wed-Thu 1:30 and 8 PM (Thu 11/24, 2:30 PM only), Fri 8 PM (no show 12/24), Sat 5 and 8:30 PM (no show 12/25), Sun 2 and 6 PM, Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace, 100 Drury Ln., Oakbrook Terrace, 630-530-0111, drurylaneoakbrook.com, $41.60-$57.20.

Massenet’s 1910 opera Don Quichotte, with its Cervantes-inspired story of the pursuit of a lost ideal, is especially resonant now. Instead, let’s move right on to say that this ravishing production, on loan from the San Diego Opera (with perfect lighting by Lyric’s Chris Maravich), looks like an Old Masters painting come to life; that bass Ferruccio Furlanetto totally inhabits the title role of the divinely foolish old knight; that he’s well served by baritone Nicola Alaimo as faithful sidekick and foil, Sancho; and that mezzo-soprano Clémentine Margaine, making her Lyric debut as Dulcinee, the object of Quichotte’s delusional affection, has that rarity: a powerful voice with a bell-like quality across its entire range. Andrew Davis conducts the Lyric Opera Orchestra. —DEANNA ISAACS Wed 11/23, 2 PM; Mon 11/28, 7:30 PM; Thu 12/1, 7:30 PM; Sun 12/4, 2 PM; Wed 12/7, 7:30 PM, Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker, 312-332-2244, civicoperahouse.com, $17-$329.

A Hedda Gabler An empty wicker birdcage hangs portentously from the rafters in A Hedda Gabler, a new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 drama from Red Tape Theatre and local playwright Nigel O’Hearn. The cage is meant to be symbolic of Hedda’s entrapment, her “caged” subservience to men, the “imprisoning” role society demands she play as a woman. More than once, men stare into the cage, lit from above by a hot spotlight, and deliver lines as if Hedda were inside. There’s even a fluttering-wings sound cue for Hedda’s “liberation,” which consists of her shooting herself in the head at center stage.

(In Ibsen’s play, she kills herself with a muffled shot, in a rear room, behind a drawn curtain). It’s all too much, a travesty of the original Hedda Gabler, whose protagonist’s lust for life, powers of manipulation, and indomitable will to charm drive the play in any version worth its salt. —MAX MALLER Through 12/17: Fri-Mon 8 PM (no shows 11/24-11/27), Pride Arts Center, 4147 N. Broadway, 1-800-737-0984, pridefilmsandplays. com, $20.

Don Quichotte It’s already a R cliche to relate a classic piece of Roz and Ray One of my most theater to the election of Donald Trump.

R cherished Chicago theater So I won’t belabor the fact that Jules memories is of Mary Beth Fisher as

AIDS researcher Emma Brookner in TimeLine’s 2013 production of The Normal Heart—particularly her cathartic, profanity-laced second-act speech directed against the slow-moving medical establishment. In Karen Hartman’s new two-hander, Fisher plays a similar role, but on the opposite side of the righteousness equation. Once a hero to the father of two hemophiliac boys (James Vincent Meredith), Fisher’s Dr. Roz Kagan becomes the target of vitriol and ethical misgiving when an advanced blood product she promoted turns out to be a means of HIV transmission.

While keeping the stakes grounded at the human level, Victory Gardens artistic director Chay Yew’s production sheds light on a tremendous historical dilemma in a fierce, thought-provoking 90 minutes. —DAN JAKES Through 12/11: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM (except Thu 11/24, no show, and Wed 11/30, 2 PM), Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Tue 12/6, 7:30 PM, Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln, 773-871-3000, victorygardens. org, $27-$60.

Roz and Ray o LIZ LAUREN Stomp I first saw this now-instiR tutionalized combo of percussion, movement, and comedy in the

90s, when it was part of a series of then-countercultural theatricals such as Blue Man Group and Savion Glover’s Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk, and like the latter especially, it retains the feel of the street. This current touring show seems especially inspired by tap, but as the dancers make use of found objects—brooms, matchboxes, plastic bags—the work evokes other traditional nonspoken theatrical forms as well, from commedia dell’arte to Japanese Noh theater. The audience for this virtuosic performance knows exactly what to expect—and gets exactly that.

—SUZANNE SCANLON Through 1/1: Wed 2 and 7:30 PM (Wed 11/23, 7:30 PM only), Thu-Fri 7:30 PM (no show Thu 11/24), Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Tue 7:30 PM; also Fri 11/25 and 12/30, 2 PM; Sun 11/27, 6 PM; and Mon 12/26, 7:30 PM, Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, 835 N. Michigan, 312-977-1700, broadwayinchi-

cago.com, $36-$76.

[Trans]formation A coproduction of Nothing Without a Company and the Living Canvas, this 90-minute celebration of the diversity of the human body is devised and performed by transgender, genderqueer, intersex, and nonbinary artists. Naked save for a layer of imaginative projections, the performers tell stories as soloists and in groups, with dance interludes in between. The script, choreography, and music could all use some tightening, but at its core this piece’s intimate use of light, shadow, and movement is inspired—and inspiring. At the end of the show, audience members are invited to disrobe and join the performers; several did on the night I attended. As the cast reminds us, “It’s about access to space and personal dignity. Without that, we’re fucked.”

—MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 12/17: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, Collaboraction, 1579 N. Milwaukee, 312-226-9633, $30.

Turtle The title of Jake Jeppson’s R 90-minute one-act, a world premiere from Redtwist Theatre, refers to

a sea turtle that is rescued by the play’s protagonist, young stay-at-home mom Molly, after the creature has lost its way on its instinct-driven transatlantic odyssey to its ancestral spawning ground.

The reptile is Jeppson’s metaphor for modern America. Molly (the engaging, expressive Emily Tate), her husband (Drew Johnson), his brother (Michael Sherwin), and the brother’s wife (Carolyn Kruse) are decent people having trouble connecting with each other and their own humanity, distracted by the relentless barrage of sound and images coming at them from their phones, Facebook, and sports and cable news TV shows. Set against the backdrop of the 2012 presidential campaign (Molly’s brother-in-law is a hard-right Republican angry at having lost his job in a corporate downsizing), Turtle is a slight but sensitively written character study, remarkably timely in light of the recent election. Beautifully acted under Damon Kiely’s direction, it features shimmeringly atmospheric lighting by Daniel Friedman. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 12/30: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM (no show Thu 11/24), Sun 3 PM, Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-728-7529, redtwist.org, $30-$35, $25-$30 students and seniors.

COMEDY

Be Happy Mark Toland hosts R this “forget-about-the-election” variety show featuring magic, mind reading, and comedy. Sun 11/27, 8 PM, Public House Theatre, 3914 N. Clark, 800-6506449, pubhousetheatre.com, $20.

Helltrap Nightmare Tonight’s R lineup of experimental noise music and stand-ups features Sarah

Sherman, Rebecca O’Neal, Geoff Asmus, Lyra Hill, Bone Lattice, and more. Sun 11/27, 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-227-4433, hideoutchicago.com, $7.

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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of November 24

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

Stand Up for Your Rights ComR edy Show First Defense Legal Aid hosts a night of comedy—including

ImprovOpoly Comedians often point out one of the trickiest ironies of their unconventional career paths: the hardest rooms they’ll ever play, the ones that require the thickest skin and most experience, are the ones faced earliest in their careers. With that in mind, God bless the gumption of this Under the Gun ensemble, which played an experimental premise at opening—house lights up—to a room of five or six folks. In front of a large game board, cast members interact with audience members to play out a game of Monopoly, then improvise scenes inspired by their landing spots.

Does the format work? Dear lord, no, it’s a catastrophe, but the ensemble seem to be aware of it and ride it out with goodwill. It’s safe to assume the structure will be tweaked in the coming performances. —DAN JAKES Through 12/17: Sat 7:30 PM, $15.

Erica Nicole Clark, Abi Sanchez, and Marty DeRosa—to raise funds for 1-800-LAW-REP4, a 24-hour hotline providing legal counsel for anyone in Chicago Police custody. Mon 11/28, 5 PM, Lagunitas Tap Room, 2607 W. 17th, 707-769-4495, lagunitas.com/taproom/ chicago, $10.

VISUAL ARTS Art Institute of Chicago Wreathing of the Lions, the Art Institute hosts the 25th annual Wreathing of the Lions, emceed by Chicago’s cast of Hamilton and featuring complimentary hot chocolate and a live performance by the Soul Children of Chicago. Fri 11/25, 10 AM-3 PM. Sun–Wed 10:30 AM–5 PM, Thu-Fri 10:30 AM–8 PM, Sat 10:30 AM–5 PM. 111 S. Michigan, 312-443-3600, artinstituteofchicago.org, $25, $19 students, seniors ($5 discount for Chicago residents), free kids under 14; free for Illinois residents Thursdays 5-8 PM.

Lip Cervix Don’t go to Lip Cervix expecting anything less than the title promises—real ladies, real talk, potential embarassment. It’s a night of sketch comedy bits with a rotating all-female cast of five: Ali Carney, Emma Macmillan, McKenzie Morrell, Kate Nolan, and Tiffany Streng. Together they are Taco Tuesdays, a troupe dedicated to exploring things like whether it’s weird that your OBGYN keeps a picture of your uterus on his desk. There are some very funny moments and a lot of intentionally very awkward ones, and they come rapid-fire, so be ready. As I watched, I got the sense that what Taco Tuesdays is mostly about is Taco Tuesdays having a great time. But this intimate show is kind of like being at a party with the cast or sitting next to them in a restaurant while they all talk really loudly about their vaginas. —MAX MALLER Through 12/15: Thu 8 PM (no show 11/24), Public House Theatre, 3914 N. Clark, 800-650-6449, pubhousetheatre.com, $10.

Harvey, David MacLean, and Rachel Webster discuss the essay collection Inspired Journeys: Travel Writers in Search of the Muse. Tue 11/29, 6 PM, Bookends & Beginnings, 1712 Sherman, Evanston, bookendsandbeginnings.com.

More at chicagoreader.com/movies

Allied Robert Zemeckis’s World War II spy thriller opens in Casablanca, but really the whole thing takes place in Casablanca, with Brad Pitt as a dashing Canadian intelligence officer and Marion Cotillard as an alluring French Resistance fighter. Together they pull off the daring public execution of a German diplomat, and the bond they forge leads them into marriage and parenthood in London, but then the past comes back to haunt them. Zemeckis is a master of the big, broad Oscar-bait drama (Cast Away, Flight, The Walk), and he makes the most of a well-constructed screenplay by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises). The movie has nothing to say about its moment in history, which makes the premise seem generic, but there’s always the pleasure of watching Pitt work; a charming goofball in his early career, he’s improbably matured into his generation’s Robert Redford. With Jared Harris, Lizzy Caplan, and Simon McBurney. —J.R. JONES R, 124 min. ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Cicero Showplace 14, City North 14, Crown Village 18, River East 21, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings, Webster Place

critic in her 60s who has lived in her unit for decades and refuses to sell. As the conflict gradually escalates, Filho reaches back into Clara’s past and revisits some of the hardships that steeled her spine; his extended narrative may not be as dazzling as in the previous film, but Braga—like Paulina García in the recent Chilean import Gloria—contributes a memorable performance as a proud, vibrant, self-possessed woman of a certain age. In Portuguese with subtitles.

—J.R. JONES 142 min. Fri 11/25, 6:30 PM; Sat 11/26 and Sun 11/27, 3:30 and 6:30 PM; and Mon 11/28-Thu 12/1, 6:30 PM. Facets Cinematheque Bad Santa 2 Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa (2003) was breathtaking in its ugliness, a bucket of green diarrhea flung across the virgin snow; its hateful hero (Billy Bob Thornton), a department-store Santa given to wine, women, and larceny, was supposedly redeemed by his fatherly regard for an adoring, misfit child (Brett Kelly), but I never really bought it. Thirteen years later the pair are back, along with Santa’s longsuffering dwarf accomplice (Tony Cox) and tattooed old mama (Kathy Bates), to pull off a big heist in Chicago. Zwigoff, whose career was sunk by his subsequent flop Art School Confidential, has been replaced by Mark Waters (Mean Girls), who works the same vein of raunchy, misanthropic humor but dispenses with any sentiment. Christina Hendricks joins the party as a prim charity worker who turns out to be a dirty, dirty girl; the whole series is based on the notion that no one is any better than his worst impulse. —J.R. JONES R, 92 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Cicero Showplace 14, Crown Village 18, River East 21

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MCA Talk: Emily Graslie R Field Museum “chief curiosity correspondent” and The Brain Scoop

host Emily Graslie comes to the MCA to discuss art, digital media, and the natural world. Tue 11/29, 6 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, 312-280-2660, mcachicago.org.

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to Chicago. Tue 11/29, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 1227 W. 18th, 312-526-3851, thaliahallchicago.com, $42.

MOVIES NEW REVIEWS

LIT

A John Waters Christmas FilmR maker and author John Waters brings his sacrilegious one-man show

brown girls who want to be dancers.

Only one has talent; the other has plenty of thoughts. Wed 11/30, 6:30 PM, DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl., 773-947-0600, semcoop.com.

RSM

R

Cecile Richards The president of R the Planned Parenthood Federation of America discusses the future of reproductive rights in the United States.

Tue 11/29, 4 PM, Laird Bell Law Quadrangle, 1111 E. 60th.

Zadie Smith Smith returns to R Chicago to talk about her latest novel, Swing Time, the story of two

Aquarius Brazilian writer-director Coming Through the Rye J.D. R Kleber Mendonça Filho turned R Salinger refused to let anyone heads with his ambitious feature debut adapt his novel The Catcher in the Neighboring Sounds (2014), in which a middle-class high-rise in his hometown of Recife becomes a sort of social ecosystem. This second feature also centers on real estate, though the interdependence of the earlier movie has given way to isolation: developers, hoping to demolish the title apartment block and erect a new structure, buy out the residents one by one, but they haven’t bargained on Clara (Sonia Braga of Kiss of the Spider Woman), a widowed music

Rye for the stage or screen, and his intransigence provides the through line for this lovely semi-autobiographical drama (2015) from writer-director James Sadwith. Alex Wolff stars as a sensitive, bullied misfit who so worships Salinger’s adolescent hero Holden Caulfield that he has written a theatrical adaptation of the book for his prep school, but to stage it, he must win the reclusive novelist’s blessing. Stefania LaVie Owen plays the charming classmate who drives W

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NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 5

Moana

AGENDA

B the hero to New Hampshire, hoping to steer him out of harm’s way and into her arms. The film’s send-up of youthful obsession is sweet and funny, and its depiction of first love and buried pain is moving. As Salinger, Chris Cooper is persuasively flinty, irritated by his headstrong fan but understanding of him too. —ANDREA GRONVALL PG-13, 97 min. Fri 11/25, 8:15 PM; Sat 11/26, 5:15 PM; Sun 11/27, 3 PM; Mon 11/28, 6 PM; Tue 11/29, 8:15 PM; Wed 11/30, 6 PM; and Thu 12/1, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Manchester by the Sea In R Kenneth Lonergan’s movies, the past gnaws at people until it threatens to gnaw them away

entirely. This long, heartbreaking drama by the writer-director of Margaret (2011) and You Can Count on Me (2000) centers on a seething, tight-lipped young janitor (Casey Affleck) who arrives in the title Massachusetts seaport to bury his older brother and discovers that he’s been named legal guardian of his 16-year-old nephew (Lucas Hedges). The protagonist recoils from the idea of fatherhood, and the stress of this unwanted responsibility makes him the wrong guy to jostle at a bar. A playwright by training, Lonergan writes leathertough dialogue that serves mainly to protect the characters from their own raw emotion; despite

A MASTERPIECE

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all the hard talk, this is a movie of deep sorrow, compassion, and forgiveness. With Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler, Gretchen Mol, and Matthew Broderick. —J.R. JONES R, 137 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre Moana For this R feature-length animation, veteran Disney directors John

Musker and Ron Clements (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules) stick to bankable formula: a plucky, beautiful girl named Moana (and given voice by Auli’i Cravalho) longs to venture outside her Polynesian village despite her father’s opposition (“I wish I could be the perfect daughter / But I’m drawn

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Eventually, at the encouragement of her sage grandmother, she sets sail with her rooster sidekick to find the braggadocious demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson). The narrative is a fairly predictable hero’s journey— Maui even calls her “The Chosen One”—but the movie is refreshing for its lack of a love interest; instead Moana learns how to chart her own course. Dynamic CGI and robust songs from LinManuel Miranda of Hamilton further enhance the experience.

—LEAH PICKETT PG, 113 min.

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"Destined to be a cult classic."

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“Packs an unexpected emotional wallop ... Chris Cooper has a superb cameo as J.D. Salinger.”

— Hollywood Reporter

ManchesterByTheSeaMovie

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Gyllenhaal) that serves as a violent metaphor for the end of their relationship. Combining elements of Hitchcockian noir, Sirkian melodrama, and Coen-esque neo-western, the film dovetails three story lines: the present, slate-toned to match Adams’s sooty makeup; the past, told through a series of warmly lit flashbacks; and the novel, a thriller-tragedy set in the badlands of west Texas. Ford and ace cinematographer Seamus McGarvey strikingly render each thread, but the transitions can be awkward (Adams’s character takes a shower at the same time that Gyllenhaal’s takes a bath, etc). Ultimately the drama, adapted from a 1993 book

by Austin Wright, constitutes a loose assemblage of ideas about romantic betrayal, selfishness, and regret. With Michael Shannon and Laura Linney. —LEAH PICKETT R, 116 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Landmark’s Century Centre Rules Don’t Apply Warren R Beatty’s engrossing drama about Howard Hughes in Holly-

wood shares less in common with Martin Scorsese’s diligent Hughes biopic The Aviator than with the Coen brothers’ tinseltown fantasy Hail, Caesar!, in which history is chewed, stretched, and rechewed like bubble gum. It’s 1964, and the billionaire’s long-suffering assistant (Alden Ehrenreich) is trying to roust the boss out of bed so he can participate in a teleconference with journalists and debunk a fabricated autobiography of him (really this occurred in 1972); flashbacks set five years earlier (but incorporating biographical details from several years before that) chronicle a fictional love triangle involving Hughes (Beatty), a virginal but calculating young beauty he’s grooming for stardom (Lily Collins), and the assistant, then his chauffeur. Beatty’s vision of showbiz corruption is hardly novel, but as a writer and actor, he’s created the most wistful and complex portrait of Hughes I’ve ever seen. —J.R. JONES PG-13, 127 min. Century 12 and CineArts 6, Showplace 14 Galewood Crossings

SPECIAL EVENTS The Last Laugh Directed by Ferne Pearlstein, this documentary looks at the limits of humor in addressing the Holocaust. With Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, Louis CK, Joan Rivers, and Chris Rock. 88 min. Screens as part of a preview for the Music Box’s “Doc10” documentary festival. Thu 12/1, 7:15 PM. Music Box v

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PATRONS OF Humboldt House—Cla ire Tibbs’s vintage-modern home store along the California corridor, between Division and Augusta—and visitors to “the Beach House”—her own Humboldt Park abode, so-named because of its location on Beach Avenue—are likely to discover similar things upon crossing either threshold. For one, the 29-year-old businesswoman and home owner has a well-defined interior design style. Both spaces are appointed with vintage leather sofas, Turkish kilim pillows, Acapulco chairs, geometric mirrors, and friend-made ceramics—many with a boob theme. (“There are boobs everywhere!” Tibbs says.)

For another, she has a particular knack for creating environments that are warm and inviting rather than sleek and showroom-y: “[I] like things to be well made and for the design to speak for itself and to speak strongly . . . but I also want a [space] that’s comfortable, and I want things to look like people live there,” she says. Her pit bulls, three-year-old Lady Bird and nine-month-old Squid, are right at home in both places. And she hopes patrons, guests,

friends, and roommates (she rents out the Beach House’s two downstairs bedrooms) feel the same.

“I have always been a collector of vintage and enjoy the hunt and the find,” explains Tibbs, who worked in the art world and restaurant industry before opening her shop in 2013. “But I like finding special things and sharing them with other people.”

During a recent tour of her residence—a two-story cottage, painted gray with a teal door—the concept of sharing came up a lot.

Atop the stairs on the second floor, a cozy guest room welcomes folks who need to crash for the night. Just beyond that is Tibbs’s bright and airy master suite, featuring a vaulted ceiling, exposed beams, a midcentury-modern fireplace, and a seating area for friends to gather. “Most of my friends have keys. A lot of my friends are here when I’m not,” Tibbs says.

“It’s a really active house.”

She bought the place three years ago, attracted by its location (only about a mile from Humboldt House), outdoor spaces, and the opportunities it presented for entertaining.

“I thought I was looking for a fixer-upper, and then you learn what that could mean,” she says with a laugh. The Beach House didn’t require a gut rehab, but Tibbs has tackled several substantial projects since moving in: taking down walls, stripping away faux finishings (“sponge paint, hot glue, fabric in strange places”). She even has a souvenir to show for her efforts: while demolishing the sunroom with a crowbar, she fell into a nail and now has a new dimple in her cheek.

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Ç Take a video tour of Claire Tibbs’s Beach House at chicagoreader.com/space.

Opposite: Claire Tibbs’s bedroom in what she’s dubbed “the Beach House” This page: Tibbs and one of her pit bulls; the sun room; a flowerpot is among the many boob-themed ceramics o KERRI PANG

Among her most beloved items in the house are a sofa set by Brazilian designer Percival Lafer, Moroccan rugs (“I have certain rugs—you just look at them and want to weep”), and various pieces by some of the 100-plus Chicago-based artists carried in

the shop: paintings, candles, wall hangings, various boob-adorned vessels . . .

“Humboldt House is always full of people I know and love and things I know and love,” Tibbs says. “That’s what I like about this house too.” —LAURA PEARSON

NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 9

Next stop: Trumpsportation The CTA is hustling to line up federal funding for the Red and Purple Modernization project before Trump takes office. o CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY

As Chicago panics over Trump, Rahm effectively raises taxes for the Red Line revamp

By BEN JORAVSKY

W

hile much of the country was losing its collective mind over the prospect of a President Trump, Chicago’s City Council unanimously passed Mayor Emanuel’s budget.

After the November 16 vote, the mayor and aldermen congratulated themselves for not raising property taxes in next year’s budget, at least not over and above the millions they’d raised earlier in the year.

Meanwhile, another proposal was swiftly flying through a separate approval process.

And this one amounts to a $625 million property tax increase the mayor plans to use to re-

10 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

build portions of the Red and Purple Lines and construct the Belmont Flyover (which would allow the Brown Line to bypass Red Line tracks as it pulls into the Belmont station).

So how can the mayor and aldermen say they’re not raising property taxes when actually they’re about to do just that?

Because the Red Line project will be paid for in part with a TIF. And the city’s official line on TIFs is that they don’t raise property taxes.

Even though they do.

Yes, dear readers, I’m writing a TIF story.

Consider it a sign that my horror over the presidential election is becoming more manageable.

Now, I know you’re thinking: Hey, man, don’t we live in a post-TIF world? That is, how can I write about something as humdrum as tax increment financing when our country’s in the hands of a pussy-grabbing bully who’s being cheered on by white supremacists?

Good question. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I have a good answer.

It reminds me of that scene in the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall where nine-year-old Alvy Singer is taken to the family physician, Dr. Flicker, by his anxiety-ridden mother.

Having read somewhere that the universe is “constantly expanding,” young Alvy’s concluded that one day it will explode.

“He stopped doing his homework,” his mother says.

“What’s the point?” Alvy responds.

“What’s the universe got to do with it?” exclaims the mother. “You’re here in Brooklyn.

Brooklyn is not expanding.”

Mrs. Singer has a good point. My takeaway

is that just because Trump is frightening doesn’t mean I should stop doing my homework and let Rahm get away with his machinations. In fact, I suspect that Trump’s election may encourage more mayoral chicanery.

Recall, if you will, one of Emanuel’s most famous lines, uttered when he was President Obama’s chief of staff: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

Since we all agree Trump’s election is a crisis—at least for most Chicagoans—we have to anticipate and examine the ways Rahm will try to exploit it.

Like the Red Line transit TIF. OK, it may not be as bad as Trump setting up his own kleptocracy, cutting deals to promote his hotels in India while interviewing candidates for secretary of state, but it’s still problematic.

The mayor’s rushing to pass the transit TIF in order to secure federal funding before Trump’s inaugurated January 20. Emanuel’s logic is that there’s a good chance Trump may deny funding requests from a city he apparently hates because we took down that honorary sign we never should have put up in the first place. Oh yeah, and for promising to protect immigrants. (For more on how Chicago transportation could be affected by a Trump presidency, see Greenfield, opposite page.)

Though, now that I think about it, over the weekend Trump met with Ari Emanuel, the mayor’s brother and Trump’s old agent.

Trump even called Ari the “king of Hollywood” once. So maybe we’ll get our funding from President Trump, so long as we go through Ari. Anyway, the transit TIF—a variation on a regular TIF—was passed by the Illinois General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Rauner over the summer. Apparently, TIFs are one of the few things Rauner and house speaker Mike Madigan agree on.

Originally, TIFs were intended to subsidize privately owned, property-tax-paying projects—like shopping malls—in low-income, blighted communities.

The transit TIF does away with any pretense of having to finance tax-producing, privately owned developments in blighted communities. Indeed, the new state law stipulates that transit TIF districts can be used in communities that are benefiting from “investment by private enterprise,” i.e., more well-off neighborhoods.

That’s how the mayor’s able to use transit

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CITY LIFE TIF funds in an area that spans from Devon to Division and roughly from Southport to Broadway. This area includes portions of such unblighted north-side neighborhoods as the Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, and Lakeview.

The money will help pay for the first phase of the Red and Purple Modernization Program, which includes repairing tracks, rebuilding four stations, and constructing the aforementioned flyover.

Altogether, the project will cost $2.1 billion, of which $625 million will come from the transit TIF. Now I’ve reached the painful point of my column where I have no choice but to explain how this TIF will work.

Typically when a TIF is created, it freezes the amount of property taxes taxing bodies—like the schools, the parks, and the city—can take from the area for up to 24 years. As the property values within it rise, the additional taxes that property owners pay because of rising property values get diverted to the TIF. A transit TIF exempts the schools from this process, so CPS will continue to get all of the property taxes it’s got coming from the property inside the Red Line TIF district. A transit TIF is also good for up to 35 years.

But the city, county, and parks won’t get the tax dollars they’d otherwise get from this area. That means that when the mayor looks to spend more money to pay for something like hiring police, he’ll likely have to raise property taxes to compensate for the money he’s not getting from this TIF district over the next threeplus decades.

Like I said, it amounts to a tax hike, folks—just like all TIF districts.

Now, personally, I don’t have a problem with raising property taxes to build new train stations or fix the tracks.

However, I do have serious reservations about the Belmont Flyover, as I’ve explained before. But it looks as though it’s coming, no questions asked or answered, thanks to the Trump crisis.

Clever guy, our mayor. We owe it to ourselves to watch what he’s up to, no matter how frightened we may be of Presidentelect Trump. v

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

Transit and biking will likely lose funding, but some say Trump’s infrastructure plan has merit

By JOHN GREENFIELD

T

he election of Donald Trump was a sad day for those of us who want to see the U.S. move toward a more efficient, healthy, and equitable transportation system. It seems like a foregone conclusion that, with Republicans in control, our country is going to become only more car dependent. The party’s 2016 platform calls for eliminating federal funding for Amtrak, mass transit, bike-share programs, trails, and sidewalks—basically any kind of ground transportation that doesn’t involve cars or trucks.

Within days of winning the election, Trump was already threatening Chicago’s roughly $1 billion in overall annual federal funding by promising to cut funds to all “sanctuary cities” that protect undocumented immigrants from deportation. To make matters worse, the president-elect picked road-industry lobbyist Martin Whitmer to lead his “transportation and infrastructure” transition team. And former Reason Foundation analyst Shirley Ybarra, a toll-road champion who has called for defunding transit, is in charge of finding the next U.S. transportation secretary and may be in the running herself.

Under the Obama administration, our city won many federal grants and loans for CTA track and station improvements, as well as bike and pedestrian projects like the Divvy system, the Bloomingdale Trail, and the Chicago Riverwalk extension. But regime change will force advocates to shift from progress to defense, says SRAM Cycling Fund director Randy Neufeld.

“We will move from growing the bike, pedestrian, and transit shares of [transportation funding] to fighting to hang on to eligibility for these modes,” Neufeld says. “Treading water is the best we can do. We may drown.

Cities will be punished at every opportunity.”

(This may be why the CTA is hustling to line up about $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Red and Purple Modernization project before

Obama leaves office. For more on that, see Joravsky, opposite page.)

Despite these threats, some transportation boosters are eyeing at least one of of Trump’s campaign promises hopefully. Trump has proposed to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure over the next ten years.

“We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals,” he said. “We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none.”

The need for infrastructure investments is “undeniable,” says Metropolitan Planning Council president MarySue Barrett. “The U.S. has underinvested in infrastructure for decades.”

Some prominent Democrats in Congress, such as House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and New York senator Chuck Schumer, say they’re willing to work with Trump on infrastructure. Illinois Democratic representatives Mike Quigley and Dan Lipinski have said that the new president may even have better luck passing a major infrastructure bill than Obama did, because he’ll have a Republicancontrolled Congress.

But putting together the funding for such a plan could be challenging.

“I doubt [Trump] can convince Congress to raise taxes to fund . . . anywhere near [$1 trillion], if at all,” says former Regional Transportation Authority chief Steve Schlickman.

The Trump campaign released a policy paper last month that proposed paying for much of the plan via public-private partnerships (P3s), and using tax credits and other incentives to attract private investors. But this model would work only for infrastructure projects that could potentially generate profits, Schlickman notes, such as toll roads. Nontolled roads or public transit lines don’t fit this model because they’re generally not moneymakers.

And while P3 toll roads tend to be profitable for the construction firms and financial services companies involved, they’re usually bad deals for taxpayers, Neufeld argues. Governments typically give concessionaires public financing and/or a guarantee that they’ll recoup their money, which means taxpayers are on the hook in the event of a shortfall. Traffic and revenue projections for these toll roads are often overly optimistic, he adds, dooming projects to financial failure.

For example, four years ago private firms opened a $1.35 billion tollway between San Antonio and Austin, Texas, backed by a $430 million federal loan. The road recently went bankrupt after seeing only 30 percent of pre-

dicted traffic volumes.

There would be other significant drawbacks if Trump’s infrastructure plan focuses on building tollways. Ironically, constructing new highways—instead of fixing existing roads, rail lines, and water systems badly in need of attention—would actually make it harder to maintain the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure. And more highway expansion would only exacerbate our nation’s problems with car dependence, sprawl, and air pollution.

Then there’s this to consider: Even if we assume that a sensible infrastructure plan could be crafted, there’s an emerging debate about whether it’s ethical to cooperate with Trump at all under present circumstances.

The president-elect has called for mass deportations of immigrants, a ban on Muslims entering the country, wide-scale racial profiling by police, “punishing” women who have abortions, and other deeply disturbing policies. If Democrats negotiate with Trump on infrastructure and other nuts-and-bolts issues, would that represent pragmatism or a deal with the devil?

Streetsblog New York’s Ben Fried recently argued that it would be the latter. “There is no moral basis for collaboration on Trump’s infrastructure agenda—because enabling any aspect of the Trump policy platform will grease the skids for enacting the entire Trump worldview,” Fried wrote. “No piece of infrastructure is worth that risk.”

On the opposite side, Jacky Grimshaw, vice president of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, argues that it would be unwise for politicians and advocates to oppose Trump’s infrastructure plan, if it’s fiscally sound and benefits the majority of Americans.

“We don’t agree with Trump being a misogynist or a xenophobe, and if he says he’s going to deport millions of people we should stand up and protest and fight it,” Grimshaw says.

“But to the extent that he says he wants to fix our crumbling infrastructure, I applaud him.”

I respect Grimshaw’s point of view, but now that it looks like Trump’s cabinet and advisers will be a horror show of climate-change deniers, union busters, Islamophobes, and white supremacists, I’m starting to favor Fried’s philosophy. At this point I’m less concerned about funding CTA track reconstruction than doing whatever it takes to keep our government from going completely off the rails. v

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

NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 11

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Read Derrick Clifton’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.

CITY LIFE Trump hold the child of a supporter at an October rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin. o TASOS KATOPODIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

IDENTITY & CULTURE

Raw deal

Donald Trump’s “new deal” for black communities

By DERRICK CLIFTON

D

id you know that Trump has a ten-point plan to help AfricanAmericans? ¶ I’ll bet that’s a no.

Trump’s “new deal” for black America includes promises of jobs associated with infrastructure investment, “protection” from illegal immigration, his usual rhetoric on law and order, tax holidays for business investment in “inner cities,” and changing the country’s approach to trade deals.

Maybe you haven’t heard about this because Trump’s transition team didn’t push this policy platform directly to the likes of NBC, or even the “failing” New York Times, as he likes to call the paper. Instead, they sent it to MediaTakeOut.com, a black community-centered gossip blog the contents of which are one step below the sometimes-newsy reporting of TMZ and one step above the brazenly ratchet brawls on World Star Hip Hop. That is to say, MediaTakeOut isn’t a destination for anyone hoping to stay up on politics. But perhaps since the site bills itself as the “most read urban website in the world,” Trump’s transition team thought it’d be best to send it their way.

Still, the choice of outlet is just downright laughable. Literally. When I mentioned MediaTakeOut during a phone call with a representative of a Chicago-based community group, I elicited a laugh so contagious that we

had to pause and marvel at the sheer absurdity of the choice.

As for the plan itself, it’s actually based on campaign remarks Trump delivered in Charlotte in late October. I’ll get to what’s in the plan in a minute. But here again, the choice of venue was telling of the Trump campaign’s cluelessness. That speech didn’t take place at, say, a black church, nor was it shared with a mostly black crowd, nor was it conveyed in a sit-down meeting with black publications of record, such as Ebony or the Root.

Rather, as the Charlotte Observer reports, this was a message shared—yet again—to a predominantly white, invitation-only audience. Indeed, it’s part of a pattern. For all his talk about the troubles of black Chicago, for example, when Trump came to town, he visited only with Polish-American groups on the mostly white northwest side.

Now let’s talk about what’s actually in this ten-point plan.

This so-called “new deal” repackages and remixes campaign promises about the economy and policing in an attempt to sell a generic plan to this specific group of people. It includes Trump’s “America First” foreign policy to redirect money spent on building democracies abroad, and regulatory changes so that small businesses—including black-owned ones—have an easier time getting the credit they need.

But for all its sweeping economic populism, the platform does nothing to address the disproportionate killings of often-unarmed black people by police officers, the issue that’s been the biggest rallying cry of the Black Lives Matter movement since its inception. There’s no mention of scaling back mass incarceration. Trump doesn’t even promise to pick a Supreme Court justice who would ardently defend the civil rights of black people. And if one reads into his nomination for attorney general—Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, a man who in the 1980s was deemed too racist for a federal judgeship under President Reagan—it appears that Trump couldn’t care less about civil rights, even if his plan promises “equal treatment” under the law.

Trump swayed just 8 percent of black voters—his descriptions of “inner city” troubles were refreshing enough for some AfricanAmericans to have earned their support. I spoke to an elderly black woman at a Hyde Park precinct on election night whose eyes lit up and who broke into a smile as she told me how she’d never before seen a wealthy white businessman of Trump’s caliber specifically address the needs of black people.

Trump’s campaign was music to her ears.

But community leaders I spoke to this week say that to them his proposals are anything but.

“I find the ten-point plan insulting,” says Shari Runner, president and CEO of the Chicago Urban League. Although some people believe this is the first time they’ve seen a specific agenda for black Americans, “that’s not the agenda I want to see,” she says. “It feels very empty to me.”

Runner questioned the vagueness of the platform as well as its vapid references to institutions like the black church. “[Rebuilding infrastructure] benefits everyone across the board. We need jobs, but how many African-Americans will get jobs to build that infrastructure?” she asks. “The AfricanAmerican church is already strong. What is he going to do to make it stronger?”

Others felt the platform had more of the same old talk they’ve heard from conservative politicians in the past.

“I’m not sure what’s so ‘new’ about this deal,” says Katelyn Johnson, executive director of Action Now, an advocacy group that organizes in low-income black communities. “From

the ten points, what I got were false promises.

There were no specifics, and these items have historically hurt black communities.”

Specifically, Johnson points out the plan’s pledge to promote “school choice,” which she argues is just school privatization under another name. Members of Action Now have been organizing to promote the vitality of neighborhood public schools, and are still working towards consensus about how they’ll proceed in the wake of Trump’s election, Johnson says.

Action Now has also advocated for corporate accountability; the tax-cutting aspect of Trump’s plan doesn’t sound appealing to Johnson either.

“People in Chicago and Illinois have clearly stated that they want the rich and companies to pay their fair share,” she says, citing conversations she’s had around restructuring the tax system and imposing financial transaction taxes. “I think people have seen what privatization and toxic reforms have done for our communities, and they’re not buying it anymore.”

Both Johnson and Runner say that whatever Trump has proposed, their organizations will

“The African-American church is already strong.

What is he going to do to make it stronger?”

—Shari Runner, Chicago Urban League president

continue working on the front lines. They stressed the importance of working in coalitions with people and groups that share similar visions for what a diverse America could look like.

“We want to make sure everyone’s voice is heard . . . . It’s going to be very difficult for the country to heal right now, and we have to be very aware that this is not business as usual, and that this is not the new normal,” Runner says. “It is important to say that America wasn’t great back in the time when they think that it was—and we need to build moving forward instead of going backwards.” v

ß @DerrickClifton NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 13

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CITY LIFE

How would a ban on Muslim immigration affect the hundreds of thousands of Muslim Americans who are already here?

Well, it’s just one step to what could be next.

Trump also proposed “extreme vetting” of Muslims who already live here. I was born and raised in this country. What does that mean for me?

It’s criminalizing me, the same way black people and indigenous people have already been criminalized in this country. If the ban is enacted, what next? What happens to the Muslims who are now trapped here? We already have heightened surveillance, we already have entrapment.

Now what’s going to happen?

Hoda Katebi of the Council on American-Islamic Relations

Q&A

‘If the ban is enacted, what next?’

o DANIEL CHAE

Chicago Muslims brace themselves for a Trump presidency

By ROBIN AMER

D

onald Trump made his blood-curdling call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. So last week the Reader checked in with Hoda Katebi, communications coordinator for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, to see how her group—and the Chicago area’s 400,000-some Muslims—may be bracing for Trump’s presidency.

Does this political moment feel unprecedented to you, or does it feel all too familiar?

I can’t say we weren’t surprised. We were surprised. I was personally surprised that Trump won. But it didn’t come out of nowhere. A lot of us are people of color, immigrants, refugees—we’ve experienced multiple layers of institutionalized discrimination, surveillance, and violence. The election made people who were unaware of this deeply rooted racism and anti-Muslimism aware. It’s what we’ve been yelling this entire time, but no one has been listening. I think, finally, more privileged communities, white communities, are opening their eyes. But for a lot of us, it’s nothing new.

Hate crimes against Muslims jumped 67 percent last year, according to FBI data released last week. Postelection, we’re seeing reports from around the country of Muslims being attacked, harassed, and

threatened. Are you aware of any similar incidents in Chicago?

Yeah. It’s been fairly well documented. At UIUC a Muslim girl was threatened. There have been a lot of threats made. There’s been a lot of fear.

Can you talk about what the fears are?

Trump’s campaign has empowered people to commit hate crimes against Muslims with no repercussions. Now our social media, and my social media, have been filled with threats from Trump supporters saying, “Oh, just you wait until someone gets in office who won’t care about you anymore.”

Then, just from a political standpoint, the people who are possibly going to be added to Trump’s advisory team—[Stephen K.] Bannon and others—these are all people who have expressed anti-Muslim sentiment. So they are, on an institutional level, very frightening.

But also, Trump gets to decide the Supreme

Court justices. And on top of that, I think it’s 400 or 500 local judges across the country.

So these are the judges who, when there’s a civil rights case that we want to bring, they’re the ones making the verdict. This is very troubling for us. We think of the Supreme Court as the last resort, and if those justices are also rooted in white supremacy as much as Trump and his whole campaign is, things are not looking good for us from that standpoint.

Is Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration even legally possible? And if you fear it is, how will you mount a defense?

It’s possible, and it’s been done before. I wouldn’t even say that a ban on Muslims would be unprecedented. We’ve seen internment camps [for Japanese-Americans]. We’ve seen a ban on Jewish immigrants after World War II. A lot of law firms have reached out to us, and we’re building our network with law firms that have similar goals and values. Coalition building is a really big agenda point for us, because we know that Trump doesn’t only target Muslims. He targets women, immigrants, refugees—literally everyone who isn’t a cis straight white man. We know it’s not only our fight—it’s a collective struggle.

Can you talk about how Muslim women in particular are reacting right now?

On a personal level, we want more self-defense training for our community. I think self-defense is really important for women in general—the patriarchy is alive and well in this country.

On top of that, I think hijabi women are particularly vulnerable. I wear the hijab myself, and I think it’s important to have self-defense training if anything happened.

I know there are a lot of Facebook posts going around of allies saying they want to sit next to the hijabi woman on a bus, and while it’s an appreciated sentiment, it’s rooted in an Orientalizing and paternalistic point of view that sees Muslim women as weak and docile and unable to protect themselves. So I appreciate it, but I think support needs to come in a different way.

What advice do you have for non-Muslims who do want to show solidarity?

I think support needs to come in a different way. I think the people who are sharing those [Facebook posts] need to be talking to their racist aunts and uncles who voted for Trump and changing their mind-set. That’s what support and allyship look like.

Then I think it’s important to respond to the needs that have already been articulated.

Right now CAIR Chicago and other groups need monetary support. With privilege comes more access to jobs and resources and money, so it’s important to help facilitate the work of people of color monetarily. That’s a direct ask we’re making of our community and our allies.

I don’t know who asked them to put on a safety pin—it doesn’t necessarily help me in any way. I appreciate the sentiment, but that’s not how trust is built. “Trust” is a verb—it’s built through action. v

ß @rsamer NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 15

The made-in-Chicago

Shop hyperlocal this holiday season for everything from unorthodox games and Chicago-centric books to craft booze and high-design home goods.

By READER STAFF

Full house

Local artist Joe Mills’s playing cards, printed on casino-quality linen card stock, immortalize Chicago royalty. Among the two decks he’s made, Jordan, Ditka, and Daley (Richard J. in one deck, Richard M. in the other) are kings; Chaka Khan and Oprah are queens; Harold Washington and Muddy Waters are jacks; and Bill Murray, of course, is the joker. —JACK LADD $15 at shop.joemills.com.

Trump card

It’s sheer coincidence that Secret Hitler is launching as president-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office. The hidden-identity card game from the makers of Cards Against Humanity wasn’t originally meant as a commentary on contemporary politics but as a lighthearted exercise in bluffing—one that

16 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

doubles as a sobering lesson in paranoia and manipulation to help explain Hitler’s rise to power. Five to ten players are assigned roles as liberals or fascists or the Fuhrer himself; the fascists work stealthily as moles to install their strong-armed leader while the liberals try to discover which player is the Secret Hitler and assassinate him before he assumes power. If that concept itself sounds a little hard to stomach, the game comes with Secret Santa as well as Secret Trump stickers to modify the Nazi theme. —RYAN SMITH $30 at Amazon and Blackbox, secrethitler.com.

Between the lines

You can mock the craze for adult coloring books all you like, but you can’t deny that there’s something soothing about getting out a box of crayons and repetitively filling

in little boxes until you have a pretty picture. There’s also something soothing about admiring the beautiful city in which we live and showing it off to visitors—especially visitors who may have gotten skewed ideas about Chicago during the election season.

So here are two coloring books for stressedout Chicagophiles. Chris Arnold’s The Chicago Coloring Book has more of a flat perspective, while Towering Chicago includes three-dimensional streetscapes based on the work of photographer Katie Heupel.

—AIMEE LEVITT Chicago Coloring Book, $15.95 in bookstores throughout Chicago or through Agate Publishing at agatepublishing. com; Towering Chicago, $13.99 at Women & Children First, 5233 N.Clark, 773-769-9299, or through Towering Chicago at toweringchicago.com after 11/28.

Onward and upward with the A s Club

The Arts Club of Chicago helped to shape the modernist movement, and its halls have been used to present the works of a dizzying number of influential artists, writers, architects, dancers, and musicians. The institution caps off its centennial celebration with this splendid newly released coffee-table book, Arts Club of Chicago at 100: Art and Culture 1916-2016. —ISABEL OCHOA GOLD $45 at Arts Club of Chicago, 201 E. Ontario, or at press. uchicago.edu.

Ware wear

Pilsen’s Maybe Sunday Collective was founded by two School of the Art Institute of Chicago alums, Jason Guo and McKenzie Thompson. In honor of their alma mater’s 150th anni-

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versary last year, they created a line of unisex T-shirts featuring the work of four celebrated SAIC grads: Katherine Bernhardt, Brian Calvin, Zak Prekop, and—coolest of all—Chris Ware, who inspired a tee containing panels from his 2012 graphic novel Building Stories.

—ISA GIALLORENZO $25 at Maybe Sunday Collective, 1320 W. 18th St, 312-625-0798, maybesunday.us.

Everything is illuminated

The Maybe Sunday boutique creates custom neon signs in a variety of colors that include a simple image or a short word in a chosen font or a provided handwriting. Each piece—usually four to six inches in height—comes mounted on clear acyclic plastic and includes a transformer to light the sign. —ISA GIALLORENZO Starting at $300 at Maybe Sunday Collective,

1320 W. 18th, 312-625-0798, maybesunday.us.

G.O.A.T. candles

If there was something supernatural at play during the Cubs’ historic World Series comeback, my money’s on Lucky Mojo Cubs Winning Candles, sold by Bridgeport’s own apothecary, the Reverend Carolyn Hennes.

During the off-season, this pair of Santeria candles keeps that victory energy afloat for your own spiritual needs. Find a clear space in your mind. Light the red candle and unleash its power, then feel its growing manifestation.

Light the blue candle and feel the calm passage through any negative energy or curse; a gentle “shattering of a glass ceiling, if you will,” Hennes says. —ISABEL OCHOA GOLD $12 at Augustine’s Spiritual Boutique, 3327 S. Halsted, 773-843-1933.

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NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 17

MADE IN CHICAGO

continued from 17

Foul-weather fan

Is it possible to be nostalgic for something that isn’t even a distant memory? Since the existential crisis of Trump’s presidency descended upon Chicagoans, I can’t blame anyone who wants to rekindle the whitehot emotion of the previous week’s unthinkable event—the Cubs’ World Series win. Bae Cutler, aka the group of sports-loving artists headed by FeelTrip cofounder Dave Beltran, paid tribute to the Cubs’ historic run with a sweatshirt featuring an updated illustration of the classic cub holding pennants from the team’s World Series victories of yore. This throwback gear is a nice reminder of a moment when the joy that united a large portion of the city felt like it could crystallize— let’s hope that feeling can return soon. —LEOR GALIL $35-$40 at baecutler.bigcartel.com.

Straight-up now

From River North-based Gramovox, the Floating Record Vertical Turntable turns the experience of listening to records on its ear.

Designed to play vinyl at an 90-degree angle, the contraption—which has speakers built into the wood-veneer base—makes throwing on music a topic of party conversation.

—JACK LADD $499 at gramovox.com.

Numero uno

There’s something inauthentic about the typical gift certificate. Sure, it signifies some sort of treasure to come, but the card stock or plastic itself is impersonal. The Numero Group offers a more soulful option: a gift card in the form of a 45, redeemable for records and other merch from the Little Village-based archival label’s vast catalog. —ISABEL OCHOA GOLD $25-500 at Numero Factory Outlet, 2533 S. Troy, or at numerogroup.com/gift.

Soul cycle

Electronic producer and Still Music honcho Jerome Derradji rebooted his Past Due archival imprint to release Star Time, a box set compiling the recordings of obscure Chicago funk and soul musician Larry Dixon— plus all the odd bits he released through his vanity label, LAD Productions. Star Time is a bit shambolic in parts, but the roughness

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Deck your halls with one of these holiday wreaths made of fresh greens, floral accents, and succulents — an addition that will lift your spirits and fill your home with the fresh scent of holiday cheer. Order today at dirtybootsflowers.com/sendflowers/wreaths

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Perfect for the movie lover in your life! The Music Box hosts over 300 films & special events each year, including Special Guest Q&As, Movie Marathons, 80s Blockbusters, Sing-A-Longs, and more.

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S P E C I A L

18 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

A D V E R T I S I N G

S E C T I O N

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is part of its allure. When everything lines up right, such as with the nimble, sweet soul of the 1971 single “Next Time,” which Dixon recorded with the Soulful Spades, it’s easy to understand why collectors go mad for his music. —LEOR GALIL $19.99 for the double-CD set, $59.99 for the four-LP box set or ten seven-inch collection, itstillmusic.com/products/ larry-dixon-star-time.

squirrels are too cold to boisterously chirp at your window, it can be nice to have some sort of companion, even if that companion is a hydroponic herb in a jar. Modern Sprout’s Herb Essentials Garden Jar Set includes basil, parsley, mint—and the warmth of unconditional companionship. —ISABEL OCHOA GOLD $55 at Sprout Home Chicago, 745 N. Damen, 312226-5950, or at modsprout.com.

The flowering of technology

Wild and woolly

Maybe you have memories of hunting through the flower selections at the farmers’ market with your father, before triumphantly deciding upon a bunch of fragrant lilacs to bring home to your slumbering mother. Well, the new West Town-based start-up Flowers for Dreams, which donates a quarter of its profits to a local charity, offers subscriptions to regularly deliver bouquets to your slumbering mother, your slumbering beau, or perhaps your slumbering house cat. —ISABEL OCHOA GOLD $45 monthly, $90 biweekly, $180 weekly subscription; 1812 W. Hubbard, flowersfordreams.com.

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The perfect gift for any pet lover. Kate, the in-house illustrator, hand-draws each pet from a photo. The art is then digitized and a custom flashcard is created with your choice of mat color and frame finish. Order now at foursided.com/flashcard

Give the gift of Goodman Theatre this holiday season. Receive a FREE $20 gift certificate for every $100 in Goodman gift certificates purchased November 25 through December 25, 2016.

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Fan of Alexander Camelton, Lincoln Park Zoo’s Bactrian camel? What about Siku, the nine-foot-tall, 1,000-pound polar bear now inhabiting the just-opened Arctic Tundra habitat? Through the zoo’s adoption program, you can help support the care and feeding of these and other creatures, from lions, tigers, and meerkats to the (also new) African penguins and the Sichuan takin. Packages run $35, $45, and $55, the last of which comes with a plush toy in addition to the adoption certificate and photo included at all levels. A $115 option combines the deluxe adoption with a year’s membership to the zoo, which—pricelessly—remains free. —KATE SCHMIDT lpzoo. org/adopt-animal.

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TH E G IF T OF M USIC Give the gift of music. Tomorrow Never Knows Festival, a city-wide event, unites independent venues and gives rise to local indie artists & acclaimed national musicians and comedians. Get tickets at tnkfest.com

NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 19

Chamber Opera Chicago Presents Two One-Act Family Holiday Operas!

MADE IN CHICAGO

Gian Carlo Menotti’s

The 11th 10th anniversary of this treasured Chicago holiday tradition, perfect for all ages!

Direction by Francis Menotti, son of Gian Carlo, and Kyle Dougan.

Sung in English with Orchestra, featuring dancers from Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater.

Sunday, December 11 at 3:00pm • Sunday, December 18 at 3:00pm The Royal George Theatre, 1641 North Halsted Street, Chicago Paired with the world premiere of Victoria Bond’s new one-act children’s opera, The Miracle of Hanukkah!

“First rate.... The parting of mother & son at the work’s close was moving indeed.”

Richard Covello, NIB Foundation

Tickets ($10-$20) at the Royal George Box Office, 312.988.9000, or www.chamberoperachicago.org

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The beautiful thing about the first product from the new Ravenswood-based design collective Makokomo, the Ursli stool, is its simplicity. Made in Illinois and Indiana from American hardwoods and powder-coated steel, the piece is available in ash, charcoal, and oak finishes, with the option of a 24-inch or 30-inch height. Even those used to Ikea assembly can put together this stool with nothing more than a Phillips-head screwdriver. —JACK LADD $374-$429 at makokomodesign.com.

Hell-bent for leather

A versatile bag that looks as natural in the boardroom as it does at the barroom afterward, Defy’s Defender Workcase has space enough for a 15-inch laptop and plenty of paperwork. Made of calf leather from Horween in Bucktown, with heavy-duty quick-release buckles and a durable detachable strap, this is

a bag that only gets better with age. —JACK LADD $635 at Defy, 4527 N. Ravenswood, suite 105, 773-696-1138, defybags.com.

Fine-tooth combs

The alchemists at Chicago Comb Co. have transformed a dull, utilitarian object into a sleek little luxury item worthy of heirloom status—instead of cufflinks or a watch, give one of its combs to a grandson someday. Made from midwestern metal—stainless steel from Kentucky and titanium from Ohio—laser cut in the Austin neighborhood, and machine finished in a workshop just west of the Garfield Park Conservatory, these combs prove that buying local doesn’t mean sacrificing aesthetics. Also available: protective sheaths from Horween Leather Co., another Chicago manufacturing icon. —ROBIN AMER Combs $35 to $65, leather sheaths $25 to $79, custom engraving $15 at chicagocomb.com

’Tis the seasonings

Epic Spices has something like 15 Michelin stars—if you count all the restaurants it

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Find out about special holiday happenings at downtownevanston.org/holidays shopevanstonfortheholidays.com distributes to. With hundreds of spices and spice blends, many of which are processed in-house, there’s something for every cook at the little West Town storefront. This year encourage experimentation with a gift set packed with themed flavors: Roasting Flavors (garlic pepper, adobo marinade, roast chicken seasoning, beef roast seasoning), Flavors for Fish and Seafood (citrus pepper, seafood boil, Chesapeake Bay-style seasoning, garlic pepper), Winter Warmer (masala chai, decadent hot cocoa, Aztec spicy hot cocoa, mulling spice), and Grill and BBQ (spicy barbecue rub, smoky steak seasoning, Jamaican jerk marinade, steak and burger seasoning). —SUE KWONG $20-$35 at 1725 W. Chicago, 312-7336445, epicspices.com.

A neat concept

Whiskey and beer are both big right now, and Chicago Distilling Company aims to offer the best of both worlds. Earlier this year the Logan Square distillery launched a line of single-malt whiskeys made from the mash bills of various beers: dunkelweizen, stout, rauch-

bier, Belgian dark strong ale, and brown ale.

They’re sold individually in 375-milliliter bottles, but for the holidays the distillery has also released a gift pack of three 200-milliliter bottles (dunkel, stout, and rauchbier).

—JULIA THIEL $49.99 for the gift pack, $36.99 for individual bottles, at Chicago Distilling Company, 2359 N. Milwaukee, 872-206-2774, chicagodistilling.com.

Beery good

The beer-of-the-month club from local craft beer mecca the Beer Temple features eight to 12 bottles per month of varying sizes, often selected according to a theme. Past boxes have included verticals (bottles of the same beer from different years), single-hopped beers (each featuring a single hop so people can taste the differences in flavor from one type of hop to the next), and winners at the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup. —JULIA THIEL $55 per month with shipping, $35 per month for in-store pickup, threemonth minimum, the Beer Temple, 3185 N. Elston, 773-754-0907, craftbeertemple.com. v

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NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 21

ARTS & CULTURE

Walter Benn Michaels

LIT & POLITICS

The prophet of Democratic doom

UIC professor Walter Benn Michaels discusses how his controversial 2006 book The Trouble With Diversity anticipated the fall of Clintonism.

By RYAN SMITH

T

he 2016 presidential election may have transformed Walter Benn Michaels from pariah to prophet of doom.

In 2006, the University of Illinois at Chicago English professor published the polemic The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality, which makes the unpopular argument that liberalism’s singleminded obsession with diversity is a tool used by elites to distract from the greater evils of worker exploitation and economic inequality.

Michaels argues that social justice is perceived as served if the top classes at Ivy League colleges contain a percentage of women, black people, and Latinos proportionate to the population—ignoring the lack of opportunity for those who don’t go to college. Likewise, it’s considered a victory if minorities or women

become executives at Fortune 500 companies, whether or not workers at those companies are paid a living wage. In other words, liberals are OK with inequality so long as it’s diverse inequality. Diversity, according to Michaels, is the moral alibi for the excesses of the winnertake-all nature of capitalism. The Democrats’ emphasis on identity, he anticipated, would weaken the electoral viability of the party. (U. of C.-educated philosopher Richard Rorty made a similar and stunningly prescient prediction in his 1998 book Achieving Our Country.)

A decade later, Michaels’s ideas played out in the flesh during the Democratic primary. Bernie Sanders, a socialist like Michaels, put antibillionaire class politics and the redistribution of wealth at the forefront of his upstart campaign, while Hillary Clinton downplayed

22 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

economics in favor of antiracism: “Not everything is about an economic theory, right?” she famously said on the campaign trail. “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow . . . would that end racism?” The Clinton campaign’s focus on identity over inequality was enough to edge out Sanders in the primaries, but she lost the general election to Donald Trump. The shocking victory of a buffoonish demagogue who employed a combination of racist and populist economic rhetoric throughout his campaign has led to a lot of soul-searching on the left since November 8.

As a result, there have been calls for the demise of Clintonism and a growing feeling that Sanders’s socialist wing of the Democratic Party should be embraced. “A lethal fusion of economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating brought neoliberalism to its knees,” wrote Cornel West in a November 17 Guardian column headlined “Goodbye, American neoliberalism. A new era is here.” The headline of a recent opinion piece in the New York Times proclaimed “The End of Identity Liberalism.” The rising socialist left even has its own growing media sphere, with outspoken personalities like Glenn Greenwald and Fredrik deBoer, publications like Jacobin magazine (which recently held an issue-release event in Logan Square), and Chapo Trap House, a podcast about politics and media that’s on its way to becoming the Daily Show of left politics.

Still, Michaels, who updated The Trouble With Diversity with an afterword for the just-released tenth-anniversary edition, isn’t optimistic that a new left will emerge during the Trump era to replace the so-called identitarian left. “Someday, but not in my lifetime,” says the 68-year-old. “I don’t have a lot of faith in the [millennial generation].”

In his UIC office recently, Michaels reflected on the legacy of his book and what it means in the aftermath of the presidential election.

What kind of response has The Trouble With Diversity gotten over the last decade?

THE TROUBLE WITH DIVERSITY: HOW WE LEARNED TO LOVE IDENTITY AND IGNORE INEQUALITY

by Walter Benn Michaels

The primary reaction has been a lot of disapproval, especially from what I didn’t yet know to call the neoliberal left. The book is essentially an attack on them, and it’s not a superpopular book among college professors—though it is widely taught at colleges with the idea of “Well, let’s start some discussion here, because here’s a guy who is against diversity but who isn’t actually racist.” The other guys who are against diversity are.

On the other hand, someone told me they’d just discovered the book last week, and now it reads like a prophecy. When I was writing that book in 2004 and 2005, inequality was high, but no one was paying attention to it like they have since.

It wasn’t on anyone’s front page, and data was lacking. Now every time [economists] Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty put out a new report on inequality, it’s on the front page of the New York Times. There’s a lot more awareness of it, and the Great Recession intensified that.

However, it’s very striking that our politics haven’t changed a lot. Our politics are very much still neoliberal left, very geared to antiracism, antisexism, antihomophobia, antidiscrimination in general. The most recent presidential campaign is a pure example of that.

Could you elaborate on that?

The Democratic primary produced a version of this philosophic split.

Some people complained about the book—with some justice — that it’s one-note about economic inequality and redistribution. Sanders got a lot of those same criticisms—that he only had one message. Now, as you saw by the end of the campaign when he was giving a stump speech, everyone in the room knew it by heart and were chanting it. That’s not a bad thing.

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ARTS & CULTURE That’s called organizing people. If you’re in a position where people know what you stand for on the issues, then they’re not confused and they’re there exactly because they know what you stand for.

For Clinton? Well, there’s a famous moment in the campaign where she said, “Will bringing down the banks end racism? No. Will bringing down the banks end sexism? No.” So the commitment at the core of the neoliberal left is a commitment to antidiscrimination. But it’s obvious that you cannot build a working-class movement with a commitment to antidiscrimination.

That doesn’t mean discrimination is right, of course—it’s wrong and we should oppose it. But you can’t build a working-class movement with that kind of campaign, because they’re not the victims of discrimination, they’re the victims of exploitation. If you keep telling them the problem is discrimination, what you’re actually telling them is, “We don’t want to get rid of inequality, we want to legitimize it.” It’s to say, “Look, if you’re poor because you’re a victim of racism, sexism, homophobia—that’s a problem because it’s an inequality of opportunity. But if you’re not a victim of one of those things, fuck you.”

That’s the core of the antidiscriminatory ethic in our politics. They don’t contain a critique of class or class structure—they make sure the class structure is fair. Of course, I think the Democrats have a better version of policy by far. The election of Trump was a catastrophe, but I don’t think anyone on the left thought Clinton was going to build a working-class movement—Sanders was the best shot at it.

Clinton also didn’t offer many policy solutions that would actually help stop systemic racism. It was more opposition to Trump’s brand of overt racism rather than offering any clear goals.

I don’t think the Clinton campaign’s

“If the Democratic Party were to be truly the party of the working class, it would stop a core political message that basically says, ‘We’re richer than you poor white guys, and we’re morally superior.’ ” —Walter Benn Michaels

problem was that it wasn’t sufficiently antiracist. No doubt people can be more antiracist, but you can’t build a working-class movement on that. In the current practical moment, half the people the [Clinton campaign] accused of being racist are people who should be voting for the Democratic Party.

The percentage of the vote from the working class and poor people—let’s say making under $50,000 a year—has declined over the years in a very strong way. Clinton did get a majority of those making under $30,000, but a very small majority.

Way, way below Obama and Gore. If you look at it, the Democratic Party gets rich people and poor people to vote for it. But if the Democratic Party were to be truly the party of the working class, it would stop a core political message that basically says, “We’re richer than you poor white guys, and we’re morally superior.” It’s not a surprise that it’s not a way to win hearts and minds.

For forever, rich people have liked to think of themselves as richer and morally superior to poor people. To try to make a political project out of that in a democracy is hard. It was this thing among the Democrats this year: “It’s bullshit to attribute the rise of Trump to the economic stuff among the working class. The real issue is their racism.” I have no doubts that a lot of Trump supporters are racist. But racism doesn’t come from nowhere.

Racism isn’t like some kind of moral failing; there’s a political economy behind it. When people attempt to think about what’s caused their own economic situation, they get a bad diagnosis of it.

As racism and antidiscrimination have become more central to the moral compass of the country, what you get is an increasing number of white people who are committed and convinced that they’re the victims of racism. Among Republicans, it’s something like the majority of them who think they’re the primary victims of racism. There are two

ways to look at that. One is that it’s not true. Let me be clear, I know perfectly fucking well that white people are not the victims of racism.

They’re not the primary, secondary, or even the tertiary victims of racism. But in a world where racism is a central issue, people begin to understand their own genuine victimization through that lens.

White people are indeed victimized—they’re the largest group of poor people, the largest group of people on welfare, and group below the poverty level in this country.

Those people begin to think, yeah, racism is the problem. That’s why what we’ve seen emerge during this Trump campaign is a white identity politics, in which white people go around thinking of themselves as aggrieved, as victims—not because of black people’s prejudice against them but rather the government’s, which prefers other groups.

It’s a mistaken view, but a standard view. But then the response on the so-called left is just to go, “Racists!”

That doesn’t change people’s minds.

You’re not trying to organize them, you’re just scapegoating. Scapegoating people is a bad idea when they’re in the majority and you’re in the minority. It’s one thing if you’re scapegoating 10 percent of the population, but you’re scapegoating a very large part of the population.

So as an electoral policy, it doesn’t seem wise.

The white working class hasn’t been provided this perspective or the vocabulary of exploitation against them. They get further exploited by Fox News, Breitbart, and the conservative media— which focuses on the racial and culture wars.

Yeah, there’s a very good book [Racecraft] written about that by African-American sisters, Barbara and Karen Fields, and one of their central points is that one of the central functions of race in the last half century has been to empty the

vocabulary of victimization so that people don’t know what it means to be victimized or exploited because of their class position. Poor white people are indeed victimized and exploited in our society, but they have no way of understanding that except to say they’re the victims of racism. A political organization for me would be to actually instill a class perspective in everyone, and that’s what left organizations should be, but that’s not what they have been.

Why does discrimination have to be mutually exclusive? Can’t the left focus on an agenda of both antiracism and antiexploitation?

I haven’t had a single discussion about this book without getting that question. I want to say, “Yeah, of course we can have both.” But if you look at the last half century, you see economic inequality growing basically every single year, while we’ve had real success in reducing discrimination. When I wrote this book, there was no such thing as same-sex marriage. Now there is. Ten years ago, if you told me we’d have a black president, I’d say, “You’re out of your fucking mind.” Since I wrote that book, there’s been continued attention on racial and gender and sexual discrimination—while economic exploitation and inequality has continued apace. There’s been more talk about it, but with few exceptions very little effort to do anything about it or even a sense of what to do about it.

Surely it’s not going to get better under the Trump administration. So it’s like, yeah, you can do both, but the [millennial] generation can’t even understand social justice without thinking of racialization. If your main problem is discrimination, you’re in a very different world—a neoliberal world. It’s not as if people committed to the primacy of markets in our lives aren’t also committed to equal access to markets. Mortgages are a good J

NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 23

ARTS & CULTURE continued from 31 example. There definitely has been discrimination against black people in obtaining mortgages, and we should fight that. But if you’re a socialist and part of the real version of the left, is the real problem discrimination against people who can’t get mortgages, or should housing be a public good? If you wanted to make housing a public good, the fact that you couldn’t get a mortgage wouldn’t be a problem.

The minute you’re committed to the mortgage market, you’re committed to making that market more efficient and function more fairly.

That’s fine if you’re committed to neoliberal markets. If you’re committed to restoring public housing and making that, along with health care and education, a public good that everyone should have access to, it’s a different story. You have to think about what it means to be on the left. What it means to be on the liberal left is a commitment to making markets run more efficiently and more fairly. What it means to be on the socialist left is to be committed to the idea that we should to try to minimize markets and take essential things like housing, health care, and education and make it public.

That’s why when I go down to speak at the University of Chicago, it’s like talking in completely enemy territory. All those universities exist as private institutions and are committed to the things that make it possible to be fair and open private institutions, not to the idea of what they should be doing is public. Charter schools are part of the same deal.

What we’re talking about is a massive withdrawal of the state from its responsibility to serve the public good. What the neoliberal left is at the core is an attempt to make sure that as the state does that, that people have an equality of access to what’s left behind.

This is the passage that ends your book: “People say that economic and ideological issues put voters off, but half the population doesn’t

vote and most nonvoters are poor. It would be interesting to see how many of them showed up for elections that hinged on the meaning and importance of equality in America.” What did this election teach us about that?

I don’t know the numbers from the election, but from what I understand, the people that make under $30,000 once again didn’t appear to vote in large numbers. You have a lot of working-class people that don’t think there’s much at stake for them in voting. In theory, that’s not a problem for the GOP, but it is for Democrats—or would be if they were aiming for a working-class movement. It’s important to not turn the election into a morality test; it’s hard to get people to vote for you if they don’t see that they have some interest, something at stake.

If they’re convinced from the start that there’s nothing you’re going to do for them, then they’re not going to want to do anything for you.

It seems to me whatever comes out of this from the perspective of the left—it’s something that begins with the idea of taking the working class as you find it, not trying to sort out its morality. Find ways in which you can propose things to benefit them and show them their interests are in alliance with other members of the working class across race and gender lines. I mean, what good have the Democrats been to poor black people? Democrats have been great for the relatively small— but larger than it used to be—black middle class. But it’s not like things have gotten better for poor blacks over the last 30 years. Since deindustrialization in the 70s, things have gotten worse for them. And you keep saying, “It’s discrimination, it’s discrimination!” But the core of it is that there’s been nothing done for poor people of any race! And black people, being disproportionately poor, take the disproportionate brunt of the indifference to the working class and poor. If you

24 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

just do race-blind redistribution of wealth downwards, the people that will benefit most will be minorities.

Why? Because they’re disproportionately poor—there’s not even any math to it.

In your book you say that the redistribution doesn’t happen because so many liberals are obsessed with diversity and representation in the upper echelons of society.

It’s [considered] a mark of justice when you have the right proportions of people—women, minorities, et cetera—in the upper echelons. But that’s not a critique of the upper echelons. It’s true that women are vastly underrepresented as CEOs of American companies, but it’s also true that CEOs make an ungodly amount of money more than the average worker— something like 300 or 400 times as much. So what is social justice?

Making sure that instead of 5 percent of CEOs are women, 50 percent of them are part of the group making 400 times more than the average worker. Yay, feminism wins!

Social justice should say that whether the CEOs are men or women, they should make way less money and their workers should be making way more. If you have diversity politics, which is equal representation, it has nothing to do with redistribution of wealth.

Applying that to Clinton and Sanders—some of Clinton’s support stemmed from the trickledown effect her presidency could have on women versus Sanders, who would have potentially done more materially for a greater percentage of women.

The most creatively destructive politician in terms of the left of the last 30 years was Margaret Thatcher.

No one thinks that being a woman guarantees virtue, including no feminist. But why you’d care about

ing with us. Anyway, some version of that case may come back, and a Trump Supreme Court may rule that fair share—which is the way unions pay for themselves—is illegal. That will be a huge battle over the structures on which a real left could build on as opposed to running around in the city streets mad because Trump got elected.

whether or not a woman was president more than you’d care about someone who was actually committed to doing something about economic inequality is a mystery.

Except that you’re more committed to diversity rather than equality.

That part of the book is still true— how we learned to love diversity or identity. We haven’t stopped finding new ways to learn to love identity and ignore inequality. Or in this case, to be committed to a vision of inequality anchored to identity.

Doesn’t Bernie Sanders’s success give you hope that Democrats will reject neoliberalism and people will be more open to socialism while maintaining a commitment to antiracism?

The Sanders campaign was very antiracist. In the wake of the Trump catastrophe, it’s almost hard to remember. We’re in for a rough four years. But one of the few ways in which we could produce a true left is through unions—and one of the problems has been the deevolution of the unions, partly because the state has used very powerful weapons against them. Organizing could be much, much harder under a Trump administration.

It’s hard enough just to overcome legal obstacles. The Friedrichs [v.

California Teachers Association] case, which basically got decided in favor of public unions because Scalia died, proved that it’s possible there is a god. But then with Trump elected, maybe there isn’t a god after all. God might just be fuck-

Maybe Trump’s election will act as enough of a shock to the system that people will turn to more left politics as a welcome alternative to the failures of Clintonism.

I don’t know. I’m not a political scientist. Last week, half of what I heard was: “See, you were right, this will show the left that they have to do a class-based politics.” But the other half was, “See, this just shows us how racist this country really is! It’s the racism we have to overcome.” So if you go with the latter, then no, it’s not going to help the slightest bit. It’s just going to turn the left into what it wants to be— the moral czar of the country who says these people have the correct moral position, these people don’t, and we want to get rid of the people that don’t have the correct moral position. That kind of politics is doomed to failure.

In the ten years since you wrote the book, it’s interesting how certain academic terms have been—in some sense—stripped of their class connotations. “Privilege” is now a mainstream part of the nomenclature primarily as way to see racism and sexism instead of wealth or class.

A lot of the academic stuff comes out of the elite universities, and one of the things that make them elite is that they’re largely populated by rich kids. So what are the issues? At Harvard, Yale, and the U. of C. they’re beneficiaries of economic inequality. That’s what universities are for. They’re for putting

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ARTS & CULTURE people into positions where they can make a lot of money and gain power—many of them the children of those who make a lot of money and have a lot of power. What you get is an entire discourse of equality that is cut loose from the question of money. That’s the tyranny of the microaggression and various forms of privilege amongst people who all have a lot of money. That’s the cultivation of the safe space. The U. of C. is a perfect example. You had the dean with his famous letter saying, “This is not a safe space, we want a fierce ideological debate. That’s what the University of Chicago is for.” But then you have a bunch of students saying, “This is not a safe space—gay people and trans people don’t feel safe here.”

But the thing is, the University of Chicago is one of the safest spaces in the whole world. You can’t get spaces much safer than elite university campuses. What you get is fantasies of unsafeness. You have administrators’ fantasies of unsafeness where you have the battle of ideas. Then you have the students’ fantasies: that there’s sexual, racial, and cultural privilege. People who are genuinely unsafe are the people who are not getting anywhere near the University of Chicago or Princeton or Yale.

The election this year was held on the same day of the French Revolution calendar as the coup of 18 Brumaire. Marx wrote a famous essay called The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon about it, in which he talked about how everything in history takes place twice—the first time is tragedy, the second time is farce.

Well, we’ve had tragedy, we’ve had farce, what comes after that?

To me, the whole discourse of microaggression and safe spaces is what comes after farce. It’s a pantomime performed of theorizing inequality among people who are the beneficiaries of the fundamental inequality and structures of our society. And it’s probably more useful to the right than the left. People

often say that having faculty and students of people of color is really important because they represent their people. But I don’t think there’s any poor white person or lower-middle-class person who see the rich kids at Harvard and think they’re there because they represent them. No, they think, These rich kids get to go to Harvard, and people like me don’t. When you see that kind of pantomime on campus, what you see is a fuck-you to everyone else that is suffering.

I was struck by a part of the book where you label the modern liberal as conservatives and Republicans as reactionaries.

Yeah, that was in the 2006 version.

The more sophisticated way of saying that now is to say liberals are like conservatives in that they wanted a better-functioning market.

They’re committed to the market ideology. Obama famously said, “I love markets!” and chose right-wing new-left Democrat Austan Goolsbee from the University of Chicago as his economic adviser. And he did totally love markets.

That’s how you’re a conservative: you love markets and want to improve them by making them more fair, more open, so they run more smoothly. Whereas the right-wing guys, they love markets but are also committed to racism or preserving whiteness or social values that matter more. So you’ve had liberals as conservatives and right-wingers as reactionaries. We have a complicated sense of how that works out now—it’s all up for grabs this minute. It’s ironic that six months ago we all thought the Republican Party was going to split apart. Now we think the Democratic Party will vanish tomorrow. What’s going to take its place? Who knows? But if there’s a way going forward for the left, it has to be committed to organizing a working-class party. v

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ARTS & CULTURE Armando Riesco, Alan Wilder, and Alana Arenas o MICHAEL BROSILOW

THEATER

Machiavellis of the underbelly

By JUSTIN HAYFORD

E

rika Sheffer’s The Fundamentals opens with a crafty one-two punch.

As the house lights dim, stock images of happy, indulgent people splash across a sweeping off-white wall adorned with nondescript high-end sconces.

“Happiness is a place,” a soothing disembodied voice intones. “Comfort is a destination.”

It soon becomes clear this audiovisual presentation, heavy on marketing hyperbole and inspirational vagaries, is a pitch for the high-end Wellington Hotel Properties. But it isn’t designed to lure customers, but rather to convince hotel employees that fealty to corporate “fundamentals”—resourcefulness, professionalism, courtesy, etc, will imbue their work hours with fulfillment bordering on religious ecstasy.

Then the wall divides in two, revealing a cruddy office: gray linoleum floor, decrepit mismatched desks and chairs, institutional storage shelving, piles of clutter, hateful lighting. This is Housekeeping, tucked away in the hotel’s inelegant bowels, where those lowest on Wellington’s corporate ladder teeter. In an instant one of the play’s main themes is laid bare: what we think we’re promised in life often bears little resemblance to what we get.

If everything in the script were as craftily executed as this opening minute, Sheffer

would have a hell of a play. Instead The Fundamentals is a terrifically uneven affair—given a terrifically acted Steppenwolf premiere under director Yasen Peyankov—by turns convincing and improbable, clever and creaky, focused and meandering. And while its attempted indictment of corporate culture doesn’t reach much beyond nice guys finish last, it ultimately offers enough high-stakes drama to earn its two-hour running time.

The play focuses on Millie, a first-generation American whose dreams of upward mobility ended with an unexpected pregnancy at age 19, leading her to forgo college and marry Lorenzo, her baby’s father. She’s spent the last nine years cleaning hotel rooms, and even got Lorenzo a hotel job in maintenance, all under the generous tutelage of rapidly aging Abe, whose avuncular management style marks him for extinction in Wellington’s cutthroat culture. To bring that point home, Sheffer introduces Eliza, a Teflon-coated upper-level manager who feeds off corporate blather with officious relish. Eliza’s getting heat from “upstairs” to cut costs, so it’s pretty clear somebody on Millie’s team will end up in the unemployment line before the evening is over.

Like the lion’s share of contemporary playwrights, Sheffer takes her sweet time before hinting that this particular episode in her

characters’ lives will be of meaningful consequence. She lets them dally through almost the entire first act, where they freely demonstrate their various concerns, quirks, and vulnerabilities without anything like a plot to get in their way. We learn it’s taken Millie nine years to consider improving her station at the hotel, recently applying for but losing the unaccountable “front desk liaison” position (she lost it to twentysomething Stellan, a self-absorbed actress wannabe). Still, Millie’s got her eye on management, encouraged by big-dreaming Lorenzo, whose groundless ambition (he’s gearing up to manufacture and market glammed-out $1,000 toothpicks) has run afoul of his gambling addiction. Meanwhile Abe has a deadbeat roommate he can’t evict and a nursing-home-bound mother he can’t comfort.

It’s all interesting and at times affecting, especially given the graceful performances of the top-shelf cast, but it’s nearly an hour before we get something more than a diorama.

That’s when Eliza, suddenly advised of Millie’s management ambitions, drops a game-changing hint: If Millie wants to show she’s got what it takes to move up, she needs to prove that friendships pale before profits. Perhaps she could keep an eye out for anything that might justify firing overpaid Abe. It’s a deliciously cynical twist that would do David Mamet proud. And in act two, Sheffer taps that cynical vein until it’s all but flooded the stage, with a slew of betrayals, recriminations, and double crosses that eviscerate any semblance of loyalty among the downtrodden. But it all comes in such a rush, necessarily squeezed into a single act, that it often feels more expedient than organic. And for every rigorously vetted plot turn—Abe’s wholly uncharacteristic yet wholly credible maneuver to get Millie fired is a marvel of dramatic ingenuity—there’s a stretch of pure writerly laziness. When Stellan faces termination for a serious infraction, she merely mentions her uncle’s an attorney and she’s instantly bulletproof.

Still, the intriguing outweighs the dutiful, and by the final reckoning Sheffer’s morally murky world has turned captivating and disturbing. While the unnecessary final scene lands with a thud, the play as a whole resonates deeply. v R THE FUNDAMENTALS Through 12/23: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM (no show Thu 11/24), Sat-Sun 3 and 7:30 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Upstairs Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $50-$82.

My sister says, “It’s hysterical!”

Wayland at the Tennis Center says,” It’s hilarious.” ...and JOEL, “LOVED it!”

Check out

Tales of the Lone Volunteer a 3’29” comedy film on YouTube http://youtu.be/ o2IS5yN9S4k

This film in not intended for mature audiences.

NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 27

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ARTS & CULTURE

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A less than orderly succession

By TONY ADLER

B

arring divine intervention, the 90-yearold reigning sovereign of the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth II, will eventually die, and her eldest son, Prince Charles (currently 68), will ascend the throne—assuming, of course, that he’s not also dead by then, which would be just his luck. In King Charles III, Brit playwright Mike Bartlett imagines a less than orderly succession.

In fact, it’s a cutthroat and ludicrous piece of business. Charles has yet to be officially crowned when his prime minister, the right fictitious Tristan Evans, asks him to sign a measure already passed by the House of Commons, stunting the power of the press.

The monarchy is so degraded that Charles’s signature is considered a formality—a ceremonial nod to an ancient institution. Much to everyone’s surprise, however, Charles resists, standing on (a) the moral argument that a free press is essential to democracy and (b) his three prerogatives as king: to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn. To everyone’s further surprise, he won’t back down. Though even his private love talk has been humiliatingly splashed all over the media (remember Tampongate?), Charles insists that Parliament reconsider the law.

Naturally, all hell breaks loose. No fan of royalty in the first place, Evans wants Charles’s refusal overridden. Charles, meanwhile, figures out that he’s got the power to dissolve

28 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

Parliament if he wants. The opposition leader does his double-talking best to turn events his way. And other Windsors make their moves— especially Charles’s daughter-in-law, Kate, the Lady Macbeth of the piece.

Macbeth isn’t the only Shakespearian resonance here. Bartlett makes seriocomic allusions to Hamlet, King Lear, Henry IV, Part 2, and maybe The Winter’s Tale as well.

What’s more, his language is pseudo-Elizabethan. But King Charles III owes less to the Bard than to Sophocles, as you can see if you catch the fine new Court Theatre production of Electra. Like the Mycenaean princess who won’t let go of her father’s murder, Bartlett’s Charles upholds a higher law in the face of business as usual. His is the story of the political dinosaur’s last stand.

Best known to American audiences as Sir Anthony Strallan from Downton Abbey, Robert Bathurst neatly embodies the dignified confusion of an honorable but crucially limited man who requires a hell of an awakening before he’ll understand his place in the world. He’s surrounded, in Gary Griffin’s well-paced staging, by an army of Chicago’s better actors. Amanda Drinkall, in particular, exudes a smooth ferocity, making herself at home in the rather retrograde role of manipulative Kate. David Lively’s opposition leader is like one of those rubber stress relievers: however hard you squeeze him, he pops back into shape. Jonathan Weir is a decorous hoot as Charles’s personal secretary. v R KING CHARLES III Through 1/15: times vary, see website, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, chicagoshakes.com, $58-$88.

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ARTS & CULTURE Peter Kim o SARAH LARSON

COMEDY

Peter Kim left Second City because of hate speech.

Why’d he return?

By BRIANNA WELLEN

O

n October 9, comedian Peter Kim left Second City’s E.T.C. revue show A Red Line Runs Through It. During the course of the evening, harmless heckling had turned into vitriolic hate speech directed at both the performers and the audience, and Kim had had enough. In a personal essay published by Chicago magazine he wrote: “Since September 2015, people in the audience have hurled increasingly racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments at me and my castmates: comments demeaning my Asian ethnicity, using the f-word to degrade my homosexuality, and shouting ‘whores’ at the women. But this time, [someone] was attacking another audience member, and that felt like a whole other level.”

Yet this month Kim’s returning to Second City. The reason: Crowd Sourced, a comedy showcase that relies completely on crowd work. Every week Kim and three guest comics have the opportunity to talk back.

“When people yell at us we really don’t have a chance to engage,” Kim told me while reflecting on the event nearly a month later.

“We do, but it kind of sacrifices the integrity of the show.”

It was important for Kim to return to the building where the incidents occurred. “I wanted to be in the same place where the same people might come so I could have a chance to talk back and shut down hecklers if they have hate speech,” he says. “I think the key story is that these hateful people

were out there anyway. It’s not specific to Second City—clearly, after the election you see them coming out in droves.”

Stand-ups begin the performance by joking around with the audience and playfully picking on people, but that approach has made a lot of the participants connect more seriously and emotionally. While Kim’s armed with a microphone and prepared to confront anyone in the crowd who turns to hate speech, the sets so far have turned into meaningful interactions wherein the performers and audience members open up about things they might not normally talk about.

Kim admits that, out of sadness and fear, he wasn’t feeling quite ready to take the stage on the Monday after the election (he blames the influx of hate speech at Second City on Donald Trump’s campaign and now his presidency). But that night stand-up Jonathan Euseppi used his time to talk to a member of the crowd (also named Jonathan) about how they were both overweight as kids. Kim says it’s one of his favorite moments of the show so far.

“Watching two men so politely and so lovingly connect on their weight issues felt amazing to watch, and I don’t know if [Euseppi] would have ever crafted that as a set,” Kim says. “He was just trying to connect with a fellow human being who happens to have the same issues as him.”

The performance’s November stretch at Second City is a test run for a concept that Kim hopes to continue elsewhere. He says that he knows that things in the world might get worse before they get better, but that the best way that he and other comics who feel unsafe can combat present-day circumstances is by taking control of the shows they’re in and not just ignoring or avoiding the problem.

“I’m triggered myself, and I’m still very scared,” Kim says. “Every time I get onstage I’m still very scared. I’m kind of almost asking for it because I want us to deal with it. It could get dangerous, but you know, I guess that’s kind of the thrill of live performance in general.” v R CROWD SOURCED Through 11/28, Wed 8:30 PM, Judy’s Beat Lounge, 230 W. North, secondcity.com, $10.

ß @BriannaWellen

“Set” at Volume Gallery o GEAN NORT/COURTESY VOLUME GALLERY

VISUAL ART

Game, ‘Set,’ match

By ISABEL OCHOA GOLD

W

hat’s in a set? The question’s so blunt that it doesn’t seem worth dwelling on. A theater director might think of a production’s set design, and move on. A mathematician might remember someone’s work in set theory, and move on. But architect and UIC professor Ania Jaworska won’t accept such simple answers. In her solo exhibit at Volume Gallery, “Set,” she implores her audience to pause and ask again: “No, what really is in a set?”

The show features eight objects. Each item consists of cylinders and slabs, all lacquered a slick black. Jaworska’s collection appears to be clear and crisp, free of ambiguities. Gradually, the ambiguities begin to emerge. Behind the black lacquer is not some uniform material— it’s wood, fiberglass, aluminum. Most cylinders stand erect, though some are bent into a shape that resembles macaroni noodles. Most slabs are stiff, but some, taking the form of cushions, are curled up, wrinkled, and folded.

Some of the pieces immediately register as furniture. The four cylinders that balance a slab with rounded edges are the legs of a table.

The four cylinders balancing one bent slab are the legs holding up the seat of a chair.

Certain objects’ functions are less apparent. In one work, a single slab balances 49 thin cylinders. More than domestic furniture,

it resembles a microscopic cross section of a freshly shorn cheek. (When I viewed the exhibit, the gallery owner wrapped one cylinder with a tape measure, then nodded and returned to his desk.) Eventually, and only with deliberate consideration, could anyone call this object a coffee table. Another flat surface is pierced by 13 scattered cylinders; it looks like something used to ward off evil spirits. I initially thought two cylindrical pillars served some symbolic purpose, like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But the gallery owner walked over, pointed to the surreptitious hinges, and opened the pillars to reveal black, lacquered shelves. “See?” he told me. “It’s a cabinet!” (The cylinders flashed from monolith to cabinet and back to monolith again. ) What’s in a set? Why does one object belong to the set of things called “a table”? What magical quality does this one item have that others lack? The moment Jaworska prompts her audience to ask these questions, the set she’s created expands the idea of what “a table” is. Leave the gallery space, and the door to the street now looks like a lacquered cylinder affixed to a slab. Step outside, and the floor that creaks under the weight of one’s legs becomes a slab that creaks under the weight of two cylinders. In “Set,” Jaworska hasn’t just created furniture, but a different way of viewing the world. v R “SET” Through 12/30: Tue-Sat, 11 AM-6PM, or by appointment, Volume Gallery, 845 W. Washington, third floor, 312-2248683, wvvolumes.com. F

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ARTS & CULTURE Q&A

o PATRICK L. PYSZKA

A conversation with new city arts czar Mark Kelly

By DEANNA ISAACS

A

fter three months on the job, the city’s new commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events sat down in his Cultural Center office to talk about how he got to his position and what’s coming up in 2017, Chicago’s Year of Public Art.

Do you have Chicago roots?

Born and bred on the south side. I went to Quigley South high school before [leaving for] John Carroll University, a Jesuit college.

Are you an artist?

I’m a percussionist. In college I actually had the honor of being a percussionist for an Allen Ginsberg happening. And for Hal Russell—I was the worst percussionist to ever play for a world-class player.

What was your college major?

Sociology, and I went on to grad school in counseling. My thesis in graduate school was on milieu therapy—the argument was that our environment shapes how we act.

And really, that idea ties in to my work in the cultural sector.

You were part of the Columbia College administration for more than three decades, ending as vice president for students.

What’s that got to do with this job?

I know the cultural landscape of Chicago and its creative industries, because I spent 32 years connecting our students to that landscape. But when I started at Columbia, it was a commuter college, with no student galleries or performance spaces for students. I was

30 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

the architect of the Manifest Urban Arts Festival, putting a spotlight on graduating-student work, and of the Wabash Arts Corridor, and the Muddy Waters mural, at Washington [and State].

The last thing I’ll mention about my background is the Halloween Gathering, which started two years ago. I was asked by the Cultural Mile Association to create an event that had an impact for the cultural life of the city, and I said, “Let’s do a procession that gathers together all of our creative communities.”

First year, we had 200,000 people.

Are you surprised to be here?

I had no intention of leaving Columbia. I thought I was going to die with my boots on.

But I got a call one night, was told I’m on the short list for commissioner. Was I interested?

Knowing the history of DCASE and knowing the legacy, in particular of Lois Weisberg, my knees began to shake and at the same time I said, “Hell, yes! I’m interested.”

When was that?

I started August 15, so it was several months before that.

Were you given a mandate?

To make this city more vital in its cultural and artistic life and support the entire ecosystem; and at the same time, strengthen DCASE. How? It wasn’t prescriptive. It’s bringing fresh eyes to everything we do. And respect what we’ve

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Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

ARTS & CULTURE accomplished, but don’t assume that what we’ve accomplished is necessarily what we do going forward.

Has there been a cut in DCASE funding?

We have the same budget going forward ($31,292,551).

Staff changes?

No. I’m working with the staff, and I’m pleased with who they are. We’re figuring out how we’re going to do the best work we can with the resources that we have.

So what changes will we see?

I think the Year of Public Art is a great example. The rubric is “50x50.” This is the 50th anniversary of the Picasso unveiling, one of the first public art pieces in the city that wasn’t built to memorialize or to honor, but was art for art’s sake. We forget, because it’s now become iconic, but I remember the cry about this meat-and-potatoes city and this alien object that has invaded it.

And then 50 years ago was also the anniversary of the Wall of Respect. So here’s a different form of public art, political art, at 43rd and Langley, long gone but highly impactful.

The other part of “50x50” is that public art is no longer for one special place or downtown—it’s going to be everywhere.

We’re going to match, up to $10,000, for any alderman who chooses to use some of their “menu money” to bring public art to his or her ward. Over 100 organizations are putting on their own year of public art programming, and we’re going to have a major event around the Picasso, unveiling it again.

At the Cultural Center we’ll have a retrospective of Latino mural art, an open call “50x50” show, with one artist representing each of the wards, and a show about the Wall of Respect. And 25 percent of the individual artists grant program for 2017 will be for artists working in the public art realm.

What’s the biggest challenge?

It’s hard for me to speak about a challenge because I just see opportunity right, left, and center. I’m a kid in a candy store. v

ß @DeannaIsaacs

Christine o NICOLA DOVE

MOVIES

Sad as hell

By J.R. JONES

O

n July 15, 1974, as President Nixon was being driven from office, a 29-year-old TV journalist in Sarasota, Florida, interrupted her morning talk show for a dramatic announcement. “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living color, we bring you another first,” Christine Chubbuck told her viewers.

“Attempted suicide.” She then pulled out a .38 revolver and shot herself in the back of the head. Chubbuck died 15 hours later, the first person ever to commit suicide on live TV and, according to popular myth, the inspiration for Howard Beale, the mad prophet of the airwaves, in Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976). A new drama, Christine, chronicles the last few weeks of Chubbuck’s life, with a heartrending performance from Rebecca Hall in the title role. Interviewed for the movie’s press notes, Hall is quick to connect Chubbuck to her era: “There’s this woman who’s in a state of nervous breakdown and there’s also a nation in a state of nervous breakdown. And it felt to me in many ways about America in the mid-70s as much as that one woman.”

That being the case, you might assume Christine to have special significance now, as a Nixonian figure ascends to the presidency,

catapulted to office by a sensationalist cable news culture. Yet the movie—written by Craig Shilowich, who has stuck pretty closely to the journalistic record—doesn’t hold much topical relevance. Like the TV series Mad Men, it can be revealing in its archaic framing of issues that still vex us (in this case, gender equality and the commercialization of news). But the heart of the movie is Hall’s incisive psychological portrait of the anguished young woman, who suffered from bipolar disorder and, to a lesser degree, professional stress and an arid personal life. Chubbuck may have turned her own death into a public spectacle, but Christine works best as a private story of someone terribly alone, isolated by sexual insecurity and using her broadcast personality as a social shield. No matter how much we might want to regard her as a symbol of her times, or ours, she is complex and irreducible.

Chubbuck had landed at WXLT in Sarasota after professional stints in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Saint Petersburg, and as host of the daily community-affairs show Suncoast Digest, she’d distinguished herself with tough, serious-minded interviews. This makes Chris the natural antagonist of her boss, Mike (Tracy Letts), news director for their low-rated and increasingly unprin- J

NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 31

ARTS & CULTURE continued from 31

“A MUST-SEE!” MARA REINSTEIN, US WEEKLY

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S C R E E N P L AY B Y T O M F O R D AMY ADAMS JAKE GYLLENHAAL

DIRECTED BY TOM FORD

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W H E N Y O U L O V E S O M E O N E Y O U C A N ’ T J U S T T H R O W I T A W AY VIOLENCE, MENACE, GRAPHIC NUDITY, AND LANGUAGE

© 2016 FADE TO BLACK PRODUCTIONS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ARTWORK: © 2016 FOCUS FEATURES LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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cipled station. “It’s a simple concept, guys—if it bleeds, it leads,” Mike tells his staff, dropping a slogan that was still fresh in 1974.

“There’s a reason this idea is catching fire in the culture right now.” Chris leads the charge against him, arguing that sensationalism will make their station a joke, but she’s also an ambitious woman—when she learns that the station’s owner (John Cullum) is looking to poach some talent for his bigger station in Baltimore, she buys a police radio and goes chasing after violent stories, landing a dramatic interview with a fire survivor. She’s an imperfect hero, but because of her sarcastic final words, uttered when she was out of her mind, one feels almost obliged to regard her demise as some sort of media critique.

Christine is more credible in treating Chubbuck’s frustrations as a working woman. “You know what your problem is, Chubbuck?” Mike asks Chris. “You’re a feminist. You think that the way to get ahead is by talking louder than the other guy. That’s the whole movement in a nut shell.” Remember, this is the Ron Burgundy era, when women in TV journalism were expected to show some leg, yet Hall captures the flat voice and mannish, intense demeanor that must have held Chubbuck back professionally.

Among the other woman at the station, she’s admired by a younger coworker, Jean (Maria Dizzia), but the breaks all go to the prettier, more vivacious, and decidedly less threatening Andrea (Kim Shaw). This part of the story hits harder than any critique of journalistic corruption, primarily because Chris’s relationships with men expose more of her private self and the demons that destroyed her.

Despite Hall’s cultural reading of the story, her real accomplishment is taking us deep inside a guarded personality: her giant eyes are like a pair of TV screens broadcasting Chris’s need, anxiety, and hopelessness. Chubbuck lived with her mother and older brother, and according to an August 1974 feature in the Washington Post, she had no close friends. “She was a strange combination of someone who at once wanted, needed desperately, the support and friendship of others and in another way rejected others out of a sense of defensive pride,” wrote reporter Sally Quinn. In the newsroom Chris can be a fierce combatant, slicing and dicing Mike, but a different person emerges during her volunteer shifts at a hospital for mentally disabled children, where she performs a series of gentle and disarmingly wise puppet shows. ssss EXCELLENT

sss GOOD

“I thought people were supposed to like me for who I am,” complains one of her characters, just after Chris has clashed with Mike. “They are,” replies her other character. “But you have to show them who you are. . . . You put on nice clothes and you wake up every day and you tell people who you are.”

More than anything else, sex isolates Chris from the rest of the world. According to the Post story, Chubbuck complained to anyone who would listen that she was still a virgin, yet she scared off men. Her inability to connect with the opposite sex tore at her, especially after she had an ovary removed and learned that she would be fertile for only a few more years. Christine dramatizes all these problems, as well as her romantic infatuation with another broadcaster at the station, and gives them a decidedly sinister tone. Director Antonio Campos has cited Hitchcock as an inspiration for the creepy scene in which Chris approaches two young lovers in a restaurant and invites them to tell their story on Suncoast Digest, her spiel growing ever more awkward as she betrays her envy of them.

Later, monitoring her police radio for breaking news, Chris is stunned when one officer tells another, “You wanna hear something on a happier note? I finally touched Marie’s pussy last night.” More alone than ever, Chris sits down on her bed, gripping the edge of the mattress as if she’s been punched in the gut.

Campos spends the entire movie leading up to Chris’s suicide, but once Hall disappears from the film, he and Shilowich are hardpressed for a conclusion. In the final scene, Chris’s coworker Jean tries to comfort herself with ice cream and TV, singing along to Sonny Curtis’s “Love Is All Around” from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. “You’re gonna make it after all,” Curtis croons, the cheap irony of the lyric compounded by our memory of Moore playing a sunny TV journalist. The scene feels like an inadequate response to the life that has just been lost. Chubbuck’s story may reflect the social chaos of the Watergate era, but the woman in Christine is too sick in the head to be used as a symbol of anything except her own misery. As portrayed by Hall, Christine Chubbuck is so alone that, in the end, all she can do is throw herself on her viewers’ mercy. v CHRISTINE sss Directed by Antonio Campos.

R, 120 min. Music Box, 3733 N. Southport, 773-8716604, musicboxtheatre.com, $11.

ß @JR_Jones

ss AVERAGE

s POOR

•

WORTHLESS

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Music gi©s you can actually wrap

Digital downloads haven’t yet driven box sets extinct—and this year the best include Paul Bowles’s Moroccan field recordings, vintage Ray Charles in mono, a 50-year NRBQ retrospective, and ten discs of foundational 40s bebop from Savoy Records.

By PETER MARGASAK

T

his is my fifth year rounding up box sets for the Reader’s gift guide, and during that time the music business in general—and the CD business in particular—has continued to decline. But music remains a gift that keeps on giving, and box sets are more fun to unwrap than digital downloads. Plus, instead of just taking up a bit of space on a hard drive, they can occupy prime real estate on your mantel, bookshelf, or, um, floor. Sadly, box sets increasingly seem to be little more than repackaging of widely available material—cash-ins that don’t cost record labels anything more than the materials used to produce them. But some labels will still invest the money and labor to make box sets that can help us approach familiar material in new ways or discover stuff we never knew existed, and the ten titles below do both. Physical media may be turning into a niche market in music, but these collections will feel good in the hands of the listeners in your life.

o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

MUSIC

VARIOUS ARTISTS Bobo Yéyé: Belle Époque in Upper Volta (Numero Group) $35 The Numero Group travels far afield from its comfort zone in soul and rock with this rich three-CD set, which compiles music from the first 25 years of postcolonial Burkina Faso— known as the Republic of Upper Volta till 1984.

The landlocked West African nation declared its independence from France in 1960 and, like many other African countries at the time, struggled to find its footing financially, but locally produced music became an important source of cultural pride.

Compared with that of neighboring Ghana, Mali, and the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso’s output was modest, and none of the groups featured here could be considered innovators or influencers. But Volta Jazz, Coulibaly Tidiani et L’Authentique Orchestre Dafra Star, and others built satisfying bodies of work, creating dynamic hybrids of Afro-Cuban music, funk, and native modes. The thick book that houses the CDs contains concise essays on the bands and some basic historical and cultural background, though nothing approaches the detail in the label’s previous multidisc sets— hardly surprising, considering the limitations imposed by geography, language barriers, and the lack of archival material in Burkina Faso.

The packaging makes up for this with a lovely array of album and single art and a large selection of photographs by Sory Sanlé, a cousin of Volta Jazz founder Idrissa Koné—both were key figures in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso, at

the time the nation’s cultural center due to its location at the original terminus of the Abidjan-Niger Railway. The dozens of beautifully reproduced black-and-white photos recall the look and aesthetic of work done around the same time in Mali by Malick Sidibé.

Stylish youth pose with prized possessions—a motorcycle, a radio, a musical instrument—in street clothes or elaborate costumes, either in front of a screen or an illustrated backdrop depicting an urban scene or the wheeled stairway leading up to a jet. Many other Sanlé shots depict the bands in performance, conveying the irresistible energy that helped them assert their postcolonial dreams and desires in the face of corruption and crushing odds.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Classic Savoy Be-Bop Sessions 1945-49 (Mosaic) $169

A couple years ago Mosaic Records assembled a superlative nine-disc box set of the paradigmshifting bebop released by tiny LA indie label Dial Records between 1945 and ’48, capturing the nascent days of the genre—including the first sides Charlie Parker cut as a leader.

While Blue Note famously released some of the earliest work from bebop pioneers Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, the other vital independent label chronicling the emerging revolution was Savoy Records, which thanks to the keen A&R instincts of Teddy Reig got on board in 1945 with a Dexter Gordon session.

The many sides Parker made for Savoy in the coming years aren’t included in this ten- J

NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 33

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continued from 33

Metal Machine Music doesn’t register as a classic to many—in fact, it infuriated most fans upon its release—its seething feedback and grinding noise laid the groundwork for industrial music and introduced avant-garde experimentation to unsuspecting record buyers.

I’m also a big fan of the two studio albums Reed made with guitarist Robert Quine—The Blue Mask in 1982 and Legendary Hearts in ’83—where a nimble band gives some of Reed’s most thoughtful and mature writing the crisp, hard-hitting, fat-free execution it required.

Other records are trickier, such as the notoriously depressive 1973 LP Berlin—a fuck-you to fans expecting a sequel to Transformer—and the sprawling 1978 double live album Take No Prisoners, dominated by acerbic banter between and during songs, with Reed lashing out at the audience and cracking interminable jokes.

Two live albums released by RCA—Lou Reed Live and Live in Italy—aren’t included here, presumably because they were mandated by the label rather than backed by Reed. None of the outtakes and bonus tracks from previous CD reissues appear either, likely for the same reason. The set comes with an envelope of reproductions of promotional eight-by-tens, a reprint of an RCA poster, and a hardbound 80page booklet full of rare photos, commentary, and ephemera from the singer’s archives.

disc set because they’ve been widely reissued elsewhere, but there’s no shortage of stuff to dig into. Savoy initially made its mark with R&B and gospel, but its bebop catalog arguably surpasses that material. The sessions collected here—deftly annotated in a 32-page booklet by longtime Reader writer Neil Tesser—include early work from some of the most towering figures in jazz history, who’d become stars of the strength of subsequent sides for Blue Note, Roost, and Capitol. Among the bandleaders are Stan Getz, Tadd Dameron, Leo Parker, Fats Navarro, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, J.J. Johnson, Brew Moore, and Howard McGhee (who, like Navarro and Gordon, cut his first sides for Dial).

The Savoy set covers a broader stylistic range than the Dial box, with many tracks that back off from the breakneck pace of much bebop.

Like the Dial box, it’s remastered by Steve Marlow and Chicagoan Jonathan Horwich, who used a digital technique called bit-density processing to add clarity and brightness to the horns and pianos and help eliminate surface noise—the unfortunate whooshing quality it imparts to the drums on some of the earliest material feels like a minor quibble.

LOU REED The RCA & Arista Album Collection (Sony Legacy) $199.98

34 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

ROLLING STONES The Rolling Stones in Mono (ABKCO) $166.10

o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

Few rock icons have achieved that status on the back of a solo career as erratic and uneven as Lou Reed’s. Granted, Reed was peerless in the Velvet Underground, but this new collection rounds up 16 albums he made after leaving that band in 1970, beginning with his eponymous 1972 debut for RCA and ending with his final mid-80s records for the label.

(He would experience one of his periodic rebirths with the 1989 release of New York, but he made that record for Sire.) Reed oversaw the remastering of the set shortly before his death in October 2013.

Of course, Reed’s reputation and genius are inextricably bound up with his contrariness— he reveled in ignoring the rules of the music business, and his solo records ping-pong between rock orthodoxy and bull-headed abstraction, stopping at many points between.

This set includes several undeniable classics, among them 1972’s Transformer, coproduced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson (who both played on it too), which includes three of his all-time best solo songs: “Walk on the Wild Side,” “Satellite of Love,” and “Vicious.” Though the 1975 double album

The trend of mono reissues continues with this comprehensive set collecting the music the Rolling Stones recorded before they formed their own label in 1971 to release Sticky Fingers. Like many popular British acts in the 60s, the Stones had their UK releases sliced and diced by American labels, so this 15-disc set includes UK and U.S. versions of three early albums that vary in track sequence and selection (and have slightly different covers).

Most folks won’t need both, just as most listeners probably won’t care if they have a stereo or mono release. But only the two latest albums in the set—Beggars Banquet from 1968 and Let It Bleed from 1969—were recorded in stereo. For the earlier records—as was the general practice at the time—engineers created simulated stereo versions for customers who preferred that format, and they were released alongside the mono versions. Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed were also released in mono, and those are the recordings you get here.

Because the bulk of this familiar music was made in mono, hearing it that way delivers a more accurate picture of what the band was doing, with a directness that after-the-fact stereo renderings typically compromised.

But that’s not to say it makes a dramatic difference. I’m reminded of my days working in a CD store, when digital recording technology was still new and a certain class of customer refused to buy albums that weren’t made that way—the sort of idiots who treat a stereo system like a sports car, privileging supposed sound quality over the quality of the music they listen to. You wouldn’t be wrong to prefer these mono releases, but what makes this stuff great is that it’s the Rolling Stones.

The set includes a 5,000-word David Fricke essay in his typically overripe prose, but the recordings sell themselves. The bite and snap of the remastering allow the minimal grace of Charlie Watts’s graceful, minimalist drumming, the snarling guitar fuzz, and Mick Jagger’s howl to sound more alive that they ever did in a fake stereo version.

FRANK SINATRA World on a String (UMe/Sinatra) $69.98 If you know anything about the importance of Frank Sinatra, you know about his global reach. He brought his own distinctive precision and originality to the art of phrasing, adding fresh nuances and wrinkles to the American songbook over the decades, and his career became an international phenomenon: this new four-disc set collects live performance recordings made between 1958 and 1982 on five different continents, nearly all of them previously unissued.

Shows taped in Monte Carlo in 1958 and Sydney, Australia, in 1961 capture Sinatra at his peak, breezing with preternatural ease through his classic Capitol Records repertoire—especially songs that from his great travel album Come Fly With Me, appropriate considering the locales. On the final disc, which includes concerts recorded in Egypt in 1979 (at the pyramids, no less) and in the Dominican Republic in 1982, Sinatra’s range is diminished and his timbre less velvety, but his phrasing remains impeccable, allowing him to work around those creeping limitations.

The liner notes devote a good deal of space to Sinatra’s charitable efforts—his 1962 world tour, for instance, raised money for underprivileged children in each of the countries he visited, among them Hong J

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MUSIC

Kong, Israel, Greece, Italy, France, and Japan.

The set includes a DVD featuring TV footage of the Tokyo concert, where the rather polite, impassive audience does little to demonstrate the fervor of Sinatra’s international fans—but he kills it from the first song, leading an efficient sextet that adapted his usual big-band arrangements for the tour.

The same DVD also includes a promotional film for his fund-raising campaign, a promo clip collecting highlights of the tour’s nine days in Israel, and a selection of commercials shot for his Italian dates—truncated versions of tunes played in a studio, with overdubbed Italian intros. It’s hard to argue with the scope and quality of this set—but it’s also hard to imagine anyone but the most obsessed fans of Ol’ Blue Eyes finding much use for it.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Music of Morocco: From the Library of Congress, Recorded by Paul Bowles, 1959 (Dust-to-Digital) $60

Paul Bowles famously served as the center of a circle of itinerant literary figures that gravitated to Morocco in the 50s and 60s, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Brion Gysin; he also set his famous 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky in Morocco. Bowles lived there for more than four decades, and he was obsessed with the country’s traditional music.

In 1957 he began a years-long effort to make field recordings of it, preserving sounds he felt would be lost as they were watered down by postcolonial nationalism. In 1959 he received funding from the Library of Congress, and for six grueling months he lugged a cumbersome Ampex tape machine around the country to document its vibrant folklore. Some of his recordings turned up on a two-LP set in 1972, but many weren’t released till this gorgeous four-CD set dropped in April.

As usual with releases from Dust-to-Digital, the packaging and annotation are sublime.

The CDs come in what could almost pass for a cigar box, except that it’s covered in beautiful foil stamps and mosaics, and a leatherettebound 120-page book contains detailed notes by ethnomusicologist Philip Schuyler, an essay by Lee Ranaldo, and Bowles’s original notes. But the music makes the set worth the price: though Bowles was a nonexpert, he had exceptional taste, and he recorded a sprawling array of arresting styles and sounds.

Bowles wanted to capture an end-blown reed flute called a qsbah by itself, but the in-

36 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

NRBQ High Noon: A 50-Year Retrospective (Omnivore) $69.98

strument didn’t occur that way in traditional Moroccan music—so he made up a story about the American government specifically requesting it. For the most part, though, he didn’t involve himself in the circumstances of a recording, instead allowing the players to do their own thing.

Cult band NRBQ have long deserved the career overview they receive on this fantastic five-disc set. Until recently the appeal of this veteran crew was something of a mystery to me, though their music sounds great on paper: rooted in good-time rock ’n’ roll, it’s slathered with pop, influenced by a longtime obsession with Sun Ra, soaked in R&B (which provides the middle two letters of their name—the first and last stand for “New” and “Quartet”), and spiked with silly humor (they’ve sung about pro wrestling manager Captain Lou Albano and written a song called “Wacky Tobacky”). But whenever I dug into NRBQ’s back catalog, it failed to measure up to what I’d heard about them. No doubt that’s partly because they’re celebrated for their infectious live shows, and that onstage energy has often failed to translate to the studio.

This masterfully curated collection has provided the breakthrough I’ve been searching for.

NRBQ have scored only one chart hit during their five-decade career—the 1974 single “Get That Gasoline Blues”—and that’s a bit mind-boggling given all the irresistible hooks here. Keyboardist and vocalist Terry Adams has been the sole remaining original member for many years, but before he put the band on ice in 2004 during a struggle with throat cancer, he spent decades working with guitarist Al Anderson (original guitarist Steve Ferguson left the group in the early 70s), bassist Joey Spampinato, and drummer Tom Ardolino. When Adams re-formed the group in 2005, the all-new lineup included Chicagoans Scott Ligon and Casey McDonough. The work they’ve done together— collected on the first disc of High Noon—carries on the NRBQ legacy without a hiccup.

RAY CHARLES The Atlantic Years: In Mono (Rhino) $119.98 I’m not about to get rid of my copy of the 2005 CD box set Pure Genius, which collects every live and studio recording Ray Charles waxed for Atlantic Records. But this new vinyl-only collection, which consists of beautifully remastered versions of all the studio albums the pianist, singer, and bandleader made for the label, might be the one I reach for more often.

When Charles signed with Atlantic in 1952, he hadn’t yet found his voice—he was essentially delivering a well-crafted imitation of the intimate urban piano blues of Charles Brown and the smooth trio jazz-pop of Nat “King” Cole. In his liner notes for the set, Charles biographer David Ritz explains that at first Atlantic wasn’t giving Charles good material to sing, so he started writing his own—a decision that inarguably altered the direction of American music. The sides he cut during his seven years at Atlantic—beginning with material recorded before he assembled his working band and began forging his powerful hybrid of post-Count Basie jazz, blues, and gospel— spell out that monumental accomplishment.

Early on, Atlantic marketed Charles alongside popular R&B singers such as Big Joe Turner and Ruth Brown, and his first LP for the label, a 1957 collection of singles, was part of its “Rock & Roll” series. But Charles’s music was significantly more sophisticated and adult than rock ’n’ roll, even as it harnessed the same sexual energy—his 1959 smash “What’d I Say” remains the most effective musical translation of fucking ever made.

Charles devoted a couple of his Atlantic records to his piano playing—they’re basically instrumental jazz given pop concision, made with trusted collaborators such as saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman, drummer William Peeples, and bassist Roosevelt Sheffield.

These LPs still sound fantastic, but Charles’s vocal sides—which famously transplanted the sounds of the church into a profane world— are what display his true genius. In these glorious mono mixes, the music sounds as electric and suave as ever.

CHARLES MUNCH The Complete RCA Album Collection (Sony Classical) $199.79

o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

continued from 34

This brick of a box—stuffed with 86 CDs—reflects a growing trend in classical music, where labels comb through their holdings and release everything they’ve got from, say, a single well-known conductor, without any significant reframing or reconsideration. This set collects the voluminous U.S. output of French conductor Charles Munch, beginning with his arrival from the UK in late 1947 and ending when he returned to France in 1963 to become president of the École Normale de Musique. For the bulk of his time in the U.S., he led the Boston Sym-

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phony Orchestra—his prolific stint there, from 1949 till 1962, resulted in most of the albums in this set. His work for RCA also included a handful of recordings made with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

A small booklet lists all the tracks alongside a brief essay about Munch, but the only other notes appear on the sleeves of the CDs, in reproductions of the original LP covers—you’d need a magnifying glass to read them.

Munch was celebrated for his affinity for French music, and this set includes plenty of it: Saint-Saéns, Ravel, Franck, Roussel, Berlioz, Chopin. But its sprawling scope provides an incredibly broad look at Munch’s aesthetic, compiling a good chunk of the most important work in Romantic music—French and otherwise—all in one place. I’ve yet to listen to everything here—more like 10 percent—but these are recordings of great craft and subtlety, and the hefty price tag is a bargain when you consider the sheer volume of music. As a gift, this could provide a solid foundation for someone who wants to start classical collection—and it makes a good doorstop.

GIDON KREMER Complete Concerto Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon (Deutsche Grammophon) $87.84 Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer has been one of classical music’s most prominent instrumentalists since emerging in the West in 1970, earning a reputation for facility across a wide stylistic range. This 20-disc set collects his work for Deutsche Grammophon, displaying Kremer’s facility interpreting Bach, Vivaldi, and Mozart as well as contemporary composers from the former Soviet Union such as Schnittke, Gubaidulina, and Kancheli. Most of the set focuses on standard repertoire, but the final two discs are by Kremer’s remarkable Kremerata Baltica, an ensemble that nurtures young composers from the Baltic states.

Kremer grew up under authoritarian rule, and strong political and social motives color many of his choices. That makes him more than a virtuoso—a rare quality in a classical-music world dominated by conservatism and orthodoxy. His readings of Bach, Beethoven, and Berg (to name just three) are extraordinary, but you can feel a deeper fire when he turns to music from his homeland—such as explosive performance of Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina’s 80s masterpiece Offertorium. v

ß @pmarg NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 37

Recommended and notable shows, and critics’ insights for the week of November 24

MUSIC

b

PICK OF THE WEEK

Bawdy blues veteran Bobby Rush reveals a newfound gravitas

THURSDAY24 Dance Jack Beats, Gene Farris, Steve Gerard, Phives 10 PM, Sound-Bar Brvthers Keeper, DR Drej, Tanza, Richie Olivo, Dangerwayne 10 PM, Primary Nightclub Vlad House, Limi, Rajic, LZ, Spaz 10 PM, the Mid Wayne Williams, Terry Hunter, Mike Dunn, Alan King, Andre Hatchett, Tony Hatchett 8 PM, the Promontory Blues, Gospel, and R&B Michael Peavy 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Eddie Shaw & the Wolfgang, Claudette Miller Blues Band 7:30 PM, Kingston Mines Jazz Harlem-Kingston Express 8 and 10 PM, also Fri 11/25 and Sat 11/26, 8 and 10 PM, and Sun 11/27, 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase International Miligram 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Soca Obsession 10 PM, Wild Hare

FRIDAY25 CFM Glyders and Hydrofoil open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10.

o STEVE ROSENBERG

BOBBY RUSH, IVY FORD

Fri 11/25, 9 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends, 700 S. Wabash, $20.

WITH HIS LATEST CD, Porcupine Meat (Rounder), which has been garnering Grammy buzz of late, Bobby Rush seems determined to cross over into “mainstream” white listenership while retaining the core fan base he’s nurtured for more than 60 years. As usual the 83-year-old “funk folklorist” delivers tales of thwarted libido, sexual gamesmanship, and other dispatches from the front lines of erotic combat with humor and self-deprecating irony. But producer Scott Billington’s in-studio aesthetic—featuring live instruments and tighter soul- and funk-based arrangements—brings a newfound gravitas to even Rush’s most ribald storytelling, and the effect is heightened when the bluesman tackles more substantial themes. “I’m Tired,” a reprise from his 2007 LP Raw, is a bleak portrayal of life in poverty, harshened by Rush’s gut-churning vocals and harp wails, while “Got Me Accused” is about a falsely accused man awaiting trial (“What kind of justice can this be . . . Seems like my life just don’t matter at all now”). On those songs especially Billington’s crisp production and the crew of studio aces create an atmosphere as haunting as—and haunted by—Rush’s lyrics and harp work. —DAVID WHITEIS

38 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

Guitarist Charles Moothart has been integral to the posse led by LA underground rock kingpin Ty Segall, working with him in Ty Segall Band, Goggs, and Fuzz, to name three of their prominent combos over the last couple of years. But earlier this year Moothart busted out with his own solo project, CFM, dropping a fuzz-heavy blast of creeping hard-rock grooves called Still Life of Citrus and Slime (In the Red), on which he plays everything and responds to what turned out to be a temporary split with a longtime girlfriend. On the throbbing opening track “You Can’t Kill Time” he moans, “I cannot leave my bed / No remedy to be seen / I crawl inside my head / Light a fire and try to clean.”

It becomes clear that the primitive grooves—larded with rude guitar, overdriven organ, and plenty of fuzz and feedback—are the fire. Moothart lacks the songwriting abilities of Segall, but he’s got a natural feel for blaring hypnosis, and I assume with more practice as a leader—and now with an actual band in tow—his snarling game will improve.

—PETER MARGASAK

ALL AGES

F

Austin Fillmore Murley, DTCO, and Harvey Fox open. 8 PM, Double Door, 1551 N. Damen, $15, $10 in advance.

Austin Fillmore wears his Chicago bona fides on his sleeve. In a video interview with hip-hop blog Illanoize back in March the rapper explains he took his stage name from the intersection where his first apartment was located, at Fillmore and Austin— that’s part of the Island, a postage-stamp-size neighborhood just southwest of Austin and north of Cicero. The neighborhood is geographically isolated, hence the name, and that sense of relative solitude is reflected in Austin Fillmore’s 2016 mixtape Hear & Now. Fillmore doesn’t make much of an attempt to bend toward the centers of gravity in Chicago hiphop; the postdusk glimmer of Hear & Now contains both the exuberant highs of a night out with a confidante and the yearning lows of early-morning loneliness. But he still goes where he wants to go: the mixtape’s pinging percussion is rooted in countless popular rap songs, and his melodic rap-singing is increasingly in vogue. The timbre of his voice—alternatively fierce and tender—remains all his own, however, and when he nearly snarls on “5000,” a song about standing for who you are, the message feels necessary. —LEOR GALIL

Eryn Allen Kane 7 PM, Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, 126 E. Chestnut, $35, $30 in advance. b Chicago singer-songwriter Eryn Allen Kane invokes soul and R&B’s rich history with intense devotion.

She pushes her powerful voice as far as her heart lets her during rafter-raising performances on February’s Aviary: Act II (1552 Music), bellowing, cooing, crying, and hitting high notes with the poise of a bodybuilder swinging the hammer at a carnival strongman game. She’s been recruited by great musicians in Chicago and elsewhere to impart her tender touch, working with Noname, Saba, and Chance the Rapper and joining Prince on the 2015 protest song “Baltimore.” And like soul greats before her, Kane is dedicated to the public good, performing at Chance the Rapper and Social Works’ recent Parade to the Polls concert, to cite just one instance. On Act II, the outstanding ballad “How Many Times” wonders about the black lives snuffed out too early, but the solemn track is as much about fighting for life as it is about death, a kind of musical manna that keeps minds looking forward during the

CFM o DENÉE PETRACEK

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Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

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bleakest times. Its courageous, headstrong pulse feels urgent as we look ahead to 2017. —LEOR GALIL

Louis the Child See also Saturday. Pell and Win & Woo open. 7 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, sold out. b In a 2015 profile of Chicago production duo Louis the Child for local culture site These Days writer Ben Niespodziany noted that the teenaged group focused their attention online rather than at the streets of their hometown. Providing more detail, Freddy Kennett, then a senior at New Trier High School, told Niespodziany, “Chicago’s not even our top city [for SoundCloud plays. That’s] Los Angeles and New York and London and then Chicago.”

It’s easy to pinpoint why Kennett and his production partner, Robby Hauldren, have raked in plays by the millions online. Their ultramodern euphoria—built from dramatic and thundering percussion, divine synths, and echoing bass that together act like Dance Dance Revolution arrows on the dance floor—blend with any and all surroundings, as if Louis the Child had emerged from the same “indie-pop” cauldron whence we received Halsey.

Their past few singles can feel indistinguishable within the blur of pinging percussion and big-footed melodies, though they wisely leave plenty of room for a vocalist to imprint personality on a track; Wilmette-raised rapper K. Flay provides alluring sighs on “It’s Strange” and Swedish pop wonders Icona Pop bring the anthemic might to “Weekend.”

—LEOR GALIL

Bobby Rush See Pick of the Week on page 38.

Ivy Ford opens. 9 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends, 700 S. Wabash, $20.

Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, $28, $26 members. b At the end of September, Nigerian Afrobeat scion Seun Kuti and his band Egypt 80 dropped their first new record in a couple of years with the three-

track EP Struggle Sounds, the initial release of a new deal with Sony Masterworks. It was coproduced with jazz keyboardist Robert Glasper, who was smart enough not to fuck with success. The 25 minutes cleave tightly to the classic agitprop-funk approach pioneered by Seun’s legendary father, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, and considering the shortsighted, selfish decisions happening in voting booths around the globe—including our recent presidential election—this blast of righteousness is plenty welcome. Though Kuti’s lyrics probably weren’t conceived with the U.S. in mind, the seething “Gimme My Vote Back (C.P.C.D.)”—the parenthetical stands for “Corporate Public Control Department”—sure seems prescient about what populist supporters of our president-elect are likely to get over the next four years: “You promise jobs / And you close the factory / But there’s always work in the penitentiary.” Nothing can supplant direct action, but truly combustible sounds can certainly help motivate it— especially when Kuti’s such an electric performer.

—PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Animals as Leaders, Intervals, Plini 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, sold out, 17+ Joseph Arthur & Nicole Atkins 8 PM, City Winery b Bad Examples, Fiona Grey 9 PM, FitzGerald’s Earfood, Lever, Blacklist Regulars, Joe Renardo 7:30 PM, Cubby Bear Engine Summer, Avantist, Mammoth Cannon 9 PM, Martyrs’ Frank Guinness, Bitters, Luxmen 8 PM, Wire, Berwyn Lucky Boys Confusion 9 PM, Durty Nellie’s, Palatine Matlock, Family Jewels, Matlock, Rusty Chains 9 PM, Subterranean New Mastersounds, Turkuaz 9:30 PM, Park West, 18+ New Sex & Drugs, Old Irving, Jeffreys, Imbecile Missile 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Nomo, Makata 8 PM, Schubas Pigface, Ruby, Dead Voices on Air, Worm, Project .44 9 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Reptoids, Rollo Tomassi, Faade 9 PM, Burlington Cathy Richardson Band, Maisie Bull 8 PM, SPACE b Two Door Cinema Club, Broods 8:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Yheti, Toadface, Trees 9 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+

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Funkadesi 20th Anniversary Family Show at 5PM SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31 8PM

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40 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

MUSIC continued from 39

Dance Anjunadeep, Gab Rhome, Theo Kottis, Yotto 10 PM, Sound-Bar Barely Alive, Virtual Riot, Dubloadz 8 PM, Portage Theater, 17+ Guti 10 PM, Spy Bar Paul Johnson, Julius the Mad Thinker, Pleasure Prince with Russoul, Emmaculate 10 PM, Smart Bar Marshmello, Speaker of the House 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Dustin Sheridan, Derek Specs, Augue Delarosa 10 PM, Primary Nightclub Blues, Gospel, and R&B Jimmy Johnson 9 PM, also Sat 11/26, 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Brian Lupo Band 9:30 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Byther Smith Blues Band, Corey Dennison Blues Band 9 PM, Kingston Mines Maurice John Vaughn, Shirley John Blues Band 9 PM, also Sat 11/26, 9 PM, Blue Chicago Jazz Harlem-Kingston Express 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Willie Pickens Quintet 9 PM, also Sat 11/26, 8 PM, Green Mill Soul Message Band 9:30 PM, also Sat 11/26, 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra Richard Kaufman, conductor (Williams). 8 PM, also Sat 11/26, 8 PM and Sun 11/27, 3 PM, Symphony Center

SATURDAY26 Children of Bodom Abbath, Exmortus, and Oni open. 7:30 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, $25-$30. 17+ For their latest record, last year’s I Worship Chaos (Nuclear Blast), stalwart Finnish melodic death-metal institution Children of Bodom were down guitarist and long-term member Roope Latvala, who’d been in the band since 2003. It didn’t slow them down much: they still step fluently between churning classic gut-buzz swirl (“Horns,” which shows some waggish wit in its video) and a more elegant, epic style bordering on power metal (“Morrigan”).

The album doesn’t radically reenvision any of the many subgenres Children of Bodom nimbly dabble in and mingle together—still, no one really wants that anyway. What you do get is a solid, well-paced blend of melodic indulgence and pummeling power, as witnessed on the fast-and-furious, no-nonsense title track. Vocalist and guitarist Alexi Laiho could probably carry the whole thing all by himself at this point, but for this tour he’ll be joined by riffmaster Daniel Freyberg. —MONICA KENDRICK

Louis the Child See Friday. Quinn XCII and Pham open. 9 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, sold out.

18+ Rock, Pop, Etc Afkavince Band, Handcuffs, Demerits 9 PM, Township After the Fight, Grool Brothers, Action Boy 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon

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

Farris Wheel 10 PM, Spy Bar Marshmello 10 PM, the Mid Marshmello, Sikdope 8 PM, also Sun 11/27, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, sold out, 18+ Pendulum 10 PM, Sound-Bar Blues, Gospel, and R&B Lurrie Bell, Louisiana Al 9:30 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Vanessa Davis Band 9 PM, FitzGerald’s Jimmy Johnson 9 PM, also Fri 11/25, 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials 10 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Nellie “Tiger” Travis Blues Band, Joanna Connor Blues Band 7:30 PM, Kingston Mines Maurice John Vaughn, Shirley John Blues Band 9 PM, also Fri 11/25, 9 PM, Blue Chicago Jazz Harlem-Kingston Express 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Willie Pickens Quintet 8 PM, also Fri 11/25, 9 PM, Green Mill Soul Message Band 9:30 PM, also Fri 11/25, 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club Experimental Steve Hauschildt, Forma 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ International Calibre 50 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom Oisín Mac Diarmada, Niamh Farrell, Samantha Harvey, and Séamus Begley 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra Richard Kaufman, conductor (Williams). 8 PM, Symphony Center

SUNDAY27 Luke Bell Al Scorch and Lawrence Peters Outfit open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $10.

David Costa, Gavi Moon, No Dead Heroes, Kadooge, Killwave 7:40 PM, Cobra Lounge Deacon Blues: Tribute to Steely Dan 8 PM, SPACE Dehd, Bunny, Lala Lala 10 PM, Cole’s F Die High, Boxsledder, Nightcap, Bombflower 9 PM, Burlington DJ NoDJ, Digeometric 10:30 PM, Schubas Funk Hunters, Chali 2na 9:30 PM, Bottom Lounge Insideout, Time Atlas, Moose, Safe Bet 6 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Jim James, Twin Limb 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Peter Joly, Rachel Drew & the Bitter Roots 9 PM, Hideout Jones Street Station, Many Places 7 PM, Schubas Sonny Knight & the Lakers 8 PM, City Winery b Malinche, Slow Form of Suicide, Fa Kings 9 PM, Red Line Tap Molk, Herencia de Zapata, Braided Janes, Death Wish 9:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+

Northern Lights, No Currency, Boys Noise 6 PM, Martyrs’ b Conor Oberst, Anna McClellan 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall sold out, 17+ One Steel Wound, Caldera, Arcadia, Let ‘Em Hang, Firer, John Tudela 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Private Instigators, Cobalt & the Hired Guns, Fantastic Mammals 9 PM, Martyrs’ Villains Company, Oginalii, End Transmission, Z Chord 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Walters, Post Animal, Summer Salt, Pool Holograph 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, sold out, 17+ Hip-Hop Wax, Freesole, Ace 94, Psych Finito 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Dance Colette, DJ Heather, Zebo, Jon Iler 10 PM, Primary Nightclub

Wyoming native Luke Bell turns to classic tearin-my-beer heartache on “Sometimes,” an oldschool honky-tonk original that opens his recent self-titled debut album for Thirty Tigers. Looking back on a love he walked out on, Bell vacillates between indifference and sadness, the former emotion something he shoots for, the latter the one he succumbs to, singing, “There’s a sweet memory at the bottom of my glass / I feel it fall to my belly and rise to my heart.” Throughout the album Bell comes off as an old soul, a reality reflected by his days as a rancher and the time he spent gigging in Austin and New Orleans before settling in Nashville. His crooning style harks back to a much different kind of country singer, summoning the sound of folks like Lefty Frizzell and Hank Thompson, especially when the pedal-steelsoaked sound of a song like “Hold Me” swings so naturally. At times he reminds me of the great Paul Burch in the way he reaches toward country’s past—and maybe as he grows in skill over the years to come he’ll find his way to the present.

Yet between the flashes of wide-eyed wonder at the world on “Glory and the Grace” and the Elvis Presley vibe of “The Great Pretender” (which has nothing to do with the Platters classic except the shared chronicle of trafficking deceit), his charm is enough for now. —PETER MARGASAK J

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NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 41

Eryn Allen Kane o BRYAN ALLEN LAMB

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

continued from 41 Ulcerate Zhrine, Phobocosm, and Vukari open.

7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $18, $15 in advance. 17+

New Zealand technical-metal band Ulcerate bill themselves as “unorthodox,” which basically means they toss a bunch of doom and a pinch of black into their death. The result isn’t exactly unfamiliar—old, crusty demonic warhorses like Autopsy are obvious touchstones, and Ulcerate certainly aren’t pushing the boundaries of metal like Mastery or Liturgy. Still, even if the novelty is a little oversold, their fifth full-length, Shrines of Paralysis (Relapse Records), released at the end of October, is pleasingly feral. “Abrogation” is a lumbering, lurching, chiming roar, with trancelike passages that are split apart by whiplash-inducing prog breaks suitable for elephantine headbanging.

“Bow to Spite”—a wonderful metal-song title—uses a brief two minutes to crawl farther down the gullet of doom, emphasized by howling, eerie feedback that sounds like a pack of wolves drowning in sludge. The band’s great dirty, scraping guitar sound reprepresents the ugly, clotted, evil noise that metal inherited from Iggy and now claims as its own. Smart, heavy, and fierce, Ulcerate fulfill the promise to burst your eardrums and blacken your soul. —NOAH BERLATSKY

42 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

Rock, Pop, Etc Big Bad Voodoo Daddy 5 and 8 PM, City Winery b Bittersweet, Nicholas Tremulis & Jennifer Hall, Wallace 7 PM, SPACE b Conquest the Band, Vernard Burton, Angele Anise 6 PM, Wire, Berwyn Krayola, Mean Sean, Retirement Club, Rich Salamander 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon Natalia Lafourcade 7 PM, Portage Theater Mannequin Pussy, Melkbelly, Soddy Daisy, So Pretty 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Morrissey 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Not for You, Basement Family, Zeev 8 PM, Schubas F Conor Oberst, Miwi La Lupa 8 PM, Thalia Hall, sold out, 17+ Dance Derrick Carter, Michael Serafini, Garrett David

10 PM, Smart Bar Marshmello, Sikdope 8 PM, also Sat 11/26, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, sold out, 18+ Ali Shaheed Muhammad (DJ set) 9 PM, East Room Steve Poindexter, Gene Hunt, Track Master Scott, Rick “Ice Kold” Johnson, DJ Queen B, Eric “DJ MR E” Potter 10 PM, Primary Nightclub Folk & Country Wandering Dirt 8 PM, Red Line Tap F Blues, Gospel, and R&B Kinsmen, PJ & Soul 6 PM, the Promontory b Jazz Harlem-Kingston Express 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Lionel Hampton Band with Jason Marsalis 6 PM, FitzGerald’s Nick Mazzarella, Greg Ward, Matt Ulery, and Quin Kirchner 9 PM, Whistler F Trio Waz 9 PM, Hungry Brain Experimental Narloch, Sies & Stevenson 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Eric Revis, Kris Davis, Ken Vandermark 8 PM, Experimental Sound Studio b International Rabbi Joe Black & the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band 2 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Etana & Iba Mahr 9 PM, Wild Hare

Classical Chicago Symphony Orchestra Richard Kaufman, conductor (Williams). 3 PM, Symphony Center

MONDAY28 Rock, Pop, Etc Band Royale, Faintlife, Sleepwalk 8 PM, Schubas F Marrow, Fell Runner, V.V. Lightbody 9 PM, Empty Bottle F O’Connor Band 8 PM, City Winery b Slaughter Beach, Dog; Abi Reimold; Oceans Over Airplanes 7 PM, Subterranean b Folk & Country Robbie Fulks with Freda Love Smith, Nora O’Connor, and Steve Dawson 7 PM, Hideout Blues, Gospel, and R&B Eddie Taylor Jr., Nick & Kate Moss 8 PM, SPACE b Jazz Ben LaMar Gay, Matt Piet, Eli Namay, and Bill Harris; MT Trio 9 PM, Elastic b Greg Ward, John Sims, and Juan Pastor 9:30 PM, Whistler F Classical Lyric Opera’s Don Quichotte 7:30 PM, Civic Opera House In-Stores Jim Dorling 7:30 PM, Myopic Books F b

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MUSIC Jackrabbits 7 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar Jazz Xavier Breaker Coalition 8 PM, the Promontory, 18+ Four Letter Words 9:30 PM, Whistler F Natural Information Society with Hamid Drake; Joshua Abrams & Hamid Drake; Dante Carfagna 9 PM, Hideout Mike Reed’s Conversation Music 9 PM, Hungry Brain F

WEDNESDAY30 Frigs Luggage, Whimm, and Heavy Dreams open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $8.

Seun Kuti o JOHANN SAUTY

TUESDAY29 Andy Shauf Chris Cohen opens. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, sold out.

Canadian singer-songwriter Andy Shauf creates a vivid world on The Party (Anti), an album where he plays nearly everything and conjures a series of characters in conflict at a small-town gathering, his point of view shifting from song to song. On “Early to the Party” a lonely woman shows up ahead of time to wait for her date only to later watch him walk off with his friends, while on “Quite Like You” the influence of alcohol impels the narrator to go from expressing empathy for a woman who’s being ignored and taken for granted by one of his best friends to savaging the friend and putting the moves on her—though in the withering denouement he’s shocked that she rejects his overtures and reaches for her boyfriend. Shauf is a keen observer of small-town domesticity and captures the claustrophobia of a community where everyone knows each other’s secrets and half have dated one another. He delivers the ten songs in a hushed warble— half resigned, half tender—tracing a string of gorgeous melodies and rich arrangements that recall the key influence of Elliott Smith and a bunch of early-70s pop auteurs like Harry Nilsson or George Harrison. The album struck me slowly and softly, but now when I key in on specific lines, it hits like a fist.

—PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Amasa Hines 8 PM, SPACE b Delta Rae, Penny & Sparrow 8 PM, City Winery b Longriver, Scott William, Electric Dylan Controversy, Travis Champ 9 PM, Burlington Kawabata Makoto & Tatsuya Nakatani, Spires That in the Sunset Rise, Brian Case 9 PM, Empty Bottle Paper Kites, Horse Thief 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Hip-Hop Partynextdoor, Jeremih 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Dance Michael Serafini, Angelenah, Awdazcate & Pugs Atomz, Cupid Players, Wage, BD & the

For a band with just a handful of digital and cassette releases, Toronto postpunk foursome Frigs (formerly Dirty Frigs) have already set quite the solemn mood with June’s Slush EP (Arts & Crafts) and the new “Chest” b/w “Trashyard.” On both releases—the latter a seething, dirge-heavy affair—sparse guitar riffs stab at steady, sometimes motorik-like rhythms while Bria Salmela’s smoky vocals pour over and dampen it all. And even though low-swelling, delaydrenched feedback lurks in the recesses of lulling tracks like “Diana” and “God Hates a Coward,” from the aforementioned EP, a single like “Ringworm” shows just how adept the band is at writing a dark and melodic two-minute punk song. When Salmela is given free rein and plenty of room to writhe around in that Frigs—who are very much on the come-up—feel at their most potent and lethal.

—KEVIN WARWICK

3855 N. LINCOLN

martyrslive.com

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 TUE, 11/29

PECHA KUCHA VOL. 40 WED, 11/30

SONUS UMBRA, FIRE GARDEN, ERZULIE THU, 12/1

BIG C JAMBOREE… THE MODERN SOUNDS FEATURING OSCAR WILSON FRI, 12/2

GREAT MOMENTS IN VINYL PERFORMS EXILE ON MAIN ST. BY THE ROLLING STONES SAT, 12/3 - NOON - ALL AGES

Rock, Pop, Etc Concrete Roots, Sammy K, Glamour Hotline, Vision in the Rhythm, Louda 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Dream Version 7 PM, Lincoln Hall F Fess Grandiose, Radius, Dia.L 9:30 PM, Whistler F Hey! Rabbit, L. Mounts, Wally Tusk & the Film Club, Colossal Woman 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon The Howl, Blackglass, Ribbonhead, Kodakrome 9 PM, Empty Bottle In Flames, Hellyeah, From Ashes to New 7:30 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Kaina, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, Matthaus 8:30 PM, Hungry Brain Kovu, Modern Vices, Ron Gallo, Matthaus 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Land Before Tim, Tone Zone Skam, Shroom Factory, Firgun 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint, 17+ Rev Gusto, Just Luckies, Sadie & the Stark, Menacerno 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen Sonus Umbra, Fire Garden, Erzulie 8 PM, Martyrs’ Folk & Country Mipso, Kristin Andreassen 8 PM, City Winery b Blues, Gospel, and R&B Liz Vice 7:30 PM, SPACE International Tuelo 8:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music F b Classical Civic Orchestra of Chicago Bach. 7 PM, Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago Jamie Yoo & Beilin Han Flute and piano. 12:15 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center F b v

KRAMPUS FEST SAT, 12/3 - 9PM

ELLE CASAZZA, JETDRIVER, CURIOUS GRACE AND THE BLACK RABBIT

NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 43

SMALL BATCH BOURBON A W A R D - W I N N I N G

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Smoked Manhattan beef loin, short rib marmalade, sweet potato anna, charred cipollini, mustard greens.

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Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 45.2% Alc. By Vol., The Woodford Reserve Distillery, Versailles, KY ©2015

44 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

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FOOD & DRINK

R OLD IRVING BREWING | $$

4419 W. Montrose 773-916-6421 oldirvingbrewing.com

Trevor Rose-Hamblin’s beer and Matthias Merges’s food could fuel the revolution—or at least spirited talk of one.

By MIKE SULA

I

NEW REVIEW

Old Irving Brewing will ease your postelection pain

Lengths of meaty roasted eggplant are slung among plump golden raisins, harissaspiked yogurt, and almond-mint pesto. o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

t’s a struggle in the wake of the election to write about a new brewpub in a way that makes it seem like it matters. On the day after Trump’s victory, I found myself at a table with a few other despondents at Old Irving Brewery, trying to medicate the malignancy of the Orange Cancer with snifters of high-ABV Imperial Black Ale. This big, boisterous new spot, with a 360-degree bar and cavernous beer hall looking out on the brewing floor’s gleaming metal tanks, has its own sad history: it was originally a project of the late, great, revolutionary chef Homaro Cantu until he was found hanging in the raw unbuilt space in April 2015. His partners, Jeff Linnemeyer and brewmaster Trevor Rose-Hamblin, himself a protege of Cantu, carried on, enlisting the culinary mojo of Matthias Merges (Yusho, A10, Billy Sunday), who very recently came to the rescue of another transitioning brewpub when Finch took over from the shuttered Breakroom Brewery just two miles east on Montrose Avenue.

While the postelection protests raged downtown, Old Irving Brewing’s picnic tables were full, the flat-screen TVs were tuned to football, and kids played cornhole in a gaming area fenced off in front of the working part of the brewery. This in a way could be rationalized as a form of protest: Bars, cafes, and brewpubs historically have been where the seeds of dissent are sown. They’re where the resistance meets and revolutions are born.

And they’re where the defeated collect for relief, to reflect and regroup. You can never underestimate the psychologically sustaining powers of food and drink.

To that end Merges and Rose-Hamblin have developed complementary food and beer menus that, while perhaps quite different from whatever radical direction Cantu might have pursued, are still original enough to make Old Irving more than just a neighborhood hang. Even brewpub givens get special treatment.

The menu is executed by Merges lieutenant Michael Shrader, of the late Urban Union, who’s armed with the most current J

NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 45

S P O N S O R E D

N E I G H B O R H O O D

C O N T E N T

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

PHYLLIS’ 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

RIVER NORTH

EATALY // 4 3 E O H I O // E ATA LY.C O M Every Wednesday at Eataly, stop into La Piazza on the second floor starting at 5 p.m. for Wine Wednesday! Each week, their beverage experts choose a very special wine, a rare find, a largerthan-life bottle, or just an old-time favorite, to pour by the glass at a very special price. The one catch? Only while it lasts! Visit eataly.com/chicago for more details.

DON’T MISS WINE WEDNESDAYS

46 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

“Fantastic place. Food is really good at a reasonable price.”

— LARRY D. / GOOGLE

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FOOD & DRINK A BLT with thick slabs of applewoodsmoked bacon and avocado is built upon soft, opencrumb bread made from the brewery’s spent grains.

group a a’s restaurant c es c n a fr ke a m

part of your

Holiday CELEBRATIONS!

o DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

continued from 45 restaurant weaponry (aka a wood-fired oven).

Deviled eggs are laced with sriracha and nestled among pickled shimeji mushrooms and dabs of charred-scallion puree. Smooth garlic mashed potatoes arrive emulsified with more than enough butter to soothe your shattered nerves. A half chicken roasts in the kitchen fire and is plated atop fingerlings roasted in its coals, charred lemons and Calabrian chiles bringing the light. A grass-fed beef burger has a distinct crusty char armoring pink beef, though it’s a bit overwhelmed by the focaccia delivery system. A BLT with avocado is built upon soft, open-crumb bread made from the brewery’s spent grains, a tender but more than capable vessel for the thick slabs of applewood-smoked bacon therein.

Shrader makes good use of that bacon.

Thick, mapled lardons of it appear with the caramelized brussels sprouts as well as the aged-cheddar mac and cheese. But it’s the more unexpected bar food that distinguishes Old Irving Brewing. Pig’s feet croquettes contain an almost molten core of porky goodness, their richness cut by fruity pickled chiles, while a salt cod brandade awaits in the interior of fritters battered with the brewery’s kolsch.

Flaps of tender, cold braised beef tongue wag over a cool, crispy salad of potato and radish, and lengths of meaty roasted eggplant are slung among plump golden raisins, harissaspiked yogurt, and almond-mint pesto.

There are an unusual number of seafood dishes at Old Irving: a plate of fire-roasted and chilled squid, shrimp, clams, and mussels is drizzled with a vinaigrette made from their shells, while prawns are bisected, roasted, and served with jasmine rice and drawn butter.

But the crowning achievement of Merges’s menu—and bar-food wise, its most unconventional plate—is a whole roasted fish: in my case a fat, juicy pompano, sauced Chinese style with chiles, ginger, cilantro, and funky fermented black beans.

Desserts, apart from an ice cream beer float, are less disruptive, and include apple crisp and a dense chocolate pudding.

Among the token three wines, half-dozen cocktails, and six bottles and cans from outside breweries, Rose-Hamblin’s beer really ought to be the priority here, most brewed with some sort of culinary element in flavor if not practice. Of these a beer said to evoke pho has been 86’d, but the Precinct, a smooth, thick milk stout, brewed with chocolate malt, lactose, cocoa nibs, and vanilla, really does live up to the claim that it tastes of coffee and doughnuts. The brewery’s fruity Belgian Dubbel Half Caf No Whip is brewed with red kuri squash and baking spices, while the hoppiness of the Pinnacle to the Pith, a Belgian double IPA made in collaboration with DryHop Brewers, gets a citrus boost from grapefruit juice. The signature Scentinel IPA has an even more pronounced citrus character, while the aforementioned IBA Black Monday is a meal in itself. About the only expression on the current beer menu that isn’t a patent success is a collaboration with Pipeworks: the Holloway, a watery Berliner Weiss given a floral note from a Rare Tea Cellar tea blend.

It’s a rare down note on the two menus at this promising brewpub, which, while no answer to our load of trouble, is at least capable of lightening it for a bit. v

visit our websites for more information on

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earn a

$25 HOLIDAY BONUS CARD* for every $100 in gift cards purchased!

available for purchase on line and in-store through december 31, 2016 *restrictions apply

ß @MikeSula NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 47

R ESTEREO

2450 N. Milwaukee estereochicago.com Mon-Fri 8 AM-2 AM, Sat 11 AM-3 AM, Sun 11 AM-2 AM

FOOD & DRINK BARS

Estereo turns up the volume in Logan Square

By JULIA THIEL

C

hicago’s diagonal streets mean that the city has a fair share of oddly shaped buildings—and businesses w it h u nusua l layouts—but I’ve never seen one embrace its triangular configuration as completely as Estereo, the Latin-inspired cafe and bar at the pointy intersection of Milwaukee and Sacramento that Heisler Hospitality opened this summer.

Not only does the bar itself form a triangle, following the lines of the walls, but the track

lighting is also arranged in concentric triangles. Glass-paneled garage doors dominate two of the three sides, flooding the space with light and, when the doors are open in warm weather, turning the place into the closest thing to alfresco drinking you can accomplish indoors.

Estereo is a cafe by day, bar by night, opening at 8 AM (11 on the weekends) and not closing until 2 AM (3 AM on Saturdays). Of course, you can order a breakfast cocktail if

A UTH E NTI C PH I LLY C H E E S E STEA KS!

T F A ER R C BE

PI

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S P DR EC INK IA LS

A

4757 N TALMAN · 773.942.6012 · ILOVEMONTIS.COM · 48 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

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@ILOVEMONTIS

you’d like; I’d go with the one called Coffee, a sweet and creamy concoction made with Batavia Arrack, Averna, coconut horchata, and Dark Matter Chocolate City coffee. It’s representative of the approach Michael Rubel and Ben Fasman, both veterans of the Violet Hour and Big Star, have taken with the 11 cocktails on the menu: simple and straightforward, most of them limited to four ingredients. And while some of those ingredients will be new to the average consumer, the drinks themselves are extremely approachable.

Missing entirely from the menu are whiskey, gin, and vodka; instead, there are dozens of rums, tequilas, and mezcals, along with lesser- known Latin American spirits like pisco, cachaca, and rhum agricole. The simplicity of the cocktails highlights their base spirits—one per drink—which in most cases is also the name of the cocktail. The one dubbed Mezcal, with hibiscus tea, Cocchi Americano Rosa, and lime juice, is smoky, savory, fruity, and effervescent; it’s one of two drinks on the menu that’s made in batches and carbonated.

The other, called Pisco, pairs a mixture of four different piscos with ginger juice, guava puree, lime juice, and grapefruit bitters for a sweet-sour drink that goes down as easily as a Moscow Mule.

While I hate to insult pisco by comparing it to vodka, the drink is a good example of the way Estereo is introducing potentially unfamiliar spirits by putting them in familiar-

Estereo’s drinks tend to be simple and straightforwardly named. Pictured from left: the cocktails called Coffee, Pisco, Beer, and Mezcal ! DANIELLE A. SCRUGGS

tasting drinks. Another is the cocktail made with rhum agricole, a type of rum distilled from sugarcane rather than molasses that’s typically grassier, funkier, and less sweet than traditional rum. That funkiness comes through in an autumnal creation made with apple cider, falernum (a spiced syrup usually made with almonds, ginger, and citrus zest), and spiced pear liqueur—but the funk is tempered by the drink’s fruity, spicy flavors.

Our bartender recommended the beer cocktail as well, which turned out to be my favorite of the bunch. Made with rum, pistachio orgeat, creme de cacao, and Rubrique-a-Brac (a wild biere de garde from the south-side brewery Whiner), it’s creamy, nutty, and a bit tart, with a funkiness that reminds me of blue cheese. The beer is one of four on tap, including a rotating selection from Three Floyds, plus three in cans and one cider. Really, though, the simple, graceful cocktails are the reason to go. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to enjoy a cocktail without overthinking it. v

" @juliathiel

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JOBS

bility & stochastic system theory into electricity pricing & risk mgmt.

Apply online: http://www. transmarketgroup.com/ jobs/?gh_jid=501698

TECHNOLOGY INFOR (US), INC. has an opening for an ICS CONSULTANT in

TRANSUNION, LLC SEEKS Sr. Consultants-Information Technology, Application Development & Design for Chicago, IL location to design, implement & maintain testing efforts for sw applications.

Master’s in Comp. Sci./Comp. Eng./any Eng. field + 2yrs exp. or Bachelor’s in Comp. Sci./Comp. Eng./any Eng. field + 5yrs exp. req’d. Must have exp. w/test strategy design, designing enterprise applications, incl. automation test development, manual testing, data quality testing & validation, building new tools & processes, estimations, resource planning, & testing w/Windows/Unix, ETL AbInitio, Robot framework, Web Services, ALM, Jira, SOAP UI, Jmeter, Fitnesse, Shell/Perl scripting, programming in C/Java, SQL, Agile, Waterfall.

Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: AAS, 555 W. Adams St., Chicago, IL 60661

General Chicago, IL. Config. complex bus. rules across mult. policies. Req’s a Master’s degree (or foreign equiv.) in Comp Sci, Eng, Info Sys or a rel’d field; & 3 yrs of progressive postbaccalaureate work exp. Will also accept a Bachelor’s degree (or foreign equiv.) in Comp Sci, Eng, Info Sys or a rel’d field; & 5 yrs of progressive post-baccalaureate work exp. Candidate must possess exp. involving each of the following: architecting multi-tier apps using .NET framework; C#; ASP.NET; Web Svcs; REST; HTML5; CSS; Java Script; SW dev’t best practices; packaged SW; ticketing sys; PLP; req’s definition & design; & SW dev’t quality processes.

Travel & work at client sites as assigned. Telecommuting permitted.

Any suitable combo of edu., training, or exp. is acceptable. How to apply: Mail resume, ref. IN40, incl. job history, to: Infor (US), Inc. Attn: Cheryl Sanocki, 1351 South County Trail, Building 3, East Greenwich, RI 02818.

EOE.

POWER MARKET RESEARCHER -Transmarket Operations LLC, seeks Power Market Researchers for Chicago, IL location to conduct interdisciplinary research on energy & power systems focused on financial impacts of this marketplace. PhD in Electrical Eng. +2yrs exp. req’d. Must have exp. researching electricity grids, economic power dispatch using computational techniques & analytical methods for power system & market operations to identify arbitrage & execution strategies, transmission operations in ISO/RTO context, generate Commitment & Dispatch in Nodal LMP markets, construct portfolio by identifying optimal hedging tools, risk factors & dev. custom pricing & risk mgmt. sw for power trading desk using Dayzer, Powerworld, R, Matlab, Oracle databases, applying proba-

TRANSUNION INTERACTIVE, INC. (a wholly owned subsidiary of

TransUnion, LLC) seeks Specialists III, Marketing Communications for Chicago, IL location to serve as Lead in the delivery of actionable analyses.

Master’s in Marketing or Marketing Communications or related field + 2yrs exp. or Bachelor’s in Marketing or Marketing Communications or related field + 5yrs exp. req’d. Must have exp. w/DS3, Marin, Paid Search bidding optimization, Google Analytics, Tableau, Google Adometry, VBA, SQL, SPSS, SEO, Display Marketing, Optimizely A/B Testing & Personalization Platform, Integrated Marketing Communication, Media Planning, UI Design.

Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: YL, 555 W. Adams St., Chicago, IL 60661

TRANSUNION, LLC SEEKS Sr.

Analysts, IT for Chicago, IL location to serve as expert in sw testing techniques such as smoke, functional, system, regression & black box in credit reporting domain. Master’s in Comp. Sci./Comp. Eng. + 2yrs exp. or Bachelor’s in Comp. Sci./Comp. Eng . + 5yrs exp. req’d. Must have sw testing exp./proficiency on Ab initio, .Net, Java, C/C++, database management, design tool patterns - MS Visio,

PL/SQL, Oracle, mainframe, JCL, test data setup, shell scripting, Unix, Agile methodologies, & w/complete SDLC & w/Test Life Cycle (test planning to defect verifications & tracking). 20% telecommuting permitted. Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: VK, 555 W Adams, Chicago, IL 60661

Software Test Engineering & Automation Lead: Automate testing of content extraction APIs; automate testing of applications which includes functional tests for deep link integration with other Android apps; run tests at scale on real devices as well as emulators; work in Objective-C, Java, Robotium, Selenium, Jenkins, Android Studio and Xcode. Will work in Naperville, IL and/or various client sites throughout the U.S. Must be willing to travel and/or relocate. Send resume to: Advit Consulting Inc, 763 Sigmund Road, Naperville, IL 60563 COMPUTER SYSTEMS ANALYST & IT PROJECT MANAGER

Zensar Technologies, Inc. has openings in Oak Brook, IL. All positions may be assigned to various, unanticipated sites throughout the US. Job Code US-OBIL114 Computer Systems Analyst (Root Cause/Code): analyze req’s +development/ enhancement. Job Code US-OBIL115 IT Project Manager (SW): plan initiate & manage. Mail resume to: Prasun Maharatna, 2107 North First Street, Suite 100, San Jose, CA 95131. Include job code & full job title/s of interest + recruitment source in cover letter.

EOE

GOLD COAST ANIMAL Hospi-

tal is looking for a few good part time vet assistants! If you love pets, and you love cleaning, this could be an ideal job for you! Help us take amazing care of our hospitalized patients, our boarding pets (this could include swimming with them in our pool!), and keeping the hospital environment clean, inside and out! Some early mornings, evenings, weekends and holidays are required. Please email a cover letter and resume to kristengcah@ yahoo.com. We can’t wait to hear from the right people!

INTEGRATION CONSULTANT: Define requirements for

integrations between the Workday product and other systems. Build and test the integrations. Mail resumes: DayNine Consulting, ATTN: Job B031 at 111 W. Jackson Boulevard, Suite 2200, Chicago, Illinois 60604.

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

Apply jobs@icscorpusa.com ETHNIC COOK: cook Polish Highlanders style meals. HS dipl. & 18 mo exp. req. Mail res: Bacowka Inc, 427 S Sunnyside Ave, Itasca, IL 60143

REAL ESTATE 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

STUDIO $600-$699 ROGERS 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

CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms

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 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 CHICAGO - HYDE PARK 5401 S. Ellis.

1BR. $535-$600/mo.

Call 773-955-5106

CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

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

Ashland Hotel nice clean rms.

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

Low rates daily/weekly/monthly.

South Side. Call 773-376-5200

1 BR UNDER $700 FALL 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

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

WINTER SPECIAL! SAVE up to $400.00 off rent for 1 year. Re-

modeled 1 bdrm to 5 bdrm starting at $675.00 & up. No app fee, no Sec. Dep. For info call 773.412.1153 Wesley Realty

Retail

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

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:

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.

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

Please apply online at www.binnys.com/careers EOE

MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All

modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)

FALL SPECIAL $500 Toward

Rent Beautiful Studios 1, 2, 3 & 4 BR Sect. 8 Welc. Westside Loc, Must qualify. 773-287-4500 www.wjmngmt.com

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

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

773-221-7490, 773-221-7493 CHICAGO - South Shore Large 1BR, $660/mo.

Free heat.

Near Transportation.

Section 8 Welcome. Call 708932-4582 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 NEW REHAB, SECTION 8 Ready, 3 Bdrm $1250, 2 Bdrm $900.

Cadillac unit. 7003 S Carpenter, 773467-8200, 773-405-9361 Roxie

4 ROOMS, 1 bedroom, 649 W 80th, New rehab. $630, heat separat e.BIG, CLEAN, QUIET. Call 773-4059361 Gina CHATHAM - 7105 S. Champlain, 1BR. $640/mo. Sec 8 OK. Heat & appl. Call Office: 773-9665275 or Steve: 773-936-4749 SOUTHSIDE - 8535 S. Green,

1 & 2 BR Apts, well maintained, hdwd/ crpt flrs, $625-$750/mo, sec dep req. Call 773-874-8451

û NO SEC DEP û

6829 S. Perry. 1BR. $520/mo.

1431 W. 78th St. 2BR. $605/mo.

HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

CHICAGO SOUTHSIDE, 1 Bedroom, 819-21 West 75th St, nice & clean, Backyard. No pets. $550/ month. 773-445-4949. $725/MO. LARGE 2BR 75th & Union. Near public trans, schools and shopping, appl incl.

Sect 8 Welc. 708-334-5188 82ND & LOOMIS, 1BR, 4 ROOMS, newly decorated, carpeted, heat incl., $675/mo + 1 mo sec. Quiet/Smoke Free Bldng. 773-846-1140

76th & Phillips 1BR $650-$700; 2BR $750-$800. Remodeled, Appliances available. FREE Heat. 312286-5678 Newly updated, clean furnished rooms, located near buses & Metra, elevator, utilities included, $91/wk. $ 395/mo. 815-722-1212 NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $130/wk & up. 773-275-4442 BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970

1 BR $700-$799 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 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

MONTROSE/ CLARENDON VINTAGE one bedroom. Sunny/

bright, across from park, heat/ gas included. Miniblinds/ ceiling fans.

Free laundry, private porch, block Montrose Harbor. $895. 773-9733463.

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

bedroom garden apartment. Near transportation, shopping, parks.

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

THE LATEST ON WHO’S PLAYING

AND WHERE THEY’RE PLAYING

EARLY WARNINGS

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11 24, 2016 | CHICAGO READER 49

1 BR $1100 AND OVER

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 ** 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 ∫

FAB HI FLOOR View of Diversey

Harbor from One Bedroom Updated Condo with New Neutral Carpeting, Appliances incl Dishwasher, 24 hr Doorman, Rooftop Deck/Pool, Dry Cleaner, Valet Parking ($160 mo).

Book/Film Clubs etc. 2626 N. Lakeview $1690. tshannon@shannonlawoffice.com/312 307 2804 (Tom).

1 BR OTHER 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 FURNISHED ROOM FOR RENT, 52nd/ Marshfield, 78th & May. $100 - $125/ week.

All utilities included. 773-6167673 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 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 SEC 8 WELC, newly rehab, huge 3BR/2BA, full bsmt w/ extra BRs & bthrm. Appls incl, fully fncd yrd, no pets, Morgan Pk loc. 773744-7411 RIVERDALE, IL 1 Bedroom

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**

ADULT SERVICES

5215 W Augusta Blvd, 2BR apts. Heat included, $865/mo, 126 N Long Ave, 3BR $950/mo Move in special! 773-251-6652

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

2 BR $900-$1099

MOVE IN SPECIAL B4 the N of this MO. & MOVE IN 4 $99.00 (773) 874-3400 ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597

2 BR UNDER $900 CHICAGO SOUTHSIDE BRAND new 2 & 3BR apts. Excel-

lent neighborhood, near trans & schools, Sect 8 Welc., Call 708-7742473

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

BRONZEVILLE 4725 S. Vincennes Ave. 1st & 3rd flr. Spacious, smoke free, 5 rms, 2BR, hdwd, tile, c-fans/AC, Ht, wtr, appls incl. Lndry on site. $950 + sec. 312-450-9696 CHICAGO: 406 E. 109th St. 2BR, parking & W/D available.

Tenant pays all utilities, $800/mo + 1/2 mo sec dep. Call 630-2483051

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

WEST AUSTIN AREA. Must See!

ALSIP: LARGE 2BR, 1.5BA, $875/mo. Balcony, appliances, laundry & storage.

Call 708-268-3762

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

DIVISIONSpringfield.

Large 5rm, 2 bedrooms, $750 per month plus security, tenant pays heat. Call 312-401-3799

Condo, newly decorated, off st. parking, gated community. $750 + sec. Call Mr. Jackson 708-846-9734

CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large 2 room Studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/C, laundry, near transportation, $650-$975/mo. Call 773-233-4939

CHICAGO 7600 S Essex 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sect 8 Ok! 773287-9999 /312-446-3333

REMODELED 1, 2 , 3 & 4 BR Apts.

Heat & Appls incl. South Side locations only. Call 773-593-4357

READY TO MOVE?

CHICAGO, NEWLY DECORATED 2BR Apartment, hardwood floors, blinds, $650/mo.

Call 773-617-2909

CHICAGO SOUTH SIDE Beauti-

COZY 2 BEDROOM apartment.

W. AVALON, 1 & 2BR Newly decor. 8059 Ellis & 11200 S. Vernon.

Hdwd floors, heat & appliances incl, $600 & $700. 708-406-2718

RIVERDALE, IL 14141 S. School St. Newly Renovated 2 BR, 1 Bath avail. No Pets.

Rent $800/mo. 312-217-6556

77TH/LOWE. 2BR. 69th/Dante, 3BR. 71st/Bennett. 2 & 3BR. 77th/ Essex. 3BR. New renov.

Sec 8 ok. 708-503-1366

VICINITY 65TH AND St. Lawrence, modern, tenant heated, 2BR Unit. $725/mo. No Sec Deposit Agent Owned, 312-671-3795

ADULT SERVICES

OLD IRVING PARK! 4146 N.

LOGAN SQUARE 2 bedroom apartment, 2-flat building, modern kitchen & bath, balcony, washer & dryer. $750/mo. Near Blue Line.

773-235-1066

DOLTON - 2BR appl/crpt, AC/Heat, parking, laundry $850/mo + 1 mo sec & credit check Call 708-841-8888

ful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. $500 gift certificate for Sec 8 tenants. 773-287-9999/312-446-3333

7100 SOUTH JEFFERY Large 1 BEDROOM, $725 Large Studio, $625 Nr Metra & shops, Sec 8 OK. Newly decor, dining room, carpeted, appls, FREE heat & cooking gas. Elevator & laundry room, free credit check, no application fee, 1-773-9197102 or 1-312-802-7301

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

Available now. Seniors welcomed. $800/mo. + sec.

Call: 773.213.1705.

ADULT SERVICES

2BR, 2nd floor, living/dining/laundry room, heat incl. secure building, $1,000/mo. Donnell. 773-584-1833

2 BR $1100-$1299 CHICAGO, 2BR APT, utilities not included, 1st & last month’s rent, $1000.

C/A, close to metra.

Move in ready. $50 App Fee. Call 773501-8131 73rd & Dorchester, 2BR, carpet, $1150; 119th & Calumet, 3BR, 2BA, carpet, $1250. No Sec Dep. Sec 8 ok. 773-684-1166.

2

ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar

CHICAGO, 4019 W. Arlington,

CHICAGO, ELED, 2BR 3BR, 55th & ies not incl.

595-6151

NORTHWEST CHICAGO AVE

NEWLY REMOD71st & Halsted, $660.

Ashland, $850. UtilitSec Dep Req’d. 773-

NORTH LAWNDALE, 2BR Apts, Multiple Units Available.

New construction, next to park and elementary school. Sec 8 welcome. 972-256-1141 MATTESON, 2BR, $990$1050; 3BR, $1250-$1400.

Move In Special is 1 Month’s Rent & $99 Sec Dep. Sect 8 Welc. 708-748-4169

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 61ST/LANGLEY. 3BR/1BA. 1ST flr of 2 unit bldg. Avail Now. Sect 8 ok. Beaut apt, New kitchen, W/D in bsmt. Hdwd flrs. Nr Trans, 1 blk from schl. $1000/mo.

312-464-2222 80TH/PHILLIPS, Beautiful, lrg newly renovated 3BR, 1.5BA, hdwd flrs & appliances incl.

Quiet apt. $950/mo & up. Call 312-8180236

ADULT SERVICES

3BR, 2nd flr, tenant pays all utilities, back porch, $975/mo. Price Neg. 773-966-4821

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

3 BEDROOM 1st FLOOR SECTION 8 OK 630-827-3968

APT: 70TH/ABERDEEN.

2BR. $695.

1 mo rent + 1 mo sec.

House: Dolton 1505 Kasten Dr. 3BR $1000/mo. 773-651-8673

CHICAGO. 7 RM, 3BR APT, 2nd flr, Close to Kennedy King College. $900 + $900 Sec, Heat Incl. Call btw 10am-7pm. 773501-9977

773-230-9250

ADULT SERVICES

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

COUNTRY CLUB HILLS vic of 183RD/Cicero.

4BR, 1.5BA $1400. Ranch Style, 2 car gar.

708-369-5187

SECT 8 OK, 2 story, 4br/2ba w/ bsmt. New decor, crpt & hdwds, ceiling fans, stove/fridge, $1465.

11243 S. Eggleston, 773-443-5397

E. 92D ST. Brick, split level 5BR, 1.5BA in a quiet area, 2 car gar, all appls incl, sec 8 welc. $1475. 773720-9787 or 773-483-2594

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799

AUBURN GRESHAM Remod Spacious 4BR, gated, encl private back porch Sec 8 OK. $1200. 773-419-1126

ADULT SERVICES

LARAMIE AND HARRISON.

Unique design 5BR House, 2BA tenant pays utils, no pets. $1600/mo + sec. 708-249-6668

ADULT SERVICES

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

CHICAGO, 1138 N. WALLER, 3BR, 2nd floor, newly decorated, hdwd floors throughout. $950/mo.

Section 8 welcome. 630-915-2755 CHATHAM-3BR 1.5BA, REF/

HEAT incl, laundry in bsmt, 7900 block of Langley, Sec 8 Ok. $1160/ Mo. Mr. Johnson 630-424-1403

CHICAGO WEST SIDE

SOUTHSIDE, 11042 S. NORBR OTHER MAL, Newly remod, 3BR, 1BA, CHICAGO, PRINCETON PARK hdwd flrs, finished bsmt, $115 HOMES. Spacious 2-3 BR Town- 0/mo. Section 8 welcome. homes, Inclu: Prvt entry, full bsmt, 773-255-8530 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 CHICAGO, 7053 S. Winchester, 3BR, 2 full bath, 2 story home, backyard, unfinished basement, 1ST FLR APT. Avail. now, avail 12/1. $ 950/mo + 1 mo sec.

7914-16 S. May St., Auburn Gresham, 2BR, living & family room, kitchen, heat & water incl. 773-651-0711

CALUMET CITY, 3BR, 2 car garage, fully rehab w/ gorgeous finishes & hdwd flrs. Beautiful backyard. Sect 8 ok. $1175/mo.

510-735-7171

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

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499 BRONZEVILLE 3300 GILES,

3rd floor, 3BR, hardwood floors, wood burning fireplace, bath newly redone, washer/dryer in unit, all appliances, $1200/mo.+ security. No move-in fee. 312-383-0178

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

83rd & Kenwood, 4BR, 2BA, with finished bsmt, new decor & carpet/hdwd flrs, ten pays utils. $1450/mo + 2 mo sec. Sec 8 ok 708-373-9525 1237 W. 72ND Pl. 4BR, 1BA, full basement, ADT security system.

Tenant pays Utils. Pets OK. $1200/mo. 847-514-8015

ADULT SERVICES

REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.

Try FREE: 773-867-1235 More Local Numbers: 1-800-926-6000

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Never miss a show again.

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1-312-924-2082 More Local Numbers: 800-777-8000

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Try FREE: 312-924-2066 More Local Numbers: 1-800-8111-800-811-1633 1633

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3 BR OR MORE OTHER

8639 S Kingston, 3BR, formal dining rm, living rm, eat in kitchen, bsmt, new rehab & dec Sec 8 ok leave message 773-4375816

3 BR OR MORE OTHER

NEAR 83RD & Yates. 5BR, 2BA, hdwd flrs, fin basement, stove & fridge furn. Heat incl. $1600 + 1 mo sec. Sect 8 ok. 773-978-6134

NEWLY REHAB 5BR $1500,

84th & Peoria; 4BR, $1300 97th & Oglesby; 3BR, $1200, 98th & Yates.

Section 8 Welcome 312-804-3638

CHICAGO, 59 S. HONORE, 5BR home, 3BA, full finished basement, $1550/mo. Section 8 Welcome. Call 773-919-7730

SECTION 8 WELCOME. 3BR, 2BA BRICK HOME. GARFIELD RIDGE, 48TH & LAMON. HDWD FLRS, LRG UNF BSMT, 2 CAR GAR. $1650/MO CALL AL, 847-644-5195

ADULT SERVICES

CHICAGO S: Newly renovated, Large 3-5BR. In unit laundry, hardwood flrs, very clean, No Deposit!

Available Now! 708-655-1397 CHICAGO HOUSES FOR rent.

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

MARKETPLACE

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

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

773-685-6868.

South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

roommates

GENERAL Rogers Park – 1700 W Juneway 773.308.5167. 3-4 bedrooms from $1175 Free heat. No deposit

PULLMAN AREA, Newly remodeled 111th St., East of King Dr. $450-$550. Close to shopping & 1/4 block to metra. 773-468-1432

ADULT SERVICES

ADULT SERVICES

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.

FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90

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

AVAILABLE NOW! S p a c i o u s Rooms for rent. $400/mo.

Utilities and bed incl. Seniors Welcome.

No Sec Dep. 312-973-2793

MASSAGE TABLES, NEW and

HEALTH & WELLNESS

non-residential

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

312-446-3333 or 708-752-3812

GOODS

1996 6X4 JOHN Deere Gator, 481

hours,electric dump bed, new battery,$ 1650,Call : 8722167229 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

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.

MUSIC & ARTS

ADULT SERVICES

BUSINESS OPS 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

VINYL RECORD SHOW 11/26 100 dealer tables of LPs 45s CDs $1.00 entry 8a-4p live bands Inquire about selling: 312.554.5515

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: 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

ADULT SERVICES

NOTICE IS HEREBY given, pur-

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STRAIGHT DOPE

By Cecil Adams Q : With the Russians getting cocky

SLUG SIGNORINO

and the Chinese itching to sow their expansionist oats, I’m starting to have The Day After dreams again. I live about two hours from a primary target; if a nuclear exchange took place one morning while I was at the office, what signs would let me know that something horrible had happened, and in what order would they take place?

—CHRIS BLAIR

A : It would have been easy to read this question as merely a dark but diverting hypothetical until, oh, about the time the results started rolling in on election night. In January we’ll hand the nuclear codes over to a guy who’s said he’s OK with an Asian nuke race and who couldn’t explain the nuclear triad if you drew him a picture. Meanwhile his autocratic idol Vladimir Putin has just previewed a new fall line of ICBMs that TASS says can flatten Texas in record time. We can only hope some sage adviser will steer the president-elect back toward the conventional wisdom on using nuclear weaponry, namely “Don’t.”

But let’s press on. I take it you’re asking about the whole enchilada here: a full-on thermonuclear conflict like Reagan used to joke about. For old times’ sake, we’ll assume our adversaries are the Russians and that their plan is, as in the 80s, to achieve maximum devastation by detonating a one-megaton warhead about a mile and a half above the target—which (working from your two-hours figure) we’ll say is a population center a little more than 100 miles away from where you’ll be watching the show.

Taking some of the zing out of this scenario is the existence of the Wireless Emergency Alert system, which in a high-stakes situation enables the White House to send out a geographically-targeted heads-up via the cell network. Assuming the scary new Russian missiles are still trackable by radar, and that @realDonaldTrump doesn’t tweet the news first (“BIG mistake from loser Russians.

Launching nukes? Sad!”), you’d become aware of the incoming warhead when the official POTUS-issued message showed up on your phone.

So let’s further imagine you’re off the grid when the missiles are launched. If you’d gone camping for the weekend and weren’t getting any signal, how soon would you begin to suspect there might be a lot less civilization for you to eventually return to?

Well, from 110 miles out, anything less than around 8,000 feet up—i.e., about a mile and a half off the ground—would be hidden by the curvature of the earth, meaning you might 52 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

or might not see a flash right at the horizon.

You’d be at the very edge of the range covered by a tech-disabling electromagnetic pulse; if you were in a running car, the dash lights would maybe flicker a bit. So you might have a feeling something big was going on, but you wouldn’t be able to tell just what.

The next few seconds would clear up any ambiguity. A fireball would rapidly expand to a diameter of maybe 6,000 feet, continuing to grow as it rose into the air from the point of detonation—clearly visible above the horizon, in other words. Within a minute or so, a mileshigh cloud of hot gases, water vapor, and atomized debris would form and begin to flatten into the characteristic mushroom shape, confronting even the most optimistic of viewers with the severity of the situation.

What would make the experience particularly eerie, though, is that none of the effects of the blast would reach you. At ground zero, the drastic change in air pressure would level buildings, and winds of hundreds of miles per hour would flay human flesh already scorched by third-degree radiation burns.

But the blast wave and associated winds would peter out within 15 miles or so, sound waves would probably be damped down beyond detection en route, and an aerial explosion wouldn’t trigger any kind of tremor you might feel out in your neck of the woods.

The apocalypse you’d witness would be still and silent.

The big question is: What do you do next?

You can’t stay out in the wild forever (fallout could be drifting your way within 16 hours in any case), and there’s no imagining the chaos that awaits you back in town. The human aftermath would likely hit your area hard, with busloads of refugees from the ruined city taxing medical and social services. And that’s not even to mention the long-term effects of radiation, or the skies darkening with soot in an early hint of the possible nuclear winter to come. Sweet dreams, Chris. 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

All about vore

What to do with a fetish about being eaten alive. Plus: sex toys for the novice Q : I’m a very sex-positive

girl and I finally convinced my boyfriend to open up about his fetishes. I could tell he was ashamed and torn about sharing them with me, but I’ve been with my fair share of guys, and I was convinced nothing would shock me. Well, it turns out he’s into soft vore.

I’m not gonna lie, I was a bit put off, but of course I didn’t tell him. I started looking for information about his fetish, and I stumbled upon many websites for like-minded people, and my understanding of it is that vores really long for intimacy and protection. Is my interpretation correct?

Also, after learning about it, I realized it’s less extreme than some of the stuff we usually engage in, like heavy BDSM, so I want him to feel fulfilled. Is there any way I can help him act out his fetish? He would like to be the eatee. —FULLY UNDERSTANDING LOVER’S LONGINGS

A : Vore, for readers who aren’t familiar with the term, refers to a spectrum of kinks that involve being eaten alive or eating another creature alive. Vore is divided between “soft” and “hard,” kind of like BDSM. Soft vore doesn’t require simulated bloodshed (it mostly involves fantasies of being swallowed whole), whereas hard vore involves the (imaginary!) ripping of flesh and the (simulated!) shedding of blood. Large creatures capable of swallowing and/or devouring humans are important to this kink, as you’ll discover if you do an image search for “vore” on Google. Since most vore fantasies involve creatures that qualify as fantastical beasts, vore fetishists are forced to construct elaborate fantasy narratives or build

their own creatures in order to get off.

Before you can determine which way to go, you’ll have to get more details. Is he into the intimacy and protection aspects of vore? Is it an extension of a mouth and/ or pregnancy fetish? Does an interest in bondage factor in? Learning more about what gets him going—besides the whole being eaten alive thing—is the first step.

Once you know exactly what it is about vore that turns him on, FULL, begin your explorations with roleplay and dirty talk. Try sexting each other and/or creating dirty vore stories together over e-mail. If your boyfriend wants to get physical, start with mouthy things like biting, licking, sucking, etc, combined with dirty talk about digesty things like chewing, swallowing, gastric juicing, etc. If everything goes well, you can try to bring his fantasies to life using props, costumes, and stage blood.

Try zipping him up in a sleeping bag to simulate being in a stomach—filling it with a gooey liquid will make it feel more like the inside of some fantastical beast’s stomach— but be careful not to smother him if you do “full enclosure.”

Finally, FULL, I want to commend you for not freaking out when your boyfriend shared his kink. You listened calmly, you did a little research, and you gave it some thought. For that, I’m upgrading your GGG card to platinum.

Q : Any advice for a first-

time sex-toy buyer? I’m looking into vibrators, but I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on something that doesn’t do it for me. —VERY INTO BUYING ELECTRONICS

A : “VIBE should go to a sex shop in person so she can

physically pick up and turn on the models she’s considering buying,” said Erika Moen.

For three years Moen and her partner, Matthew Nolan, have been making the Oh Joy Sex Toy comic, which combines reviews of sex toys with really awesome/hilarious/radically inclusive sex ed. And Moen, who has personally tested hundreds of sex toys, wants you to rub one or two out before you go shopping.

“VIBE should pay attention to the kind of action that feels good or gets her off,” said Moen. “Does your clit like superdirect focus? The smaller the head of the vibrator, the more laserlike the precision. Do you like lots of overall, engulfing stimulation that covers a lot of ground?

The larger the head, the more surface area it’ll cover and the vibrations will be more generally distributed across the entire vulva, from outer labia to clit.”

For best results, Moen recommends buying two toys, VIBE. “Get a generic bullet vibe first,” said Moen. “Try it out at home, and then based on how you did or did not enjoy it, purchase a more expensive, high-quality model ($60 to $120) based on the kind of vibrational stimulation you learned you want (or don’t want) from that first cheaply made model. Personally, I recommend the Minna Limon and Vibratex’s Mystic Wand for smaller-size, decently powered vibrators. And then the big guns that’ll blast you to the moon and back are the Doxy and Vibratex’s Magic Wand (formerly known as the Hitachi Magic Wand). Best of luck to you!” v

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NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 53

High on Fire o J.HUBBARD

NEW

Anvil, Night Demon 4/8, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Peter Asher 1/15, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Code Orange, Youth Code 1/18, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Dada 3/2, 8 PM, Double Door, 18+ Datsik 1/20-21, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Freddy Jones Band 1/1, 7 PM, City Winery b Griswolds 3/10, 8 PM, Double Door b High on Fire 12/30-31, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Stephan Jenkins 12/15, 8 PM, City Winery b Joyce Manor, AJJ 2/3, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Gladys Knight, Jeffrey Osborne 3/17, 8 PM, the Venue at Horseshoe Casino, Hammond, on sale Fri 11/25, 10 AM Knocks 3/11, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Talib Kweli, Styles P 2/2, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Leftover Salmon 2/5, 1 PM, City Winery b Meat Wave 2/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Muna 2/18, 9 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Ne-Hi 2/24, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Agnes Obel 3/30, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b One OK Rock 1/18, 6:30 PM, the Vic b Esme Patterson 1/27, 10 PM, Schubas Purity Ring (DJ set) 1/27, 10 PM, the Mid Res 1/15, 6 PM, City Winery b Mala Rodriguez 12/31, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+

Sekta Core 12/11, 9 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Slapshot 4/2, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Sticky Fingers 3/4, 8 PM, Double Door, 18+ Chip Taylor 1/6, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 11/25, 11 AM Trollphace 3/3, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Dale Watson & Ray Benson 1/21, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Whispers, Temptations Review with Dennis Edwards 2/11, 8 PM, the Venue at Horseshoe Casino, Hammond, on sale Fri 11/25, 10 AM White Lies 2/6, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Webb Wilder & the Beatnecks 1/21, 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 11/25, 11 AM

UPDATED Isaiah Rashad 1/20, 6 and 9:30 PM, Double Door, early show sold out, late show added, on sale Fri 11/25, 10 AM Run the Jewels 2/17, 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, moved from Riviera Theatre, 18+

UPCOMING All Them Witches 3/16, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Allah-Las, Babe Rainbow 3/16, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ American Wrestlers 12/11, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Architects, Stray From the Path 3/8, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ August Burns Red, Protest the Hero 1/13, 6:45 PM, House of Blues b

54 CHICAGO READER - NOVEMBER 24, 2016

Bad Bad Hats, Flint Eastwood 12/9, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen The Bad Plus 12/14, 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Taylor Bennett 12/23, 7 PM, Metro b Bring Me the Horizon, Underoath, Beartooth 3/13, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom b Cam’ron 12/22, 7 PM, Portage Theater, 17+ Ceremony, Negative Scanner 1/14, 9 PM, Schubas, part of Tomorrow Never Knows, 18+ Cloud Nothings 2/10, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 18+ Coldplay 8/17, 7 PM, Soldier Field The Damned 4/23, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Deadbeats 12/10, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Mike Doughty, Wheatus 2/18, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall E, Crown Larks 12/5, 9 PM, Empty Bottle F Earthless, Ruby the Hatchet 12/2, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Evergrey 5/26, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Felly 1/7, 6 PM, Portage Theater b William Fitzsimmons, Laura Burhenn 12/4, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Flaming Lips 4/17, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Brantley Gilbert, Tucker Beathard 3/2, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Giraffe Tongue Orchestra 12/3, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 4/8, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Godheadsilo 1/9, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Laura Jane Grace 2/5, 8 PM, City Winery b Lalah Hathaway 12/31, 7:30 and 11 PM, City Winery b Zach Heckendorf 3/10, 10 PM, Schubas, 18+

b Helen Money 12/9, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Helmet, Local H 12/16, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 18+ Houndmouth 12/30-31, 8 PM, Thalia Hall Into It. Over It. 1/13, 7 PM, Metro b Ja Rule 12/16, 8 PM, Portage Theater, 18+ Japandroids, Craig Finn & the Uptown Controllers 2/15, 8 PM, Metro, 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 King 810 12/18, 7 PM, Thalia Hall b The King Khan & BBQ Show 12/3-4, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Julian Lage & Chris Eldridge 2/26, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Hamilton Leithauser 2/15, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Lemon Twigs 1/26, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Lemuria, Mikey Erg 2/7, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Less Than Jake, Pepper 2/8, 7 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Macabre 12/23, 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Magnetic Fields 4/19-20, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Mayhem, Inquisition, Black Anvil 1/23, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Mest 12/16-17, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Moon Duo 4/21, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Mystery Lights 12/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Stevie Nicks, Pretenders 12/3, 7 PM, United Center Panic! at the Disco, Misterwives 3/11, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Rob Parton Big Band 12/14, 7:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Priests 2/9, 7 PM, Beat Kitchen b Queensryche 12/9, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Radkey 12/13, 6 PM, Cobra Lounge b Rainbow Kitten Surprise 1/25, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall b Red Fang, Torche, Whores 12/10, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Red Hot Chili Peppers 6/307/1, 7 PM, United Center Leon Russell 4/10-11, 8 PM, City Winery b Saigon Kick 12/2, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Secret Space 12/13, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b Ty Segall 5/14, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 18+ Senses Fail 3/28, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Sleaford Mods 4/3, 8 PM, Double Door, 18+ Caroline Smith 1/13, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, part of Tomorrow Never Knows, 18+

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

Tennis 3/9, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall b Tinariwen, Dengue Fever 4/11, 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Title Fight 1/14, 7 PM, Metro, part of Tomorrow Never Knows b Twin Peaks, Together Pangea 12/17, 7:30 PM, Metro b Ultimate Painting 12/2, 9:30 PM, Hideout 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 Weekend Nachos 1/13-14, 7 PM, Subterranean b The Weeknd 5/23, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Weezer, Phantogram, Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness 12/1, 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom Xylouris White 12/3, 10:30 PM, Beat Kitchen White Panda 12/22, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ A Wilhelm Scream 12/2, 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Lucinda Williams 12/28-31, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, 12/29-31 sold out b Keller Williams & Leo Kottke 3/10, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Roy Woods 12/4, 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b Xavier Wulf 12/11, 6 PM, Double Door 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 Adam Ant 1/31, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ 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 Mr. T Experience, Nobodys 12/9, 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint, 17+ Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats 12/7, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre 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 IN 1991, drummers Martin Atkins (Public Image Ltd, Ministry, Killing Joke) and William Rieflin (Ministry, KMFDM, Revolting Cocks) launched Chicago-based industrial supergroup Pigface, whose revolvingdoor lineup has since included literally dozens of musicians, including members of Swans, Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, the Jesus Lizard, and the Sugarcubes. During an epic, cameo-crazy set that Gossip Wolf caught at Metro in November 1994, it seemed like they all got onstage at some point! On Friday, November 25, Pigface celebrate their 25th anniversary at House of Blues with the usual mishmash of awesome weirdo luminaries, among them Atkins, former NIN drummer Chris Vrenna, former Kittie guitarist Fallon Bowman, former KMFDM drummer En Esch, and My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult cofounder Frankie “Groovie Mann” Nardiello.

So far 2016 has been packed with awful surprises, and Prince’s death in April is high on the list—Gossip Wolf isn’t ready to let him go! On Saturday, November 26, Odd Obsession’s midnight-movie series at the Music Box screens a 35-millimeter print of the Purple One’s underappreciated black-and-white flick Under the Cherry Moon, which came out in 1986. Tickets for the one-off showing are going fast!

Looking for something to do on Thanksgiving evening after you’ve digested a week’s worth of food and your third cousins (once removed) have hopped the train home? Well, the Promontory is hosting a house-head family reunion, with six of the Chosen Few DJs—Wayne Williams, Terry Hunter, Mike Dunn, Alan King, Andre Hatchett, and Tony Hatchett—spinning sets in tribute to defunct house club Saunders. Tickets are $10; the show starts at 8 PM on Thursday, November 24.

It’s been a minute since Gossip Wolf has heard from rapper-producer Martin Sky, but he drops an EP on Thursday, December 1—he’ll throw a listening party at Jugrnaut on Wednesday, November 30, at 5 PM. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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ROONEY

ROYAL TEETH + ROMES

12/04

HEMMINGBIRDS

MUTTS + ARCHIE POWELL & THE EXPORTS + JESSE W. JOHNSON

12/29

I FIGHT DRAGONS

JENNIFER HALL + BOY MEETS ROBOT

12/30

LINCOLN HALL NEW YEAR’S EVE FEATURING...

THE HOOD INTERNET

AIR CREDITS + CELINE NEON + DJ MANNY MUSCLES

12/31

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

CHIRP WELCOMES...

SLØTFACE 12/05

GRANDKIDS

THE HECKS + HOMME + SETH ENGEL [OF OPTIONS]

12/21

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

THE WACO BROTHERS

STICKFIGHT! + THE GIRLS OF THE GOLDEN WEST

12/29

DIANE COFFEE

MODERN VICES + YOKO & THE OH NOS + THE VOLUPTUALS

12/30 & NEW YEAR’S EVE

NOVEMBER 24, 2016 - CHICAGO READER 55

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