Chicago Reader print issue of December 5, 2024 (Vol. 54, No. 10) by Chicago Reader

Street View Menswear for anywhere

07 Cooper | Feature Uduimoh Umolu’s Jon Basíl Tequila is an ode to Chicago, family, and legacy.

08 Reader Bites Pot roast sandwich at Punky’s Pizza & Pasta

NEWS & POLITICS

09 Environment A new report ﬁnds that the city isn’t enforcing its own environmental regulations for private contractors.

10 Prout | Opioid crisis The process to distribute lifesaving opioid overdose–settlement money is convoluted and onerous

ARTS & CULTURE

14 Hosking | Cover story A new exhibition highlights the ﬁrst 25 years of Barbara Crane’s practice.

16 Review For its 50th anniversary, the Smart Museum features work from its collection.

17 Exhibitions of Note Recommended shows at Parlour and Ramp and Devening Projects

THEATER

18 Plays of Note FLUSH, Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, The Long Christmas Dinner, and more

FILM

20 Feature An interview with Bill Morrison, director of the short ﬁlm Incident

23 Moviegoer In labor

24 Movies of Note Moana 2 is aﬄicted by middle-child syndrome, Amy Adams is a real beast in Nightbitch, and more.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

26 Feature Lily Glick Finnegan and gabby ﬂukemogul improvise the intimacies of survival.

28 The Secret History of Chicago Music Dee Clark bridged doo-wop, rock ’n’ roll, R&B, and soul.

30 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Robert Hood, Coalesce, ML Buch, and the WGCI Big Jam

35 Savage Love Dan wants you to fuck ﬁrst and eat dinner later.

Jobs

Matches

THE COVER

of the

Artist Barbara Crane (1928–2019) transported a large-format camera around the Loop to capture the multiple exposures that form the Neon series (1969). Crane photographed people leaving the now-defunct Carson’s department store on State Street. At night, she captured neon signs on the same piece of ﬁ lm. To Lynne Brown, Crane’s former studio manager and the current executor of the Barbara Crane Studio Archive, “the results were le to randomness and experimentation, and what [Crane] could do creatively and conceptually with that.” Crane’s work is on view through January 6 in a solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and in an accompanying monograph.

More of Barbara Crane’s work can be found at barbaracranephotography.net or on Instagram @barbaracranestudioarchive

Thanks to Oleg, Lynne Brown, and Bruce Crane

Cover pull quote said by Lynne Brown in “She couldn’t not make work” by James Hosking, p. 14.

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Neon series by artist Barbara Crane (1969) COURTESY BARBARA B. CRANE TRUST ON

Neon series by artist Barbara Crane (1969)

Courtesy

Barbara Crane Studio Archive, © Barbara B. Crane Trust

Reader Letters m

Re: “Chicago’s right-wing roots,” written by John Wilmes and published in our November 28 issue (volume 54, number nine)

Wilmes overlooks much relevant context. There had been race riots in Cicero in the 1950s. In the early 70s, the ﬁrst African American family ever in La Grange Park moved into our block (and three families moved out). Riding my bike in the late 70s to [Lyons Township], Fuentes’ (and Wilmes’ father’s) high school, I passed a car proudly displaying an American Nazi Party sticker proclaiming, “We’re back!” Nazis marched in Berwyn in 1978, and a Black family’s home was ﬁrebombed in 92. It goes much deeper than he reports. —Russ Burgos, via Threads

Re: Review of the ﬁlm Blitz, written by Kylie Bolter and published online November 19

It ain’t Bullitt, that’s for sure. — Gregory D. Howe, via X

Find us on socials: facebook.com/chicagoreader twitter.com/Chicago_Reader instagram.com: @chicago_reader threads.net/@chicago_reader linkedin.com: search for chicago-reader

The Chicago Reader accepts comments and letters to the editor of less than 400 words for publication consideration.

m letters@chicagoreader.com

EDITOR’S NOTE

Barbara Crane (1928-2019) explored photographic techniques and forms throughout her long career. In the 1960s, she used layering techniques in the darkroom in the same way that these days we might alter an image with photo-editing software. Crane was born in Chicago and started teaching at the School of the Art Institute (SAIC) in 1967. She remained connected to the SAIC community even after her retirement. Her photos of Chicago capture random people in the parks, sharp angles on buildings, and a sense of wonder that seemingly permeates from both sides of the lens. You can read more about her in the article by James Hosking on page 14.

A spark of curiosity brings so many of us deeper into our city explorations. And many of you have shared your notes with us in the form of nominations in our Best of Chicago competition. Go to our site anytime between now and December 31 to vote for your favorite Chicago people, places, and turns of phrase. v

—Salem Collo-Julin, editor in chief m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com

CORRECTIONs

The Reader has updated the online version of Mike Sula’s November 28 print article, “Gifts for foodlums,” a gift guide for food-related holiday shopping. The previously printed version stated an incorrect price for Hoste Cocktail’s Gold Fashioned. The online article has been updated with the correct price, $150.

And a photo credit for an item listed in the Reader’s 2024 Holiday Gift Guide (originally published in the same print issue) has been updated. The photograph of Droosh chutneys was provided to us by Droosh, not Tasting India as previously cited. The Reader regrets the errors. v

Smoke

By Demetrius Amparan

I imagine my grandfather smooth like silk, dark like soot, a testament to a hard day’s work.

Factory grease that compressed his airways long enough until they hummed when he walked.

Cigar smoke and real smoke like two enemies at a party

I imagine he woke up like me most days struck by god’s will and confused by its reason.

I wonder if the wind irritated his skin like it does mine.

I wonder if his dads did the same?

I wonder if he walked the wrong way 72 or three years ago and showed up in Chicago

brisk december like does everyone’s toes burn too?

What was signing a mortgage like?

What was the look on white faces when you tear dropped color into englewood?

On days I sit and pray in silence, have you ever been there with me?

A withered shell of what my ancestors would hope for me to be I wonder if my father pleads with god

I wonder if my grandfather does too

I wonder if they had the same belly aches that I have in the morning

The ones that feel like cigar smoke and real smoke just saw each other on opposite sides of the party

Two men, all ﬂames, who both want all of the smoke

Fall Hours

Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM

Thursday: 11:00 AM–6:00 PM

More Light! Exhibition

Chicago design duo Luftwerk’s immersive interpretation of Aram Saroyan’s poem “lighght” transforms the Poetry Foundation gallery into a dynamic lightbox.

Open through January 11, 2025

blk: Blues Funeral for James Baldwin

Join us for an evening of music, poetry, dialogue, memory-weaving, and community gathering to honor the James Baldwin Centennial.

December 5, 2024 at 6 PM

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org

Demetrius Amparan is a music artist and poet from the south side of Chicago. He is a nonproﬁt leader and father to daughters Ella and Addison. His latest work, Hold Me Down, released August 2024.

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

CITY LIFE

STREET VIEW

Well-suited

Whether for the street or a gala, menswear sets can be stylish.

By ISA GIALLORENZO

Suits have long been a menswear staple for two reasons: they are practical and they look great. A head-to-toe outﬁt is a cohesive statement and a neat way of clearly conveying a point of view. But in these casual and creative days, suits are not always the answer, as proven by the stylish Chicagoans featured in this article. They found all kinds of ways of suiting up without wearing a suit.

Colin Tighe paired a motorcycle jacket they recently thrifted with a pair of motorcycle

pants they’ve had for a while, then added a pair of Crocs for comfort. Model and wardrobe stylist Alejandro Mena opted for vintage luxe while working on a styling project with his colleagues at the Pop-Up boutique in Wicker Park (at 1753 N. Damen, the former home of RSVP Gallery). Mena was wearing a vintage Dior tracksuit, a vintage Louis Vuitton bag, and a pair of Nike Cortez shoes made for martial arts.

Physician Gabe Stahl decided to honor his heritage with an embroidered hoodie and basketball shorts from a Market and H Bar C collab. “[These pieces] remind me of the southwest, and my formative years were spent in Arizona. They are also unique and kind of a way of dressing up while also dressing down.” That’s the beauty of a matching set. It always looks put together, no matter how sporty. One can even attend a gala while wearing party pajamas if the accessories are just right. Coordinated creativity was on display among the partygoers at October’s Golden Jubilee, a celebration of the Costume Council

“DRESSED IN HISTORY: A COSTUME COLLECTION RETROSPECTIVE” Through 7/27/2025 : Tue-Sat 9:30 AM– 4:30 PM, Sun noon– 5 PM (see website for holiday hours and admission prices), Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark, 312- 642- 4600, chicagohistory.org

hosted at the Chicago History Museum. The evening also served as an exhibition preview for “Dressed in History: A Costume Collection Retrospective,” which is on view through July 2025 at the museum.

Artist David Jude Greene rocked his striped Marni pajamas at the event. “I’m wearing a vintage hat from my grandfather from the Medinah Temple because since we are at the History Museum and it’s [a] Costume Council [event], I thought I should wear something about our city,” said Greene. “Then [I added] this fun lobster brooch I found 15 years ago in [the Northalsted district]. I wanted pajamas because I wanted to be comfortable. Rather than black tie, I thought I’d go a little di erent.”

Fashion entrepreneur and stylist Rhan Rodgers, also in attendance at the Golden Jubilee, matched feathered textures in his Comme des Garçons ensemble. He topped off his outﬁt with an extra-tall statement hat that he brought back to the States from Paris. Rodgers was honored as one of this year’s Men of Style

From le : Rhan Rodgers, Colin Tighe, and Chip Hendon. More photos at chicagoreader.com/life. ISA GIALLORENZO

during September’s Chicago Men’s Fashion Awards, another Costume Council event. The Chicago Comme des Garçons enthusiast is not one to follow trends. “I create my own look,” he said. “This is my soul, and this is me. I set myself apart from the rest of the world.”

Also doing his own thing, visual manager Chip Hendon opted for a full polka-dot outﬁt that went all the way down to his socks. “I just thought I’d wear a random pattern, one thing, and then overdo it. Dots popped into my head and . . . voilà!”

Hendon’s sartorial choices depend on his mood. “You never know what you’re going to get. I wake up, maybe see one thing, and end up building a whole outﬁt o of that thing,” he said. “Or I’ll be like, ‘Today’s western. Today’s the 1920s. Today’s the 1950s.’ I never know. There’s always something going on. Tomorrow, I’m thinking it might be metallic. It’s very shiny, but silver, not gold,” he said, envisioning yet another coordinated showstopper. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

FOOD & DRINK

FEATURE

The Basíl businessman

Uduimoh Umolu’s Jon Basíl Tequila is an ode to Chicago, family, and legacy.

By CHASITY COOPER

Uduimoh Umolu consistently wants to bring ideas to life. As a full-time entrepreneur and business owner who simultaneously runs a creative design studio and a sales production company, his days are long and his roles multifaceted. However, the bigger picture is always in sight. The bottom line is important to every thriving business, but the experience and essence of a brand beyond its product are what make it memorable. Simply put, Umolu envisions something that will outlast himself.

“But legacy comes with time,” he says.

His first name, Uduimoh, means “he who has patience and perseverance”—two characteristics that he is learning to better embrace as cofounder and CEO of Basíl Chicago Spirits.

A child of Ghanaian immigrants, Umolu grew up in Rogers Park and was keenly aware of the diversity of his environment. After spending a few of his school years in Ghana, Umolu returned to Chicago, where he graduated from Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center and studied advertising at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In addition to his studies, Umolu became enthusiastic about the business of parties on campus. Inspired by how his peers gathered socially, he and a few classmates created Mouve, an app that invited students to share social experiences in an engaging way.

“In Champaign, I realized that business is my sport,” Umolu says. “I’ve always viewed things from a brand-marketing and storytelling side, with an emphasis on a consumer’s experience.”

Long before Instagram and Snapchat, Mouve aggregated user content by geolocation, allowing his peers to build connections digitally. While the app didn’t take off as he and his cofounders had hoped, it did teach Umolu the importance of risk-taking and the power of community.

His career led him to work in different industries, including technology and events management and production, all here in Chicago. In 2015, after Umolu had spent three years as a tech consultant, he and cofounder and business partner Belall Taher got back into the business of celebration by creating Jon Basíl, a tequila for the millennial generation.

“I’m often thinking beyond the actual business of tequila,” Umolu says. “I want to establish a brand with its own world, feeling, and experience. And that brand world itself is very vast and colorful.”

30 Under 30 list, putting the cofounders on a national stage. However, the pandemic prompted supply challenges that Umolu and Taher weren’t expecting.

“We ran out of product,” Umolu recalls. “We would have been off to the races, but we ran out. The amount of product that we allocated for that year speciﬁ cally was gone in a month.”

“I’m often thinking beyond the actual business of tequila. I want to establish a brand with its own world, feeling, and experience.”

Jon Basíl Tequila is made in Jalisco, Mexico, from 100 percent blue agave. The name “Jon” honors Umolu’s grandfather, and “Basíl” is the name of his dad’s godfather and mentor, who played a role in helping him come to America from Ghana. In 2018, the brand o cially launched its blanco tequila—the traditional twice-distilled, unaged expression, which showcases the agave plant.

Shortly after that, its reposado expression debuted— which is the blanco tequila aged in whiskey barrels for nine to 11 months.

In 2020, Jon Basíl landed its biggest partnership, debuting in seven Binny’s locations. With expansion came attention, specifically from the Forbes

Challenges like this would cause any business owner to panic; Umolu knew he had to get creative and go digital in order to keep the brand alive.

“Through those storms, you gotta stay level,” he says. “Sometimes you get antsy and want to make rash decisions, but I had to keep reminding myself that it is a process, and patience is key to what we ultimately want to do.”

And that time and energy paid o . Jon Basíl Tequila has continued to expand and recently introduced a third expression: añejo. Aged in Jack Daniels whiskey barrels for 23 months, the añejo o ers richer, more complex ﬂavors with a very smooth ﬁnish.

“While I’m not of Mexican descent, launching Jon Basíl allowed me to understand the cultural nuances of tequila and its connection to where I grew up,” Umolu says. “The brand

2 oz Jon Basíl añejo tequila 0.25 oz agave syrup

1 dash Angostura bitters 1 large ice cube Orange peel Orange slice to garnish (optional)

Add a large ice cube to a rocks glass. Pour in two ounces of tequila, along with the agave syrup and bitters. Stir. With a vegetable peeler, peel a strip of orange and twist it to express the essence over the glass, then drop the peel into the glass. Add an orange slice as garnish if desired.

FOOD & DRINK

continued from p. 7

not only represents our story but so many of the folks in our community who are connected to it. Living in Rogers Park, we went to school with so many di erent kinds of people—Indian, Mexican, Caribbean, West African, descendants of Black families from the south. From Clark to Devon to Howard, it was clear that our

The outside of Punky’s Pizza & Pasta looks like many other Chicago Italian-ish pizza parlors, so you might not expect much. The old-school sign with the decades-old green, white, and red logo has been refurbished by Bridgeport’s Scarlata family, who opened the restaurant in 2002, but otherwise, it seems like it could be a neighborhood pizza place (which it is, to the delight of the residential section of Bridgeport that borders the south part of Chinatown).

The foodies of TikTok blew off Punky’s unintentional veil last year when, in an attempt to incorporate a burgeoning “what’s the best chicken Caesar wrap” trend (yes, it was a trend), several influencers discovered Punky’s and waxed poetically about their optional croutons (giving the wrap a satisfying but not overwhelming crunch) and huge portions. Despite what you might be telling yourself about the nutritional benefits of Caesar dressing, this is not a culinary choice for the strictly health-conscious eater, but it’s goddamn good.

neighborhood was a melting pot of cultures, and we all learned from, grew with, and helped each other.”

Umolu doesn’t take for granted the sacrifices his parents made moving from Ghana to build a life for him and his siblings. It’s that sacrifice that serves as constant motivation to build a business that will benefit future generations.

thriving for years despite the ﬁckle nature of Internet trends. I do like the wraps there, but for the truly hungry, your best bet is the pot roast sandwich. It’s a massive slab of marinated beef layered with grilled onions, sauteed mushrooms double-basted in beef juice, and the blessing of someone’s grandmother urging you to eat more because you’re looking a little thin these days. The ﬁrst time I had one, I had to ask if they had the rest of the pot roast the night before. The sandwich was fresh, to be clear, but it felt like an exorbitant amount of care for a $16 sandwich: surely, this was a bigger affair at some point. But no, Punky’s made it that day, and they threw in a bag of fresh potato chips—hot, salty, and right from the fryer, making me feel almost patriotic.

The pot roast sandwich comes with provolone melted into the bread and meat, and it’s served on toasted garlic bread. It’s a Chicago meal for sure, and a tribute to someone’s home recipe in that it’s not a graband-go—you will want a fork, and you will need napkins and a table, so that you can rest your head every five bites or so and make satisﬁed cooing sounds. Trust me, the time spent concentrating on your sandwich and staying off your phone will be worth it. —SALEM COLLO-JULIN PUNKY’S PIZZA & PASTA 2600 S. Wallace, $15.95, 312-842-2100, punkyspizza.com v

“And that’s kinda why we started Jon Basíl,” Umolu says. “In my mind, you hustle for your last name ﬁrst.”

I am not a foodie TikTok person, but I do like food, and lots of it—and thankfully, there are plenty of people like myself in the Punky’s delivery area, so they’ve been

Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at fooddrink@ chicagoreader.com.

Chicago is undoubtedly one of the foundational pillars of the brand and has strongly supported its growth over the years. Local staples like Nobody’s Darling, the now closed Kimbark Beverage Shoppe, Logan Liquors, and West Loop restaurant Eleven Eleven were early adopters. Today, Jon Basíl Tequila is available in more than 300 Binny’s locations and in several independent wine and spirits stores across Chicagoland. Last month, Jon Basíl also hosted the ﬁrst installment of the Supper Club, a thoughtfully curated dinner experience, to celebrate its ﬁfth anniversary and the launch of añejo. Umolu wants to host more of these gatherings,

spotlighting local chefs, mixologists, and business owners.

“Experiences are the ethos of our brand,” Umolu says, “and the Supper Club is an opportunity for us to intimately say thank you to our supporters. Community and creation are baked into everything we do. No one can replicate the essence of who we are.”

While the work of a boss is never done, Umolu is determined to keep building a good team and delegate more so that he has more time to bring new ideas to life.

“At some point, you gotta start creating, and I want to be free enough to make dope shit.” v

m ccooper@chicagoreader.com

Pot roast sandwich at Punky’s Pizza & Pasta

Uduimoh Umolu COURTESY JON BASÍL TEQUILA

NEWS & POLITICS

CENVIRONMENT

How Chicago leaves communities in the dust

A new report ﬁnds that the city doesn’t monitor whether its contractors violate environmental regulations—and companies that violate the law continue to receive city contracts.

BY GREYSON VAN ARSDALE

hicago rarely enforces environmental regulations for city contractors, according to a new report released last month.

On October 1, Neighbors for Environmental Justice (N4EJ) released their second report in two years, “Paid to Pollute,” which found that the city department responsible for government contracts doesn’t monitor whether companies violate environmental regulations and there are rarely consequences for companies that do.

For community members in N4EJ, city compliance is personal. The group formed in the McKinley Park neighborhood in 2018 when MAT Asphalt, which holds millions of dollars in city contracts, constructed a facility across from the eponymous park and in close proximity to schools and homes. In 2020, developers canceled a planned 120-unit a ordable housing project in the neighborhood after they failed to secure funding from the city or state over concerns about the plant’s emissions.

“When [MAT Asphalt] opened up, there would be mornings where I could tell they were running without even getting out of bed; the smell just gets into the house,” says NE4J member Anthony Moser, who authored the report. “When my kids went to the preschool that’s right there, where they would walk through that park all the time, and you’d have this big facility there just pumping smoke.”

The City of Chicago regularly contracts with hundreds of private companies for all kinds of work. According to the Department of

Procurement Services (DPS), the city typically awards more than $1 billion through more than 300 contracts annually.

Companies have been required to report potential environmental violations to the Department of Law since 2014, but, according to the report, the department has no records of any such claims ever being reported—despite the fact that three major city asphalt contractors, Reliable Asphalt, Ogden Materials, and MAT Asphalt, have all had multiple citations in recent years. The three companies were awarded contracts worth more than $383 million combined for city work in 2023, according to city data.

MAT Asphalt did not return a request for comment. However, the company claims on its website that its facility is “one of the most modern asphalt pavement-making facilities in the nation,” and meets or exceeds all regulatory requirements.

Failure to report suspected violations constitutes a breach of contract by itself, but the DPS has no record of canceling a contract or barring a vendor for any reason, according to data from the report. “I think there’s a lopsided emphasis in the public understanding about the importance of legislation, where once we’ve made a rule and written it down, then the problem is solved,” says Moser. “One of the things I ﬁnd to be a recurring theme in all of this is that a requirement is only a requirement if there are consequences for ignoring it, and if there aren’t, then it isn’t really a requirement.”

DPS. Arwady responded, “It’s an interesting thought.” But the practice didn’t change.

The City Council will hold a hearing on DPS’s proposed 2025 fiscal year budget on December 4, and N4EJ members plan to come with questions for public comment. The group wants the city to go beyond enforcing the standards it already has on the books and to require compulsory environmental reviews of contractors and request documentation—like soil and water monitoring and air quality impact studies—that could help determine a project’s environmental impact.

“There are tools that are part of our law. It’s not about underutilizing them—it’s mostly been about ignoring them and not using them at all,” said 12th Ward alderperson Julia Ramirez at an N4EJ press conference on October 1. “We know that [the construction] industry is really important, but they’re large industries and we’re paying them so much money. We need to protect the people that are less fortunate.”

In a letter responding to N4EJ’s report, Sharla Roberts, the city’s chief procurement o cer, pledged her “commitment that DPS will continue partnering with user departments overseeing vendor performance on these contracts to fully leverage this authority, especially on matters that pose potential public health risks. We will also seek to leverage additional resources, such as engaging with the newly reconstituted Department of Environment in support of this initiative.” (The DPS did not return the Reader’s request for comment.)

This would be a marked change for the agency, which in late September bucked a recommendation from the Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) to bar a longtime city vendor, Benchmark Construction, from further dealings with the city. The OIG made the recommendation after it discovered Benchmark fraudulently claimed to be based in Chicago to get a better deal on city contracts. Instead, the DPS arranged a settlement that required Benchmark’s CEO to retire and the company pay a $100,000 ﬁne but allowed the company to continue business dealings with the city.

The city has previously considered environmental activists’ point that the DPS could refuse to award contracts to companies cited for environmental violations by the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH). During 2022 city budget hearings, Alderperson Andre Vasquez asked the then CDPH commissioner, Allison Arwady, why the results of CDPH investigations aren’t communicated to the

“Paid to Pollute” follows a report published by N4EJ in February 2023, which outlines a pattern of what community members see as a failure on CDPH’s part to monitor or adequately punish companies when they violate environmental laws, such as illegally dumping waste. The report illustrates that enforcement had dropped dramatically since Chicago’s Department of Environment (DOE) was decommissioned by then mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2012 and such investigations were taken over by the CDPH.

Mayor Brandon Johnson reinstated the DOE with a budget of $1.8 million last year, but the department’s focus will be on policy rather than enforcement, and it only employs ten people compared to the 60 it had a decade ago. As it stands, the CDPH will continue to oversee environmental compliance.

Community members and environmental advocates hope to see not just a change in enforcement but, someday, changes in how the city builds and maintains its infrastructure.

Moser says that while there is no pollutionfree way to produce asphalt, there are steps the city could take to allow industry without compromising community health, including decentralizing production so that emissions aren’t concentrated in one neighborhood. “But the city ﬁnds it convenient to do it this way; they get asphalt that’s cheap—but it’s cheap because it’s being subsidized by the health of the community.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Illinois organizations decry state’s convoluted process for overdose prevention money

Questions about who reviews applications for funding remain unanswered by the state.

By KATIE PROUT

covery, harm reduction, and “justice-involved populations and public safety.” The goal is to reduce overdose deaths and related harms. But the half-dozen harm-reduction leaders, large nonproﬁt directors, psychiatrists, state lawmakers, and former IDHS workers who spoke to the Reader for this story describe a confusing and burdensome application process, promises of feedback for rejected applicants that are not delivered on, and a lack of transparency around award allocation.

Jolt Harm Reduction in Peoria, Illinois, began in 2012 as an overdose prevention and naloxone distribution program, founded by Tamara and Blake Olt, after their 16-year-old son died from an overdose. The rural ambulance that responded to their 911 call didn’t carry naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug also known by the brand name Narcan.

“That could have saved his life at that moment,” said Chris Schaffner, Jolt’s executive director.

In the following years, Jolt expanded its work to include harm-reduction services like drug checking, free and sterile syringe and pipe exchanges, and sex worker outreach. Harm reduction acknowledges that, for many people, abstinence is neither possible nor desirable, and it helps people use more safely, rather than pushing them toward sobriety like many traditional recovery or treatment approaches—and it saves lives.

From 2019 until 2022, Peoria County— where Jolt is based—saw sustained decreases in fatal overdoses, while rates for Cook County and much of the country exploded. Using overdose hotspot maps, Jolt workers went door-to-door in high-risk communities and offered Narcan—and training on how to use it—to anyone who answered. Jolt, which is run by and for current and former drug users, hired queer people, people of color, and others from the communities they visited and looked for individuals and businesses to serve as focal points for continued naloxone distribution. Fatal overdoses in Peoria County decreased by 16 percent from 2020 to 2021, according to a Peoria County deputy coroner Ben Brewer. Scha ner said that the Peoria County coroner

was an advocate for the work Jolt was doing. “He said that if it weren’t for harm-reduction programs distributing naloxone, we would have a signiﬁcant number of deaths.”

In 2022, the last year for which data is available, 3,261 people in Illinois died from opioid overdose–related deaths. That same year, Illinois attorney general Kwame Raoul settled the first of multiple lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, dispensers, and distributors “for their unfair and deceptive practices in the marketing, sale, and distribution of these drugs,” according to the state opioid settlement website. Like the cigarette lawsuits of the 90s, these multistate suits are one attempt to hold large corporations that proﬁted from opioid addiction and death accountable for their role in the crisis. The settlements with drugmakers and pharmacies collectively amount to billions of dollars and are divided between numerous states that were part of the lawsuits. Even so, Illinois is expected to get more than $1.3 billion by 2038. Fifty-ﬁve percent of that money will go to the Illinois Opioid Remediation Fund; the remainder is divided between state and local governments.

Most, though not all, decision-making powers for remediation funds are housed within the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) and its Division of Substance Use Prevention and Recovery (SUPR). A governorappointed steering committee determines if these funds are distributed via intergovernmental agreements, expansion of existing programs, or competitive awards. The steering committee uses Illinois’s Statewide Overdose Action Plan (SOAP) guidelines, which include five priority recommendation categories: social equity, prevention, treatment and re-

“How are the opioid settlement funds working? I don’t think they’re working that well,” said state representative Lindsey LaPointe. LaPointe is the chairperson of the House Mental Health and Addiction Committee, and her remarks came the day after an October 28 hearing on the settlement funds and cannabis revenue held jointly with state senator Laura Fine, the IDHS, and harm-reduction and treatment specialists.

“It’s a boatload of money that our communities all across Illinois desperately need, and the state has been really slow to get the money out the door,” she continued. “I recognize that it’s very di cult to get public dollars out the door in the right way, but I was just stunned by how complicated the funding process is.” At least ten di erent boards, state departments, and other stakeholders—including members of the public, though most Illinoisans don’t know that—play some role in deciding if and how funds are spent. An unfortunate side effect of this e ort to include many voices is that it obfuscates who is actually being listened to.

“I don’t know who has the most power in these decisions because it’s not something an outsider, even a legislator, can decipher,” said LaPointe. “One would probably have to sit through a bunch of meetings for six months to be able to understand that.”

In hearings and during interviews, directors of small harm-reduction organizations say they are too overburdened to successfully apply for settlement funds. Unlike large nonprofits and public health departments that have received funding so far, these community groups don’t have multimillion-dollar budgets or grant writers on sta .

“As a grassroots organization, I do not stand a chance against these bigger programs,” said Melissa Hernandez, founder of Puerto Rico Project, the first Native woman–led harmreduction program in Illinois, at a November hearing. “I cannot afford the administrative capacity. I do not have the funds currently for these reimbursement grants.” Hernandez is a member of the low-income community she

serves: She’s a former intravenous drug user and trafficking survivor. Puerto Rico Project o ers showers, food, naloxone and syringes, and other core support services to housed and unhoused residents of Humboldt Park. It operates on an annual budget of $137,000. “As executive director, I’m the last to get paid—if I get paid at all.”

During the October hearing, state opioid settlement administrator Jim Wilkerson promised that a report on funds received and spent would be released sometime in November. Although the remediation fund began receiving settlement money in 2022 and “most of the work” in disbursement started in 2023 and 2024, according to Wilkerson, the report will only cover ﬁscal year 2024. “I think it’s very interesting to me, and somewhat disappointing, that an annual report for how we’re spending all the money doesn’t exist today,” said LaPointe later. “We’ve been doing this for almost two years. That’s just, to me, a fundamentals-of-government issue. With a funding process this complicated and this much money, that should have been part of the plan from the get-go. I’m glad it’s coming out in November.”

Midway through November, the Reader contacted IDHS for an update; spokesperson Daisy Contreras responded that the report would be out by the end of the month, but, on on December 1, I found an annual report that had been posted to IDHS’s website on November 2. I emailed Contreras to conﬁrm whether this was the report she was referring to but, as of press time, have not received an answer.

Thanks to the continuously polluted drug supply, 2023 saw a signiﬁcant increase in overdose deaths in Peoria. In 2024, Jolt applied for two Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFO), the competitive method with which remediation funding can be dispersed. NOFOs are handled by Advocates for Human Potential (AHP), the private business contracted by IDHS to support Wilkerson, the opioid settlement administrator. AHP is tasked with writing NOFOs, reviewing and scoring applications, awarding funds, ensuring the public settlement dashboard is updated and accurate, and something called “regional coalitions coordination.”

One of the NOFOs to which Jolt applied provided funds to run harm-reduction education for youth and young adults. The other was for warm hando s, a process that connects people with histories of substance use disorders directly to social services as they exit jails,

NEWS & POLITICS

continued from p. 10

hospitals, or shelters. “We’re already doing a lot of that work,” explained Schaffner to me this summer. “We’re trying to get some of that money just to pay my sta for the work that our other grants don’t pay for.”

Jolt was rejected from both. “I submitted one request for further information and never heard a word back from anyone,” wrote Schaner over email in November. He and leaders of other organizations that were rejected say that feedback has been minimal, formulaic, or nonexistent. In Chicago, the harm-reduction organization Chicago Recovery Alliance (CRA) also applied for and was rejected from two NOFOs: one to run an intramuscular (IM) naloxone hub and another for community outreach and recovery support services. CRA executive director John Werning appealed their IM naloxone hub rejection and requested feedback on both their applications. The feedback he received was vague and suggested the organization answer questions that, in some cases, the CRA had thoroughly answered in its initial application.

It’s unclear if the independent appeals reviewer works for AHP or a di erent organization, or what their credentials are. I sent an email to Contreras asking for clarity on this but have not received a response.

Acommittee of at least three people with “relevant subject matter expertise, and including persons with lived experience” conducts the merit-based reviews of applications to determine how and where millions of dollars will be spent, according to the opioid settlement dashboard website. At the October hearing Wilkerson said reviewers are both AHP sta and outside “subject matter experts,” depending on the NOFO. “AHP subcontracts with people outside of their organization, so it is their responsibility,” Wilkerson explained, “but they aren’t necessarily the ones that are doing the full merit-based review.”

Is it the same three reviewers every time? Who specifically is doing each full review? What are their credentials? So far, the state has been tight-lipped. In an email to Wilkerson, the Reader asked about the “qualiﬁed independent reviewer” mentioned in the appeal letter but received no answer.

“Do legislators get to know who is evaluating those NOFOs?” Representative LaPointe asked in October.

“We can get back to you and potentially

give you a list of who that may be,” replied Wilkerson.

Four weeks after the hearing, LaPointe still hasn’t learned who the reviewers are. After reaching out at the end of November, LaPointe wrote, “They said the answers would come very soon, and that they want to make sure they are getting me accurate info.” In November, IDHS denied the Reader ’s FOIA request seeking the same information, citing an exemption for personal information and arguing that its release could expose reviewers to outside pressure when making their decisions. The Reader’s appeal of that denial is currently pending with the attorney general’s o ce.

“Who is tasked at writing these NOFOs that are e ectively going to be the gold standard for the state—and community organizations— to adhere to?” asked one downstate harmreduction director during an interview this summer. They asked not to be named out of fear they’d be denied future funding opportunities.

Even some staff members of entities that successfully applied for and received opioid settlement funds have concerns. “We need insight into AHP and SUPR decisionmaking—that’s the critical accountability for these structures,” said one, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “With the state structure now, there’s no transparency.”

Without transparency around who conducts the reviews, applicants and legislators have to take it on faith that the reviewers are independent and have the relevant expertise to fairly evaluate each application. “I still have several outstanding questions about who the ‘subject matter experts’ are that are making these decisions in partnership with AHP,” wrote one of the half-dozen lawmakers who were present at the October hearing. AHP has a satellite ofﬁce in Chicago but is based in Massachusetts. “It’s unclear if they have any experience in Illinois, or if they have any understanding of the human service landscape here.”

AHP maintains a website that tracks Illinois opioid settlement fund spending and announces NOFOs. A disclaimer at the bottom of each page notes that questions about awards can be submitted through the site’s help desk. But when clicked, the page is blank except for this message: “Welcome! You can raise a request for our HelpDesk using the options provided. There’s nothing in this portal yet.”

According to Wilkerson, AHP holds technical assistance calls and helps applicants complete NOFOs. Multiple applicants I spoke with

described this assistance as “just reading the NOFO out loud.” A document provided to the Reader by a NOFO awardee this fall included anonymous feedback submitted to AHP from frustrated applicants. “No response to several emailed questions and calls. Questions submitted to the HelpDesk website were not answered or updated on the FAQ on the website,” read one. Others complained of errors on application forms: wrong budgets, inconsistent word counts, and application start dates “nearly two months after the originally scheduled start date” with no notiﬁcation in between.

Perhaps in response to this feedback, at the October hearing, Wilkerson announced that the state planned to release a new NOFO for an Opioid Training and Technical Assistance Center (OTTAC). According to the notice, the OTTAC will primarily focus on communities disproportionately impacted by opioid overdoses and other harms from structural racism and health inequities. At the hearing, Wilkerson said the OTTAC’s purpose is to “help the smaller organizations learn how to apply” for NOFOs, as well as provide “back-o ce assistance” for managing the grants.

“Would that also include if [an applicant] were denied, providing some technical assistance as to why a denial was made and feedback?” asked state representative Jackie Haas. Yes, answered Wilkerson. The OTTAC could provide recommendations on how an application could be “tweaked, changed, [or made] better for the next round.” The NOFO application closes December 9; the OTTAC should be running sometime in 2025, approximately three years after remediation funding ﬁrst became available in the state.

According to the Illinois Opioid Settlements

Initiative tracking page, as of August 1, 2024, the remediation fund had received about $231 million, with the first settlement received in October 2022. According to public records from IDHS, a little more than $550,000 of that was designated—but not necessarily distributed—via 14 awards in 2024. The initial approved budget for 2025 jumps signiﬁcantly, to nearly $10 million designated through 42 awards. These numbers include funds distributed via NOFO only; they exclude remediation funding distributed via intergovernmental agreements—for example, the $6 million given to the Illinois Department of Corrections for the treatment of incarcerated people—or the expansion of an existing program.

JAMES HOSKING

From 2024 to 2025, according to IDHS, these 42 awards will be split between 34 successful NOFO applicants. They include addiction recovery and treatment nonprofits, medical groups, and county public health departments. Six applicants received two or more awards for ﬁscal years 2024 and 2025; except for a county health department, all are recovery and treatment providers. McDermott Center, part of Chicago-based treatment and recovery provider Haymarket, received the most grants (four) and the most funding (a little over $1.3 million).

To date, only one harm-reduction organization, Perfectly Flawed Foundation in LaSalle, has received any funding: $350,000 over 14 months for community outreach and recovery support services. Those services, according to language in the award contract, include harm reduction. But the contract Perfectly Flawed received from AHP includes a stipulation that “federal award funds” may not be used to purchase needles or syringes if it means that the people receiving them “may use illegal drugs.” But opioid settlement remediation funds come from lawsuits, not the federal government. They are not federal dollars, and thus

not subject to federal restrictions that block lifesaving care. Perfectly Flawed received its contract from AHP in late June 2024. “We’re hoping to get clarity any day,” wrote Luke Tomsha, founder and director of Perfectly Flawed, over email in November.

According to Contreras, the IDHS spokesperson, none of the NOFOs awarded so far fund syringes and pipes. However, if a program is registered as a syringe service program (SSP) with the Illinois Department of Public Health “and the purchase of harm reduction supplies is consistent with the scope of a particular grant,” she wrote, “it would be possible” for those funds to be used on syringes and needles. Perfectly Flawed is a registered SSP with the state.

When combined with a lack of transparency around who ultimately is making remediation funding decisions, confusion like this—even if it stems from what might be simple paperwork mistakes—does not assuage the anxieties of applicants who stretch shoestring budgets to try and prevent overdose death in their communities every day.

“It’s very clear to me that on-the-ground,

small, nimble, authentic harm-reduction organizations are endemically underfunded,” said LaPointe. “They are on the front line of the opioid epidemic, keeping people alive and building relationships with people based on trust. Those organizations deserve opioid settlement funding. As a policymaker, I don’t know exactly what the answer is, but I’m interested in ﬁnding a way for those endemically underfunded organizations to get more support so they can do the work that they do.”

In November, Representative LaPointe and Senator Fine convened a second hearing, this time on the ﬁnancial and administrative barriers treatment providers and harm reduction practitioners face in Illinois. Scha ner of Jolt was invited to speak. Just that week, he began, someone Jolt served died by accidental overdose. “I come today with heaviness in my heart,” he said, along with a sense of desperation and anger. “These are preventable deaths. . . . We can make a serious positive impact on this crisis, but we lack the resources and— often—the political will to do so.” v

The web of stakeholders that play a role in deciding how opioid overdose settlement funds are spent AMBER HUFF

ARTS & CULTURE

Barbara Crane (1928–2019), the legendary Chicago artist behind this week’s cover, said, “Once I developed my first roll of film in 1948, nothing else mattered.” What followed was decades of daring formal experimentation, deﬁned by a connection to Chicago’s social and physical landscape. Her current solo exhibition at Paris’s Centre Pompidou features over 200 works from the ﬁrst 25 years of her practice. It’s accompanied by a new monograph published by Atelier EXB. Below, Lynne Brown, an artist and former studio manager to Crane who helped develop the show, talks about Crane’s history and legacy.

James Hosking: When did you start working with Barbara?

Lynne Brown: I ﬁrst met Barbara in the early 1980s when I was a graduate student at SAIC, and we became friends. It must have been 2007 when she asked me to stop by her studio to look at the book she was working on that accompanied her retrospective exhibition, 2009’s “Challenging Vision,” that was being organized by the Chicago Cultural Center. Barbara wanted me to help her with the sequencing and organization. I spent the afternoon and came back and spent the next day, and the next, and the next, and never left.

How do you think that Barbara’s early time at the Institute of Design, with its grounding in the Bauhaus and the work of László Moholy-Nagy, inﬂuenced her work?

It was transformative. She had been working as a photographer for many years: making portraits of neighbors’ families or businessmen’s portraits, but that held no interest for her anymore. She was familiar with Aaron Siskind’s work, who was running the program at the Institute of Design, and she arranged to show him her work. He said, “I don’t take private students, but why don’t you come into the master’s program?” She said, “Oh, no, I can’t do that.” She woke up the next morning and called him and said, “How do I apply?”

As I became more familiar with Barbara’s work I was struck by the distinct series she created. What is the methodology behind them?

It’s hard to say if a series evolved over work that coalesced into an idea or if she approached things as an idea and pursued that in-depth. I think both of those would happen

‘She couldn’t not make work’

Barbara Crane’s photography is on view at the Centre Pompidou and in a new monograph.

By JAMES HOSKING

over time. The idea might change and shift, but it was all within the context of a larger series or concept. Some series had a discrete period of time while others would happen over a longer period concurrent with other series.

She often would talk about having summer work and winter work. In the summers, it was important for her to get out and photograph and be around people. She felt isolated largely

How did the show at the Centre Pompidou and the accompanying book come to be?

The curator, Julie Jones, did her PhD on U.S. photography in the 30s and 40s, with a focus on the New Bauhaus and the Chicago School, and that’s where she ﬁrst discovered Barbara’s work. As a woman and a single parent with three children, Barbara’s work wasn’t always taken seriously by her professors and male peers. She was often up against preconceived ideas of what a woman’s role should be. Julie had an interest in making Barbara and her work more present.

How would you characterize Barbara as an artist?

A friend who also knows Barbara and her work very well characterized her as experimental, expansive, fearless, inspired. She couldn’t not make work. She had to do it. She would challenge herself all the time. With the series People of the North Portal (1970–1971), she would position herself with a large-format 5x7 view camera outside one of the entrances of the Museum of Science and Industry and photograph people coming out the revolving doors. Some of the photos are closer up, some of them are farther back. She thought through what are the possibilities here? She always talked about how inﬂuential mistakes were. She would ﬁnd a mistake compelling and would pick it apart and pursue it. Barbara approached the world with a childlike wonder and heightened fascination that she brought to her photography.

What was her relationship to Chicago?

Barbara was a lifelong Chicagoan, and she saw herself that way. She was very connected to the city and felt that she did some of her best work here, because she could always go back again and again and again to what she was photographing. She didn’t like taking travel pictures. It didn’t interest her.

How did Barbara want to be remembered?

because her children would spend the weekends with their father. So she would photograph in crowds of people resulting in series such as Beaches and Parks (1972–1978) and Private Views (1980–1984). These are examples of summer work made out in the world. Winter work, series such as Still Lifes (1997–2002) and Objet Trouvé (1982–1988), were photographs of objects she collected and found fascinating that were made in the studio.

Her legacy was deﬁnitely important to her. She wanted her work placed well so that it would live on beyond her lifetime. Barbara always would say, “ If I die”; she would never say, “When I die.” She loved living, and she hung on to it as long as she could. There was something about connecting with the world through her work and the process of discovery that was so important to her. v

m jhosking@chicagoreader.com

Neon series by artist Barbara Crane (1969) COURTESY BARBARA B. CRANE TRUST

NEW FROM THE GRAY CENTER

Edited

by Abigail Winograd

By Romi Crawford

Slavs and Tatars and Leah FeldmanCover: Thomas Hirschhorn

Art in Pursuit of Common Cause (Delmonico Books, 2024)

Edited with text by Abigail Winograd and Jill Sterrett. Introduction by Marlies Carruth. Text by Don Meyer and Michael Christiano.

Azbuka Strikes Back: An Anti-Colonial ABCs (Buchhandlung Walther König, 2024) By Slavs and Tatars and Leah Feldman. Illustrations by Amine Boulkroun.

Cauleen Smith: Breaking Cinema. Experimental Film 2010–2023 (Mousse Publishing, 2024)

By Romi Crawford.

Portable Gray, Vol.7, No.2

The United States of Criticism

(The University of Chicago Press, 2024)

Contributors: Meralis Alvarez-Morales; William Ayers; Michael B.; Ted Barrow; Adrienne Brown; Adam Bush; Rikki Byrd; Stephanie Cristello; Alireza Doostdar; Zaria El-Fil; Ghenwa Hayek; Thomas Hirschhorn; Britt Julious; Paula Kamps; Sam Korman; Joel Kuennen; Lisa Yun Lee; Thomas Love; Peter Margasak; Matthew Metzger; Fred Moten; Lauren O’Neill-Butler; Our Literal Speed; Dieter Roelstraete; Saroop Singh; Jennifer Smart; Ashlyn Sparrow; Ian F. Svenonius; Regina Victor; Erik Wenzel

Photos: Tom Van Eynde.

ARTS & CULTURE

REVIEW

The evolution of the Smart Museum

For its 50th anniversary, the institution mounts an ambitious rehang.

By DMITRY SAMAROV

“What is art for?” asks art historian Katharine Kuh in the introductory wall text of the Smart Museum’s ambitious rehang of their entire gallery space. The question was likely at least partly rhetorical, but if this exhibition o ers any clues, it has something to do with discovering surprising and unlikely resonances.

Opened in 1974 as part of the University of Chicago’s art department, the Smart has long since become a stand-alone institution that often highlights local and contemporary artists while always focusing on the teaching aspects of art presentation, appreciation, and scholarship.

Though the exhibition is roughly chronological—in that work from the 1960s and ’70s dominates the ﬁrst gallery and work from the last couple decades takes up much of the last room—there are many asynchronous groupings. The first piece that made me stop was Jan Steen’s A Game of Skittles (circa 1650). It’s hung high up, salon-style, along with several disparate but mostly abstract 20th-century works. I’m a sucker for Dutch genre painting, and though the Steen is too high up for me to examine it closely, I stood for several minutes trying to understand why the curators placed it where they did. I never cracked that secret but the fact they made me stop and think indicates some measure of success in their choice, whatever the intention.

In the same room, a top-tier Mark Rothko canvas, No. 2 (1962), is accompanied by a label that quotes the artist’s ambition as the “elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, between the idea and the observer.” I’m usually not fond of reading wall text but

R“THE 50TH: AN ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION”

Through 3/2/25 : Tue–Sun 10 AM– 4:30 PM, Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood, smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/exhibitions/the- 50 th-an-anniversary-exhibition, free

this show is the rare one where attention to them is warranted. One of the reasons is that many labels are written by the university’s students and professors, thereby providing unusually fresh, ofthe-moment takes on the work, be it contemporary or ancient. A great example of how the exhibition emphasizes art-historical study is the freestanding display of a Felix Nussbaum canvas featuring a 1927 portrait on one side and a group of masked ﬁgures circa 1939

The chance to rethink and reimagine the entire installation of a stalwart institution like the Smart is a rare treat.

on the other. Not only is this a unique way to trace one artist’s development but it is also an insight into the fraught economics of many painters’ lives. Nussbaum’s reuse of a 12-yearold canvas speaks to a reality many museum visitors may not consider.

Another fascinating pairing is a wood engraving by Willem van Swanenburgh hung over an etching by Pieter van Sompel. Done 30odd years apart, in 1611 and 1643, respectively, both were made from a painting by Peter Paul

Rubens. But the di erences in media point to how developments and discoveries in technology can drastically alter a creative outcome. Imagine the same scene photographed by Polaroid and digital cameras and you’ll get some sense of the qualitative contrast between these two now-archaic printing processes.

I spent some quality time with Kerry James Marshall’s Slow Dance (1992–93). It’s a canvas that gracefully marries a simple moment of romantic intimacy with several clashing approaches to rendering seen and felt life. How he gets away with a musical sta and ﬂoating notes over a dancing couple in a humble living room without a bit of saccharine schmaltz is a mystery I can’t (and wouldn’t want to) uncover.

Other highlights include Ben Shahn’s trenchant series of pen-and-ink illustrations for an article about the Great Migration and Dan Peterman’s hard-to-categorize glass and steel pods filled with scientific detritus. They’re like artifacts from a long-extinct civilization, except that it is the one we’re living in, for the moment.

Being a catchall survey, not everything will appeal to everyone. There’s too much photography for my taste, and Antony Gormley’s Infinite Cube (2014) is a silly optical curio that belongs at Navy Pier or the gone-andforgotten Museum of Holography rather than in a darkened room all its own, as if it’s some sacred relic.

I understand why the curators had to devote an entire corner to the Chicago Imagists and two of their main progenitors, H.C. Westermann and Joseph Yoakum, but much of this stuff looked shopworn and prosaic; local yokels included so as to appease longtime collectors. Kind of like casting your spouse in your movie knowing they don’t have much talent but doing it anyway because you value the relationship.

Overall, the chance to rethink and reimagine the entire installation of a stalwart institution like the Smart is a rare treat. I wish more local museums rehung their collections this way more often. The idea that a museum can be a dynamic, ever-changing entity, as opposed to a staid repository of unquestioned treasures, is an attractive one. The Smart’s holdings are rich enough that they could make an entirely new exhibition a few times a year.

If they do, I hope a Jan Steen piece is included, and that it be hung at eye level and away from the sun’s glare. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Installation view, “The 50th: An Anniversary Exhibition,” 2024 COURTESY SMART MUSEUM

& CULTURE

OPENINGS

RLiberate the flesh

Sam Schwindt and Catie Burrill ruminate on Chicago’s countercultures.

Artists Sam Schwindt and Catie Burrill hone their cra smanship and explore threads of vitality through materiality at Parlour and Ramp, once a funeral parlor and salon. In “Leather and Fur: Uncommitted Crimes,” tall sculptures of hard and tough leather are married to others with so , fuzzy faux fur to illustrate the elements of life that are easily discarded, disregarded, and othered, spotlighting each artist’s ruminations on countercultures, from queer ephemeral bodies to the portrayal of madness in American society.

This exhibition marks the evolution and beyond of each artist’s creative practice. Schwindt’s meticulously manipulated leather and animal hides comment on the politicization of the queer body while Burrill’s steadfast commitment to the cra of sewing is attested in her skillfully cra ed designs accentuating her own unique patterns. Schwindt’s The Figure Ravaged By The Sublime—which is commanded by hot pink leather and pierced by a bright neon light—next to Burrill’s Dead Horse—reminiscent of a U.S. ﬂag with brightly colored faux fur in place of stars and black leather for stripes that bleed out of the frame—prelude the exhibition’s platonic matrimony of the two. Around the corner, Burrill’s installation Furgate: Embrace the Worm, two nearly 8-foot, one-eyed furry guardians, hovers over the salon and guards Schwindt’s The Figure (Pierced) Regenerating From the Fragments which hangs from the ceiling like a carcass with a neon rod slicing through its body. What I found to be the most intriguing and resounding element of the exhibition is on the gallery wall. Each artist debuts a series of small sculptures that drive home the themes they are exploring on a microlevel. Schwindt tears muscle, tissue, and appendages from the body in his sculptures in which he explores the voluntary and involuntary, the constraints and contortions our muscles endure unknowingly. Burrill’s series “Stones of Folly” spotlights mental illness through a collection of small stones—embellished with bright fur and strung like a rosary—that references the dated belief that those who were “mad” had stones in their head that needed to be surgically removed. In the center of each larger stone is a picture of a popular ﬁgure who has experienced unjust treatment because of their mental illness.

In “Leather and Fur: Uncommitted Crimes,” Schwindt and Burrill liberate the ﬂesh and the mind from the societal conﬁnes of normality and structure. Viewers

are encouraged to participate in this un-lassoing of American order by playing with salvaged scraps of faux fur and leather that the artists have gathered in a treasure chest. With German philosopher Theodor Adorno’s reﬂection that all art is in a potential state of making a political statement in mind, Schwindt and Burrill liberate the aspects of the human experience that are o en overshadowed by the sociopolitical contexts in which they are conﬁned. —RACHEL DUKES “LEATHER AND FUR: UNCOMMITTED CRIMES” Through 12/6: by appointment, parlourandramp@gmail.com, Parlour and Ramp, 2130 W. 21st Street, parlourandramp.com

RNathaniel Robinson’s games

The artist’s ﬁ h solo show at Devening Projects is full of risks.

“Rooms with Rooms and Games,” Nathaniel Robinson’s ﬁ h solo show with Devening Projects, sure is an odd one. For anyone who principally associates the artist with his paintings—o en small, sweet, sodden with nostalgia, but too chilly to be sentimental—“Rooms” is jarring. Each high-tension, jewellike installation is suspended cleverly in space, mounted on individualized bracket systems married to their sculptural forms. One is le aﬂoat amid an archipelago of works that know their place in the gallery’s environment, and feels it.

In this way, the show is rivetingly uninviting. So self-contained are works like Room With Closet and Droppings and Room With Large Paintings that they don’t particularly need their viewers. Many occupy forms that require navigation, stooping and peering, careful intrusive transits through their personal space. O en the reward for engaging is to be met with a mirror, a sudden and humiliation-tinged reminder of your own behavior.

Bandai-Namco S.H.Figurearts body-kuns—movable figures used for drawing—appear in a sparing number of the sculptures. “The figures felt like a risk, which was good,” Robinson notes in the exhibition text. Both are true. They strip the work of the so ness that the artist is such a master at achieving (see Room With Painted Walls and Ceiling). In exchange, we receive a locked-in sense of scale. This makes for less ambiguous, equally quiet, and more dread-filled encounters than one is accustomed to having with his work.

It’s clear who comes out the winner in Robinson’s games, but you’ll be awfully glad you played.

—BIANCA BOVA “ ROOMS WITH GAMES AND GAMES” Through 12/21: Sat noon–5 PM or by appointment, dan@deveningprojects.com, Devening Projects, 3039 W. Carroll, deveningprojects. com/exhibitions v

Le : Nathaniel Robinson, Room With Figure and Clock , 2024 COURTESY DEVENING PROJECTS

Above: Installation view, “Uncommitted Crimes,” Parlour and Ramp SAMUEL SCHWINDT

THEATER

OPENING

RFLUSH reveals our humanity

Heartrending revelations unfold in a queer dance club’s gender-neutral bathroom.

Juwon Tyrel Perry’s new play, FLUSH, digs into a multitude of impactful stories revealed in the confines of a gay nightclub’s bathroom. Directed by Christian Alexander for Campfire Repertory, the play begins with ten individuals dancing enthusiastically along to Selena’s “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” not on the dance floor but in the gender-neutral bathroom. I find the opening scene to be crucial as it sets a joyful tone that soon turns somber as each of the characters takes turns revealing their story. It’s unexpected but necessary that we see and hear the facade being flushed away as the evening evolves, illuminating the complexities of identity and community.

Throughout the evening we meet ten individuals who are each striving, in their own way, to be seen and

RHigh-end Hallmark

Griﬃn’s The House Without a Christmas Tree is a heartwarming musical dramedy.

Griﬃn Theatre’s world premiere of this one-act Christmas musical is a high-end Hallmark movie, and I mean that as a compliment. I’ll preface it with the “content warning” that you must be looking for a heartwarming holiday story, but if that’s your jam, The House Without a Christmas Tree is elevating the art form this season. Based on the 1972 TV movie (novelized by Gail Rock in 1974), this theatrical adaptation includes music and lyrics by George Howe and a book by Griﬃn artistic director William Massolia. Under Dorothy Milne’s direction and with a capable cast, what starts as a truly low-stakes story evolves into a full-bodied production that you can’t help warming to. Yes, it’s about a literal Christmas tree, but it’s also a dramedy about loss, family dynamics, and creating new traditions.

Set in a 1946 rural Nebraska town with no traﬃc light, the story centers around young Addie Mills (an endearing and charismatic Julia Limoncelli). Early

RA very Marley Christmas

Lifeline’s Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol is a cunning twist on the classic.

The holidays are upon us, which means memorable productions like A Christmas Carol provide the toasty comfort of a coal furnace and a warm scarf. But if you’re looking for a fun and diﬀerent take on the familiar Dickens classic, grab your stovepipe hat and head over to Lifeline Theatre’s Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, written by Tom Mula and starring Phil Timberlake. This one-man, nineteen-character production is a delightful journey through the world of spirits and curmudgeons, but with a new twist on the well-worn tale.

Dickens’s original story begins with talk of Marley’s death seven years prior, and we only see him as a chainclad apparition. But Mula’s story not only takes Marley’s perspective by illuminating his own journey a er his demise—it also provides fresh insights into many of the themes of the original, inventing new characters who seem penned by Dickens himself. In Marley’s story, we get a glimpse of the a erlife, with poignant observations about who looks over us—good and bad.

heard. From someone with a drug addiction battling his demons while on the toilet, to the lesbian couple expressing their individual views of love, to the mother ﬁgure consoling a gay man who is burdened with trying to communicate with his own mother who has shunned him, each of these powerful characters has an impactful story to share. Their stories reveal the plight—and joy—of queer life. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will hopefully be moved to understand the lives of members of the LGBTQ+ community. (Did you know that there are currently more than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the U.S.?)

Without giving it away, I can say that the ending of FLUSH reminds us of the tragedy of hate crimes directed at LGBTQ+ people. I highly recommend this moving and vital play. —SANDRA TREVIÑO FLUSH Through 12/8: Thu–Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; Chicago Dramatists, 798 N. Aberdeen, campfirerep.org, $30 ($45 VIP, $15 students/teachers)

scenes concern daily life with her friends, school crushes, and other quotidian topics, but the songs pop with the cast’s high-quality harmonies and energetic, physical use of a small space. Addie’s gripes about not having a Christmas tree initially feel juvenile but evolve into a more mature understanding of her father’s long-term grief over the loss of her mother. Grandma Mills (a grounding Darrelyn Marx) is her guide on this emotional journey, bringing a quirky, no-nonsense conﬁdence to her role as family matriarch. While a bit of a non sequitur, the musical closes with a very fun Christmas pageant parody, perhaps the biggest wink during a show of mostly earnest “awwws.”

—MARISSA OBERLANDER THE HOUSE WITHOUT A CHRISTMAS TREE Through 12/29: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Sat 12/21 and 12/28 3 PM; Bramble Arts Loft, 5545 N. Clark, 872-529-0657, griffintheatre.com, $43 (seniors $38, students with ID $35, limited number of $15 access tickets at each performance)

We witness more of the rivalry between Marley and Scrooge while they were alive, with Timberlake eﬀortlessly transforming from one miser to the other. Timberlake is charmingly Dickensian, seemingly plucked from the dirty streets of 19th-century London and totally engrossing and hilarious in his multiple roles—a true pleasure to watch. Mula played Scrooge in the Goodman’s A Christmas Carol for seven years in the 1990s and performed his own play for several years, starting in 1998. He gives Marley, who is a kind of “Scrooge lite,” the responsibility to redeem his former partner, despite Scrooge being the most undeserving target of charity. Marley’s quest ultimately reminds us all what true charity really means. —JOSH FLANDERS JACOB MARLEY’S CHRISTMAS CAROL Through 12/22: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood, 773761-4477, lifelinetheatre.com, $45

R

Tragic smallness

TUTA’s The Long Christmas Dinner takes one family through 90 years.

It’s always Christmas at the Bayard house, located somewhere across the Mississippi. “Every last twig is wrapped around with ice,” exclaims Lucia (Alexis Primus), peering out the window. At dinner, the place settings never change, though sometimes the people do, as 90 years of Bayards march through time and Christmastide. Newlyweds Roderick (Matt Miles) and Lucia host Mother Bayard (Joan Merlo), who can remember “when there were Indians on this very land.” Son Charles (Huy Nguyen) goes ice-skating and gets married to Leonora (Seoyoung Park). In 75 minutes, we see births, deaths, war,

industrialization, and Anthropocene-era environmental disasters.

The meal is endless, a menu incessantly eaten from plates that never register a mark—another toast, a sea shanty sung boisterously so its gruesome text is never quite heard. Changes are understated—a baby born, a basket carried into the room, a death as easy as walking out the door—rendering landmark events on the scale of an extra glass of wine tipped back, or a jelly le behind in the kitchen.

In TUTA Theatre’s production of Thornton Wilder’s The Long Christmas Dinner (written by the author of Our Town when he was teaching at the University of Chicago), directed by Jacqueline Stone, characters seem to recur as cast members are reincarnated as their own descendants. In the brevity of such episodes, it can seem diﬃcult to invest in the details, yet impossible not to confront, within the mundanity of each occurrence and recurrence, the same tragic smallness of loss and love within our own lives. “We let him go so casually,” weeps Leonora. “Only time, only the passing of time,” says Lucia. “Don’t grieve.” —IRENE HSIAO THE LONG CHRISTMAS DINNER Through 12/29: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Thu 12/19, Mon 12/23, and Thu 12/26 7:30 PM; Bramble Arts Loft, 5545 N. Clark, tutatheatre.org, pay what you can (suggested $20$60)

RTrailer tinsel

Who’s Holiday again brings the laughs and the grit to Theater Wit.

Matthew Lombardo’s highly praised Who’s Holiday is back at Theater Wit for its seasonal run.

Cindy-Lou Who (Veronica Garza), now 40, is preparing to host a Christmas party for her friends in the Dr. Seuss universe but ends up telling us of the a ermath of the events that took place when she was a tot in How the Grinch Stole Christmas

At its surface, Who’s Holiday has the makings to be one of those heartwarming redundant Christmas stories that proliferate through the likes of Hallmark and Lifetime. However, Christopher Pazdernik’s direction and Garza’s stellar, quick-witted embodiment of Cindy-Lou Who take the show on a different route that keeps its audience entertained. It mixes mature humor with the nostalgia of the Dr. Seuss universe through its rhyming cadence and cheery tone.

Garza’s embodiment of Cindy-Lou Who is captivating as soon as she steps into Cindy’s decked-out Christmas trailer (set design by Angela Weber Miller) on the outskirts of Whoville. Decked out in costume designer Uriel Gomez’s Christmas-themed garb and sporting a grown-up take on Cindy-Lou’s iconic updo, Garza leans into this new, edgier version of the character.

Throughout the show’s 65-minute run, Garza commands the attention of the audience with her quick-witted humor and doesn’t miss a beat as she interacts seamlessly with the audience through her bits and songs. There are points where she makes the audience laugh out loud, while still drawing them into the sadness of Cindy-Lou’s story. Garza’s performance oﬀers surprises for her audience at every nook and cranny. Who’s Holiday is a must-see for those looking for a laugh while also leaning into what the reality of the season is for many. —LAYLA BROWN-CLARK WHO’S HOLIDAY Through 12/29: Thu 7 PM, Fri-Sat 7 and 9 PM, Sun 3 PM, also Mon 12/23 7 PM; 7 PM only Fri 12/6-12/13; Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-9758150, theaterwit.org, $39 v

The Long Christmas Dinner JOSH BERNASKI

FILMFILMFILM

RINCIDENT (2023)

30 min. Mon 12/9, 6:15 PM, postscreening dialogue with director Bill Morrison and journalist and Invisible Institute founder Jamie Kalven, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, $13 general admission, $ 8 youth and seniors, $6. 50 Film Center members, $ 5 SAIC faculty and Art Institute staff, free for students, siskelfilmcenter.org/incident

‘What does the footage show us?’

An interview with Bill Morrison, director of the short ﬁlm Incident, which documents the 2018 killing of Harith “Snoop” Augustus by Chicago police

By KAT SACHS

On July 14, 2018, Harith “Snoop” Augustus, a barber in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, was shot to death by Ocer Dillan Halley. Police had stopped Augustus after noticing that he had a gun under his shirt. As two o cers attempted to detain him, Augustus—aware as any Black man might be in his situation of how such an incident might escalate—ran into the street, upon which Halley ﬁred ﬁve shots, killing him on the spot. The police later claimed he had reached for his gun, a narrative that emerged as a classic example of the police’s interminable commitment to justifying their unlawful brutality.

Bill Morrison’s short ﬁlm about Augustus’s death, Incident, is screening Monday, December 9, at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Morrison, who has watched the bodycam and surveillance footage of the incident, many, many times, tells me, “He wasn’t thinking about being stopped. He was scratching his back.”

Morrison will appear in person at the Film Center for a postscreening dialogue, joined by Jamie Kalven, founder of the Invisible Institute and the intrepid journalist whose reporting on the Laquan McDonald shooting brought that injustice to light and who also reported on Augustus’s shooting. (Morrison and Kalven are family friends, so the latter’s work was the inspiration for Incident.)

age of the shooting, isn’t so much a deviation as an evolution of how Morrison approaches archives and the images contained there. We spoke via Zoom about his ﬁlm in advance of the Film Center screening.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kat Sachs: Your earlier works engage so much with the decay of physical ﬁlm, whereas Incident deals with the overwhelming abundance of digital footage. How did this shift affect your creative approach to the themes that you wanted to explore?

board cameras that told this story from many perspectives. When I saw how much coverage there was and that it could be synced to tell the story from different views, it resonated in di erent ways for me. Jamie and I are old family friends. I was aware of his work and had often asked about whatever project he was working on.

the presence of an archive dictated the action.

What were the challenges of working with the bodycam footage, both technically and emotionally?

“I think that you could watch this film 20 years from now and still understand it, not necessarily about these players, but about this country.”

It’s difficult to reduce Morrison’s ﬁlmmaking, experimental as it is, down to a simple description—the appreciation and understanding of it are in the viewing. He’s largely worked with decaying celluloid (2002’s Decasia , 2016’s Dawson City: Frozen Time ), breathing new life into these imperfect and previously believed to be lost images and creating new narratives in the process. Incident, which utilizes bodycam and surveillance foot-

Bill Morrison: Incident is still an archival piece; it still talks about the archive in a di erent way. . . . With decayed footage, it’s hard to get your hands on. It’s [because of] my privileged relationship with certain archives that I’ve been able to rescue it, and so in a way, it’s lost, or it certainly would be lost if I didn’t reproduce it and put it into my ﬁlms, whereas this is a di erent kind of disappearance. These images are so common and so ubiquitous that they fall into an enormous archive that is not watched by virtue of the fact there’re just so many images like it. And if it gets rubber-stamped by the authorities as, “There’s nothing to look at here,” then we tend to not go back and examine it. It’s a different kind of obsolescence, I guess you’d say, and it also obviously speaks to a decay of society, quite literally.

This collection was remarkable because of the work Jamie Kalven did and the lawyers [did] on behalf of the family—they were able to get an extraordinary amount of footage from the city . . . body-worn cameras, surveillance cameras, closed-circuit TV, and dash-

I had often said there is this idea of a Rashomon, where different stories reveal di erent realities based on who’s holding the camera or what kind of camera it is, and that those different types of media tell different types of story, which is sort of a compelling, 21st-century update of Rashomon [1950]. That remained a theoretical film idea we thought we might explore one day, and when this came up, [Kalven] wrote about it in the Intercept, and then more footage was released in 2022, and he wrote another article. At that point, most footage was uploaded to YouTube. I started downloading clips, seeing how they could ﬁt together, and creating a structure of split screens or quad panels, always prioritizing this master shot, the eye-in-the-sky surveillance camera capturing the event, so we’d always be aware of the victim on the ground and everything happening around him. I saw the di erent points of view as a di erent way of telling a larger story, and that was very compelling to me.

With the Laquan McDonald case, the Feds eventually stepped in and said, “All this material has to be released in 60 days, you can’t hold onto it,” and so that also changed the nature of this type of footage, that officers were aware that this was all gonna become public, and therefore they started creating a narrative, which I also found compelling—that

I wouldn’t say any o cer was a trained cinematographer, and of course, kind of ridiculously, they’re asked to turn these cameras on at the beginning of an incident, so they have to make a judgment call, “Oh, now I’m in an incident,” just as [the] natural incident is occurring. That said, much of the footage didn’t begin where you’d want it to and often ended too soon. O cers turned it o —[it’s] a theme in the piece, where they say, “Don’t say nothing on that camera.” Eventually everyone turns their camera o because the poor o cer who’s assigned to summarize it, to write the report on it, can’t get a straight answer from anybody until everyone’s camera is turned o . My film explores the aftermath—what do they do with the corpse? How do the cops react? And a big part of that is, also, how does the crowd react? The crowd becomes a Greek chorus who are incredibly observant. One man even says, “You whisk them away so they can get their stories together,” which is exactly what’s happening.

In bringing all perspectives into the same frame, are you hoping this approach limits interpretive ambiguity, or do you welcome varied responses?

Well, I do welcome a range of responses. The New Yorker posted it on their YouTube channel, so there are comments allowed there, and if you go to those comments, there are quite

A partial still from Incident (2023) INTERNATIONAL

a bit of people who find Snoop at fault. But, be that as it may, I’m presenting the footage, and that’s what’s important to me. I really wanted it to be about the 20 minutes that the cameras were on, and that we had that footage for, so that it becomes about: what does the footage show us?

To me, there’s not a shadow of a doubt that the police are culpable for at least manslaughter. But there are also rules that allow a gray area, always siding with police, saying it’s a dangerous job, that he was armed, and they couldn’t be sure.

It’s interesting how the police’s perspective often becomes the default “objective” point of view in these situations, even as you present the footage objectively and allow subjective responses.

That relates to how, in the archive, it’s rubber-stamped as, “This is how it went down.” Snoop’s fault is assumed, case closed. The very next night, they released a freeze-frame [on the news] where it appears Snoop is reaching for his gun. Because I’ve watched this a lot, I know that he’s already been shot at that time, but if you take that frame out of context and show it to the public and say, “This is the guy that the cop shot last night,” it’s immediately going to change public perception. He’s painted as a perpetrator, as a threat to society. The cop protected us all. That story was successfully spun. Harith Augustus’s name never entered the canon of repeatable names that the nation has sadly accrued.

You’ve mentioned how police behavior changes with footage, with officers per-

forming on camera. How does this impact the narrative?

It’s interesting because what I think happens is that—and this could happen without a camera there, too—is that they start repeating the story to each other. Everyone’s saying, “OK, this is the o cial narrative,” you know? And so you see that happen immediately, with Halley saying, “Police shot.” And then he tells his sergeant that this guy pulled a gun on him.

We see that, actually, [another o cer] takes Harith’s gun out of his holster, so there was no way that anybody pointed a gun at that o cer. But that becomes the o cial narrative.

Do you think O cer Halley believes his version of what happened?

On some emotional level, he certainly does. By now he must, because he got o with a slap on the wrist. I understand from another officer that he’s sort of a hardened vet now, and that this was an early trial, and he faced it. This sergeant in the car with him says, “You shot him in the head.” He says, “I don’t know,” and she says, “Damn, that was a good shot.” He’s been lionized for this deadly murder.

The incident draws a parallel to the shooting of Laquan McDonald. What’s the significance of revisiting that case in the context of Augustus’s death?

My access to this collection was sort of also mandated by Laquan McDonald, and then of course, narratively, the city’s really in turmoil at that time, wondering how that case is gonna end up.

FILM

It goes to trial in September. Until that time, no cop had ever done any time for the murder of a Black man. So there’s a lot of anxiety, and I think that’s palpable, especially in [the South Shore] neighborhood. You hear a bunch of the crowd say, “You already killed one of ours. Now, you’ve killed another, you’re just starting to take random people out.” So the Laquan McDonald case is on everyone’s mind right then.

What’s the value of elevating this to cinema in relation to archives and assembling footage? What makes it cinema?

People ask me [if] I hope that this case will get reopened. That never was my intention. I do think that it narratively provides some closure for the family, in that now the world could see what happened to [Augustus’s mother’s] son. When we showed this ﬁlm at the Chicago Humanities Festival, Snoop’s mom was there, and she stood up, and that’s what she said. She said, “We haven’t won any cases, but now

everyone can see what happened.” And she turned to me and said, “It’s your job to tell this story to the world.” So I do feel, for her, there’s a sense of narrative justice in showing this film, but . . . this is no longer a current case. It’s six years old. But it’s an iconic story. It’s a story that tells, in incredible detail, the dynamics that are at stake in terms of why the o cers are there and who called the o cers there: their training and their background, their prejudice, and why Snoop is there, why he has a gun, the laws that allowed him to have a gun, the laws that made a Black man who’s carrying a gun a suspect, whereas a white man carrying a gun might not be. The yellow tape creates this zone around the corpse, whereas the corpse is being ignored. There are just a lot of elements of the story that tell the greater story of racism in this country, so I think that it distills that story in this sort of iconic way. And I recognized that and thought that this is about these people, it’s about this victim, but it’s also a greater story, and a story that can last. I think that you could watch this ﬁlm 20 years from now and still understand it, not

necessarily about these players, but about this country.

A new collective bargaining agreement allows officers to turn off body cameras and delete postincident footage. How does this change affect documentaries holding power to account?

That’s immense, and I think we’re going to find that in this upcoming administration across the board. This is a sort of remarkable collection of footage in that I don’t think it exists anywhere that you would see this kind of coverage. This was a blitz, of coming after the city and them acquiescing, between Jamie and the lawyers for the family. I think Jamie’s stature and his history with the city, you know, they gave him what he asked for.

I think they were also relatively assured that no more damage was going to be done, and so, here it is, knock yourself out. I think [the agreement has] been ratiﬁed by the city, by the City Council, but it hasn’t passed Fed. We’ll have to see how that turns out. At this point, I’m not

that hopeful that it’ll turn out better, but it is preposterous, the way it’s worded. It’s that if there’s any conversation about what just happened between two o cers, then that footage becomes deletable, and you can invite any occasion to say, “Well, that was screwed up,” and “Whoops, you just talked about it. Now we can delete it.” So it really is a loophole that allows you to delete anything. If that passes, I don’t know what the possibility is of this footage effecting any changes. But then again, here we have just a plethora of footage, and it still didn’t e ect any change. We still got the same outcome. You can have all the footage in the world, but whoever’s able to spin that image on the nightly news or withhold it or delete it are the people in control of the footage. And that’s ultimately telling the story that we hear. I think that this film is somewhat alarming because it speaks to all the stories that we don’t hear and all the [incidents] where we can’t see this footage. And even if we could, we can’t do much about it. v

FILM

A still from 2024’s Youth (Homecoming)

There is perhaps no other filmmaker working right now who’s chronicling labor— and, in the process, critiquing the machinations of late-stage capitalism—like Wang Bing. The Chinese documentarian’s first film, Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2002), is a nine-hour study of Shenyang’s Tiexi district and its decline from the heyday of the country’s socialist economy, conveying that downturn vis-à-vis the workers, the families, and tertiary ﬁgures a ected by the factory closures.

Following this monumental ﬁrst ﬁlm (which I had the pleasure of seeing in New York several years ago, a durational achievement of which I’m particularly proud), Wang has focused primarily on similar subjects as well as the legacy of Maoist China. The former concern is the bent of his recent Youth trilogy, the latter two of which, Youth (Hard Times) (2024) and Youth (Homecoming) (2024), began screening at Gene Siskel Film Center this past weekend, with Wang in attendance for Q&As following screenings of Youth (Homecoming).

The ﬁrst ﬁlm in the trilogy is Youth (Spring), which came out last year. All shot over the course of five years prepandemic, each film follows young people working as garment workers in Zhili, known as the “city of children’s clothing” for being the country’s main production area for kids’ clothing. Youth (Spring) is a more general overview of the lives of the young workers, while Youth (Hard Times) and Youth (Homecoming) assume more specific narratives, the former around workers’ issues with their employers and the latter around the workers, primarily emigrants from more rural provinces, as they return home and progress in their personal lives.

I watched both of the ﬁlms at home in advance of writing about Youth (Homecoming) for CineFile and having the incredible opportunity to interview Wang on Friday. The dominant image of all these ﬁlms is that of the worker, hunched over their sewing machine, the ache and mo-

notony of their labor aptly captured via the 20-minute sequences with which Wang composes these ﬁlms. I’d say that for most of us in the west, the idea of such exploited labor is abstract—we know it exists, and a decent amount try to o set this ghoulish reality where possible, but it’s still di cult to imagine, to put faces and personalities to such distanced abstraction. Empathy might only get a person so far. Through studied observation and fearless prolongation, Wang’s films document this reality in such a way that makes it real, rather than just reality consolidated for a condensed viewing experience.

Also, over the Thanksgiving break, I tried to catch up on some films I hadn’t been able to see in the theater earlier this year, one of which was Stephen Maing and Brett Story’s Union (2024), fitting viewing following my time spent with the Wang films. Maing and Story’s documentary follows the creation of the Amazon Labor Union, led by Chris Smalls. It’s a true David-and-Goliath story about the so-called “little guy,” in this case the workers, prevailing over the monster tech company with a historic win in founding the first Amazon union to be recognized by the National Labor Relations Board. It was also appropriate considering the holiday in question; it certainly made me recommit to my ongoing resolution to stop using Amazon, a film again helping to bring to life an abstraction that unfortunately can be easy to ignore in the face of convenience.

I watched quite a bit at home, but I did catch Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise (1974) at the Music Box Theatre on an absolutely gorgeous 35-millimeter print. Turns out split screens and campy Faust adaptations provide quite the palate cleanser, though one shouldn’t feel comfortable for too long.

Until next time, moviegoers. —KAT SACHS v

The Moviegoer is the diary of a local ﬁlm bu , collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground ﬁlm scene has to o er.

Moana 2

Moana 2 has officially arrived, and it’s just . . . fine. The characters from the beloved first film, Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) and demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson), are back for another adventure that builds on the heroine’s still relatively newfound exploration skills. The chemistry is also still there, as are the songs, and there’s an intriguing plot that finds the duo taking on new sidekicks (including Moana’s adorable younger sister) as they go up against a god bent on sabotaging humanity’s attempts to reconnect from across the ocean.

So what’s not to love? An absence of Lin-Manuel Miranda, for one, who—in spite of protests regarding his omnipresence—is still so good at his job that he can only be missed. Plus, there’s a lack of time and attention given to promising characters who feel like a collection of trending traits that will sell well at the retail outlets or make a far too brief appearance before being sidelined so the plot can continue on its merry, colorful way.

And continue it does, with some of the same beats and a few new ones, including a villain who stays offscreen until mid-credits, where the baffling decision to keep him out of sight is explained by mere sequel baiting. Much like the hermit crab who kicks things off by attempting to trade in his new shell for an ill-fitting larger one, there’s simply not enough to fill out Moana 2 Unable to stand completely on its own, it’s a movie that ends up as a transitory point for another, bigger story that’s clearly in the works—at least until the live-action remake hits theaters in 2026. —ANDREA THOMPSON PG, 100 min. Wide release in theaters

R Nightbitch

Suburban housewives will always be a subject of fascination. As a group, they’re symbolic of aspirational modernity, of those who uphold and represent societal norms, the status quo, the Family, and the oppressive, insidious sexism that forces women into a box, because the problem with no name remains both stubbornly persistent and diﬃcult to deﬁne.

What they are rarely allowed to be is themselves, with creators more o en shaping them accordingly to embody whatever concept they’re looking to explore. But Nightbitch’s biggest accomplishment is how much Amy Adams gets to unsettle as a nameless member of the demographic who starts turning into a dog. And like much media centered around women, it’s an unintentional indicator of what has and hasn’t changed. Mothers may get to feel dissatisﬁed, but good ones generally don’t get to rage. The fact that that particular emotion is the movie’s main emotional thread is likely why Nightbitch has been squeezed into the horror genre, regardless of the uncomfortable ﬁt.

And there’s noticeably a lot less wiggle room than there was for director Marielle Heller’s previous outings into messy femininity. The protagonists of The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) and Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) may have been in disarray, but neither was representative of the sacred American family. Adams is the mother of a cute little two-year-old boy, so even at its most touching, when she’s calling herself the worst mom ever at the slightest sign of anything shy of smiling perfection, things can’t get too dark or weird even a er her canine transformation. And her well-meaning but clueless, and also nameless, husband has to get an arc that reassures viewers that this couple will stay and thrive together.

Yet there is a power in Nightbitch that can rise above its timidity. The beautifully deranged artistic career of the book’s heroine would be a near impossible sell onscreen, and if it’s almost tragic in how the movie cuts material involving the ﬂaws of the other mothers in her orbit, there’s power, even awe, in the strength of women simply gathering and sharing unspoken, violent truths about motherhood and the dark humor many of them use to cope. If its legacy is ultimately that of a stepping stone for a later, more radically honest ﬁlm, well, that’s on theme too. —ANDREA THOMPSON R, 98 min. Limited release in theaters

Our Little Secret

Childhood sweethearts who ended on bad terms ten

years ago ﬁnd themselves in-laws at a domineering matriarch’s Christmas get-together. Will Avery (Lindsay Lohan) survive her critical mother-in-law’s barbs? Will Logan (Ian Harding) successfully court a family friend’s business? And, most importantly: will the two of them be able to pretend they’re strangers?

Despite its seemingly simple (if charmingly cliche) premise, Netflix’s Our Little Secret manages to make all the wrong moves. It overcomplicates the plot with inconsequential antics while ignoring the lynchpin that makes every fluffy, fun-to-watch holiday movie work: the (re)connection between Avery and Logan. The film opens by speed-running their friendship-turned-romance with a lackluster animation sequence, forcing the audience to fill in the emotional gaps of their relationship. Throughout Our Little Secret, we’re told that these two have a storied past, but none of that makes it to the screen; instead, we must suffer through infidelities and blackmailing we have no reason to care about, the woeful underutilization of Kristin Chenoweth (who plays the evil mother-in-law), and a stoner comedy scene that would have felt dated in 2010.

A er the release of Netflix’s campy flick Falling for Christmas (2022), audiences can’t be expecting much more from a holiday picture produced and starring Lohan than something light, goofy, and fun. Unfortunately, her newest endeavor is none of this— between the nonsensical storyline built on middle-schooler logic and Lohan’s stiff performance, an uninterrupted sober viewing of this film feels heavy and endless.

If you’re looking for something you can put on mute in the background of family gatherings this holiday season, something that’ll make your mom point to the screen and say, “Hey, there’s that lady from that one movie!” you’ve met your Hallmark-knockoff match. Just don’t get your hopes up. Under the shiny Netflix-feature-filmbudget gi wrapping, you won’t find much in Our Little Secret to feel grateful for. —BROOKS EISENBISE TV-14, 101 min. Netflix

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

Huppert as Iris, a French teacher with no teaching experience who lives in Seoul. However, we learn that Iris does have a few months to consider how she thinks about her native language. This period of Iris’s life has given birth to her “system” of index cards. I’m giving the “system” more credit than it deserves, as she seems to use the index cards to write down her students’ admissions of aggressive or ambivalent emotions in French, a er insistent prodding—though Hong never shows us what Iris actually writes on the cards (the second-best bit of the ﬁlm).

This incongruity—a teacher who doesn’t really teach—and the oddity of the situations Iris eﬀortlessly engineers, Hong plays for laughs. Iris regularly ignores her students—two Korean women who genuinely seem to want to learn French during her haphazard and wandering lessons—and spends most of her time wandering outside, drinking makgeolli, and playing the recorder. We never learn exactly what brought Iris to South Korea, where Iris was before, or why she le France, and so we encounter Iris as she is: a vaguely witchy odd duck with a penchant for leaving the room to smoke whenever anyone wants to play an instrument for her (the best bit of the ﬁlm, in my opinion).

However, as the ﬁlm is so intensely aware of Hup-

A Traveler’s Needs

The prolific South Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo teams up with French actor Isabelle Huppert for the third time in the effervescent, mysterious, and somewhat mystical A Traveler’s Needs. Premiered earlier this year at the Berlin International Film Festival, the film features

pert’s presence and the charisma she carries, there’s a magical weight to her blankness, her unexplained idiosyncrasies. In one scene, she aggressively stomps on the feet of her roommate while they use her grounding mat before she throws herself on him in a hug and thanks him for his friendship. Her gratitude in that moment feels like a ﬂower blossoming. Iris’s roommate, who might have fallen just a bit in love with her, tells his mother that Iris is a “sincere” person who lives her life with honesty. I would agree with him. Here, I think, lies the magic of Hong and Huppert’s collaboration: life can sometimes look like a shapeless series of moments, but underneath there lives a beating, open heart. —ANNETTE LEPIQUE 90 min. Gene Siskel Film Center v

Nightbitch SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

Our Little Secret CHUCK

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 19 | 6:30 PM

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FLily Glick Finnegan and gabby ﬂukemogul improvise the intimacies of survival

The Chicago drummer and the New York–based violinist throw it in the sink at this weekend’s Catalytic Sound Festival.

By BILL MEYER

irst dates can be fraught and awkward. But in improvised music, where the word “date” means something di erent, they’re mostly opportunities for discovery and excitement. That’s why violinist gabby ﬂuke-mogul particularly relishes them. “A lot of my recordings include first meetings,” they say over video chat from their home in New York. “There’s something very speciﬁc about the heightened sensitivity and the heightened listening and just the spark of that type of encounter that I’m really curious about.”

The intensity of ﬂuke-mogul’s August duo releases with saxophonists Ivo Perelman ( Duologues 2: Joy ) and Dave Rempis ( Lip ) a rms the potential of a ﬁrst improvisatory meeting to enable incendiary interaction. But the violinist’s newest album, Throw It in the

Sink (Sonic Transmissions), offers another angle. This ﬁrst-time duo with Chicago drummer Lily Glick Finnegan demonstrates how the players’ heightened attunement to each other can give a listener access to something about them that isn’t so much heard as understood. You don’t just experience the a ective jolt of their short, songlike improvisations—you also get a handle on the relationships these musicians have to (among other things) queerness and punk rock.

Born in 1991, ﬂuke-mogul grew up in Florida. They ﬁrst learned violin by the Suzuki method, later switching to classical training, but their attraction to raw, emotionally charged sounds (regardless of genre) soon drove them to abandon the classical path in favor of more experimental and improvisational terrain. In 2013 they graduated from Hampshire College

in Massachusetts with a degree in music and early childhood education. After finishing an MFA in music performance and literature at Mills College in Oakland—where their professors included Fred Frith and Pauline Oliveros—they moved to Brooklyn in 2020, just before COVID shut down the country.

Since then, fluke-mogul has rapidly risen in prominence. They’ve become a galvanizing presence in the U.S. and Europe, playing or recording with the likes of violist Joanna Mattrey, violinists Charles Burnham and Biliana Voutchkova, cellist and sound artist Paula Sanchez, and drummer Mariá Portugal. They first visited Chicago in 2022, and they recorded Throw It in the Sink with Finnegan on a subsequent trip in June 2023.

Finnegan was born in Chicago in 1998 and studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston

with pianist Kris Davis and drummers Terri Lyne Carrington and Francisco Mela. She graduated with a master’s degree in 2021 and returned to Chicago the following year, at which point she connected with local reedist, composer, and organizer Ken Vandermark. These days she plays in Vandermark’s band Edition Redux and leads several of her own groups locally.

She’s toured with Christof Kurzmann and James Brandon Lewis, helps curate the Option Series for Experimental Sound Studio (with Vandermark and guitarist Andrew Clinkman), and runs the online record shop for Catalytic Sound, a multinational artist collective formed in 2012 that lets fans buy and stream music directly from musicians. Since 2020 the collective has also presented an annual festival, usually in a few cities at once—the fifth installment takes place this weekend in Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. Finnegan and fluke-mogul first met in New York in fall 2020. At the time Finnegan was still a student, taking classes online and nannying for the children of drummer Allison Miller. “I barely met anyone, but I did go to a few outdoor shows, and one of them gabby played,” she says by video from Germany, where she’s touring with Lewis. “We kind of just stayed in touch, but we didn’t play or anything. And then I invited gabby to come play the Option Series. I was like, oh, gabby is going to be here for two nights, so I asked if they want to just record together. We really connected, kind of o the bat, and so it just felt right.”

Several commonalities bound the two of them from the start. “We met at the beginning of the pandemic,” recalls fluke-mogul. “We were both taking care of young children in New York. Throughout my whole life, I’ve worked in preschools, I’ve worked in homes, been with very young little ones, and that’s something that Lily and I spoke about at an outdoor gig— our relationship to young people and how that impacts our listening and our music. We also

gabby ﬂ uke-mogul (L) and Lily Glick Finnegan released the duo album Throw It in the Sink in October. ALL PHOTOS BY DERRICK ALEXANDER

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talked about [Lily] being a younger person on the scene, and how that felt for her as a nonman and as a not-straight person. She was like, ‘You’re one of the few older folks I know who are doing this music, who are committed in this way, who are outwardly queer and speaks outwardly about your politics and your praxis.’”

They’d never played together before the session, but they were already comfortable hanging out. Finnegan and ﬂuke-mogul spent a day together before going into Experimental Sound Studio. They agreed to work with shorter forms, but the only other guidelines for the session came from a list of loose, even silly prompts they’d put together while getting to know each other better: they joked about the beachfront lodgings ﬂuke-mogul had found, which they called “Carol’s condo,” and they lamented that as queer people they were just feeling too sad to get on board with the hype around Pride Month.

Finnegan’s playing on the nine resulting pieces is distinct from her negotiation of Vandermark’s segmented structures. Sometimes she’s spare and coloristic, implying shapes around fluke-mogul’s lines, and at other times she slings around masses of sound like her drum kit is doing the job of an entire ensemble. The amount of sound she produces means that ﬂuke-mogul’s playing also stands out from what they’ve done on other recordings—even their duo with another drummer, Nava Dunkelman. Those have tended to be free-form, mercurial explorations of the acoustic violin’s potential to project expressive sound, but here ﬂuke-mogul digs into the melodies they might only imply elsewhere—and they don’t just vocalize but actually sing lyrics. Throw It in the Sink begins and

ends with versions of “Fragmented Memory” (the latter called “Memory Fragmented”) where fluke-mogul recites a reminiscence of a moment of shared happiness over an insistent, martial snare-drum beat: “Do you remember that time when we were in bed and you started crying and you said to me you made me so happy?” In the second version, both musicians play more lightly, and fluke-mogul switches “made” to the present tense. Each time, fluke-mogul ends their recitation with short bowed slashes that sound more like turntable scratching than fiddle playing.

For “On the Fringe,” fluke-mogul returns to the microphone to sing a song by Dora Magrath, a fellow music student at Hampshire College who committed suicide in 2008 and whose work they grew close to by playing with her friends and bandmates after her death. Their voice adopts a conﬁding, bluesy tone as it weaves between Finnegan’s tumbling blocks of battering sound.

On the nonvocal tracks, fluke-mogul saws through blunt, in-the-red phrases with more than a hint of blues, while Finnegan builds out rhythmic constructions so complete and varied that she sounds like a whole band. Pithy and in-your-face, the music feels punk without resorting to punk-rock form.

“I came up playing a lot of punk music, and

Catalytic Sound Festival 2024

Full listings for the three Chicago concerts, with acts in order of performance

then I got into jazz as well, and improvised music,” says Finnegan. “Those worlds felt separate for me for a long time, and it was like an identity crisis, confusing, because I was in these different worlds. But then I’m realizing, with improvised music, I can bring all parts of my inﬂuences together. That was important to me for this project. I wanted it to be pretty punk, because that’s a big part of who I am.”

In a follow-up email, fluke-mogul writes, “Throw It in the Sink isn’t about neglect or abandon. It’s about two people navigating the intimacies of survival, queer resistance, joy, and the power in taking care of yourself and others amid apocalypse—all while honoring those who have come before, ancestors in the music and beyond. Sometimes you have to throw it in the sink and do what you gotta do, feel what you gotta feel, remember what you are remembering. Whether it’s standing up for what you believe in, coping with your pain, or ﬁnding god in the music. Pauline Oliveros once said to me, ‘gabby, you gotta remember to remember!’ Remember to remember, throw it in the sink.”

Ben Hall, Tongo Eisen-Martin, and Victor VieiraBranco; Wendy Eisenberg (solo); Earscratcher (Elisabeth Harnik, Dave Rempis, Fred LonbergHolm, and Tim Daisy)

Fri 12/6, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15–$35 single-day ticket, $60 three-day pass. 18+

Vandermark Lane Tech Workshop Band; Dorothy Carlos (solo); Percussion Discussion (Ben Hall, Lily Glick Finnegan, and Chris Corsano)

Sat 12/7, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15–$35 single-day ticket, $60 three-day pass. 18+

Kim Alpert, gabby ﬂuke-mogul, and Lily Glick Finnegan; Elisabeth Harnik & Chris Corsano; Damon Locks

Sun 12/8, 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $25 single-day ticket, $60 three-day pass. 21+

Since recording the album, Finnegan and fluke-mogul have played together just once, when the violinist ﬁlled in for an ailing Sarah Clausen for one set at the 2023 Catalytic Sound Festival. They will reconvene to celebrate the record’s release on the last night of this year’s fest, but not as a duo. They’ll be joined by video and vocal artist Kim Alpert—who, like them, is being inducted into the Catalytic collective. Alpert plans to contribute security-camera footage, public-domain videos that propagate stereotyped gender roles, spoken poetry, and jazz singing. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

Dee Clark bridged doo-wop, rock ’n’ roll, R&B, and soul

This underappreciated Chicago singer had his biggest hit with “Raindrops” in 1961, but everything he recorded deserves to be heard.

By STEVE KRAKOW

Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.

For nearly 20 years, the Secret History of Chicago Music has shined a light on musical underdogs. Some acts didn’t get the recognition they deserved because they had bad managers or made uncommercial music, but other times the reason isn’t so obvious—and I’m still scratching my head as to why multifaceted singer Dee Clark isn’t a legend. He might be remembered as a “onehit wonder” due to the success of his 1961 single “Raindrops,” but that term elides his importance to Chicago R&B, soul, and rock ’n’ roll. Though popular in his day, especially locally, Clark is now a footnote (if that) in most histories.

Dee Clark was born November 7, 1938, in Blytheville, Arkansas, and Dee was short for “Delecta” or “Delectus” (sources vary, and we can’t ask him because he died in 1990). His family moved to the west side of Chicago in 1941, and his gospel-singing mother, Essie Mae Clark, encouraged him to pursue his love of music. At age 13, Clark started a trio called the Hambone Kids with Sammy McGrier, his classmate at Calhoun North Elementary on the west side (a victim of Rahm Emanuel’s merciless school-closing spree in 2013), and Ronnie Strong from Douglas Elementary on the south side.

The Hambone Kids were riding a craze around the “hambone,” a percussive dance that involves clapping, stomping, and slap-

ping your own thighs and body. (Also called “juba,” it was originally brought to the American south by enslaved African people.) In 1952 the trio appeared on “Hambone” b/w “Boot ’Em Up,” a single billed to drummer Red Saunders and his orchestra and released by the storied OKeh label. On the A-side, the kids perform with singer and whistler Dolores Hawkins (also from Gene Krupa’s band), and on the B-side, Joe Willams (later of Count Basie’s orchestra) sings an ecstatic post–bigband number.

The song reached the top 20 on the pop charts, but to my mind it’s even more notable that it was arranged by Herman Blount—who was about to change his name to Le Sony’r Ra and then become the cosmic being Sun Ra.

“Hambone” inspired similar tunes recorded by Frankie Laine & Jo Stafford, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Carl Perkins. In a Yahoo Group called Shakin’ All Over, historian Dik de Heer made an even bigger claim about the song’s influence: “In 1955 one Elias McDaniel took a heavy variant of the rhythm and the same nursery rhyme lyrics, added his own powerful distorted electric guitar sound and immortalized the song and himself as Bo Diddley.”

I’d love to believe that this is literally true— and because Bo Diddley lived in Chicago at the right time, he easily could’ve heard the origi-

nal single. But while the so-called Bo Diddley ri is a crucial part of the bedrock of rock ’n’ roll and R&B, we’ll probably never be able to trace it back to a single source.

In 1953, while Clark was attending Marshall Metropolitan High in East Garfield Park, he joined an established doo-wop group called the Goldentones as lead tenor vocalist. They came to the attention of famed local DJ Herb “the Cool Gent” Kent, who took them under his wing and renamed them the Kool Gents.

Kent got the Kool Gents signed to Vee-Jay Records imprint Falcon (later Abner), and Clark’s gorgeous, elastic croon helped them rule the local scene in 1955 and ’56. (They also put out a few novelty singles as the Delegates.)

When Clark’s relationship with the Kool Gents deteriorated, he went solo. “The group and I, we weren’t getting along too well, different things came about, and I came around to the company and asked Calvin Carter and Ewart Abner if they would record me as a single,”

Clark told Robert Pruter in his book Chicago Soul. “Calvin said, ‘I’m glad you asked because we’ve been wanting to do that anyways.’”

Clark’s ﬁrst few solo releases didn’t set the world on fire, so he tried taking a turn into early rock ’n’ roll. On his 1957 single “24 Boy Friends,” he did an uncanny Little Richard impression—a well-timed move, because that same year Richard left secular music to attend Bible college.

“I liked Little Richard’s style ’cause he was like number one back then and I could imitate fairly well for having a tenor voice,” Clark said in Chicago Soul . “Little Richard had thrown his rings in the water, quit that scene. The guy who was booking Little Richard on the east coast heard my record and had me come [in November 1957] and do the remaining dates that was on Little Richard’s itinerary.”

Clark’s 1958 single “Oh Little Girl” b/w “Wondering” featured backing by “the Original Little Richard Band,” aka the Upsetters.

But later in ’58, Clark sang in his own style again on the smoothly soulful single “Nobody but You” b/w “When I Call on You.” His subtle, powerful performance on the A-side sounds more indebted to Jackie Wilson or Sam Cooke than to Little Richard, and the pleading B-side gets a gentle, nostalgic feel from its easy tempo and a phalanx of backup singers swaddled in ghostly reverb.

Clark returned to pounding rock ’n’ roll with a tough Bo Diddley shu e on the 1959 single “Hey Little Girl,” cowritten by Otis Blackwell (who also cowrote “Fever,” “Great Balls of Fire,” and “All Shook Up”). The song, which featured Phil Upchurch on guitar, stayed on the pop charts for 15 weeks, peaking at number 20. (Clark also cowrote the Phil Upchurch Combo’s 1961 smash “You Can’t Sit Down.”)

Over the next couple years, Clark continued to enjoy great success locally and sometimes charted nationally, and in 1961 he had the biggest break of his career. On the way back from a New York gig, Upchurch was driving the two of them through a storm, and Clark started singing to the rhythm of the windshield wipers and jotting down lyrics. That birthed the classic tune “Raindrops,” which bridged doo-wop with the emerging sound of soul.

“Raindrops” combined stormy sound effects, sweeping strings, and a melody to die for. It climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and number three on the R&B chart. Soul music was largely a singles game, but the song also appeared on Clark’s third and ﬁnal proper LP for Vee-Jay, 1961’s Hold On. . . . It’s Dee Clark. Over the years, the tune has been covered by the likes of David Cassidy, Tony Orlando & Dawn, Jan & Dean, and country singer Narvel Felts.

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In the late 60s and early 70s, Clark bounced among various labels, among them Columbia, Wand, Liberty, and Rocky, with the latter releasing a new version of “Raindrops” in 1973. Two years later, a funky number on Chelsea Records, “Ride a Wild Horse,” became a surprise UK hit, but Clark failed to make good on its promise. “He was booked for a European tour, he was sent the money for his air fare, and then he disappeared with the cash,” wrote de Heer. “No Dee Clark in the UK, no international tour. And since then, no record deal.”

The 80s were unkind to Clark. Relegated to the oldies circuit, he got by on small gigs, and for a time he lived in a motel in Toccoa, Georgia. In 1987, Clark su ered two heart attacks and a stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed and struggling with his diction. Because he didn’t have insurance, he kept performing to pay for his treatment—until December 7, 1990, when he died of another heart attack in Smyrna, Georgia. He’d played his last gig at the Portman Lounge in Anderson, South Carolina, with the Jimmy Gilstrap Band. He was buried at the Oakridge-Glen Oak Cemeteries in Hillside, Illinois.

Clark needs to be heard by new ears, so that maybe one day he’ll be mentioned in the same breath as Smokey Robinson, Wilson Pickett, and Curtis Mayfield.

Thankfully, Clark’s early work still has a life among hardcore fans of soulful music. Even during his life, his recordings were being reissued on compilations: London label Charly R&B released Keep It Up in 1980, and Bay Area label Solid Smoke released Dee Clark With His Groups . . . the Kool Gents & the Delegates: His Best Recordings in 1984.

Clark released other excellent singles in ’61, including the classy and catchy “Don’t Walk Away From Me” b/w “You’re Telling Our Secrets,” but they didn’t reach the same heights. For the 1963 release “Crossﬁre Time” b/w “I’m Going Home,” he moved to the Constellation label, started by Abner after he was ﬁred from Vee-Jay. Clark consistently got lots of airplay in Chicago, but further mid-60s Constellation singles such as “Warm Summer Breezes” (with a fab Johnny Pate arrangement) and “Come Closer” didn’t hit nationally.

In 2022, UK label Acrobat issued the 55track Dee Clark compilation Raindrops: The Singles & Albums Collection 1956-62 . As far as I can tell, that’s the newest release, but there can never be too many—Clark needs to be heard by new ears, so that maybe one day he’ll be mentioned in the same breath as Smokey Robinson, Wilson Pickett, and Curtis Mayﬁeld.

The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived at outsidetheloopradio.com/tag/secrethistory-of-chicago-music.

Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of December 5

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PICK OF THE WEEK

Detroit techno legend Robert Hood brings the spirit of resistance to Smart Bar

Sat 12/7, 10 PM, Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, $25, $20 in advance, $20 students. 21+

THE READER HAS SPILLED plenty of ink over the years in celebration of Robert Hood, who cofounded Detroit techno collective Underground Resistance in 1989. Alongside fellow founders Je Mills and “Mad” Mike Banks (who’s also played bass in Parliament), Hood helped create a counterculture by and for Black people that expanded listeners’ political imaginations through minimal techno beats.

Inspired by the house and industrial communities in Chicago, Underground Resistance envisioned a mutually liberatory scene. They wanted it to reject the hedonism and monetization associated with techno, empower lower-income Black communities (especially Black men) to uplift themselves and change their circumstances, and thrive because of its participants’ creativity and strength of relationships—not corporate sponsorship or fame seeking. Since Hood’s time in UR, his career has taken a series of twists and turns. He’s recorded under a number of aliases, including H&M and Monobox; he’s founded minimal techno label M-Plant; and as a devout born-again Christian, he’s become an ordained minister. In 2014 he invited his teenage daughter Lyric to make gospel-infused electronica as Floorplan, a moniker he’s used since 1996. Through the decades, he’s never wavered when it comes to the ideas about peace, love, and understanding that brought him to music.

Hood’s Smart Bar appearance is cosponsored by the Museum of Contemporary Art, and at 2 PM the same day he’ll speak at the MCA on a panel alongside DeForrest Brown Jr. and Arthur Jafa. Jafa is an artist primarily working in moving images who aspires to replicate “the power, beauty, and alienation of Black music” through ﬁlm. His retrospective, which features a piece with musical accompaniment from Hood, is on display at the museum through March. Brown is the author of 2022’s Assembling a Black Counterculture, one of the most comprehensive histories of techno that situates the music not

only in the sociopolitical context of the Motor City’s decline but also in a rich lineage of Black cultural responses to racial capitalism. The three artists will provide a thought-provoking conversation about cultural resistance, which is sure to resonate into the night and make Smart Bar’s dance ﬂoor feel more alive. —MICCO

THURSDAY5

The Story of 400 years The Chicago Black Artist Union’s presentation of Isaiah Collier’s 13-part suite features trumpeters Marques Carroll and Corey Wilkes, bassist Emma Dayhuff, chamber ensemble D-Composed, drummer Charles Heath, saxophonist and flutist Fred Jackson Jr., trombonist Tracy Kirk, pianist Frank Menzies, saxophonist and clarinetist Jacob Slocum, flutist Kenthaney Redmond, and others, with choreography by Kennedy Banks-Battle and visual media by Jordan Stewart-Curet. 7 PM, DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, 740 E. 56th Pl., $25–$135. b

Chicago saxophonist and composer Isaiah Collier conceptualized The Story of 400 Years as a student fellow at the University of the Pacific’s Brubeck Institute seven years ago, then evolved it into a multimedia production that integrates jazz music, dance, and visual art. The work illustrates the history and legacy of Black people in North America, starting with the inhumanity and brutality of the transatlantic slave trade that brought millions to the continent against their will. From there, it explores the important roles Black people have played in four centuries of American culture and how they’ll continue to shape the country and the world.

The Hyde Park Jazz Festival originally commissioned the work; at its 2019 premiere at the University of Chicago’s Logan Center, Collier led a group of 13 local musicians recruited from a variety of jazz-informed scenes as dancers choreographed by Kennedy Banks-Battle moved to the music. Since then, Collier’s vision has only grown. He’s expanded the material into 13 movements, a direct reference to the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States following the Civil War. He then collaborated with a team of creatives, including Banks-Battle, visual artist Jordan Stewart-Curet, and musician and administrator Mayshell Morris to build a grander, more layered production.

At this world premiere of the full-scale version of The Story of 400 Years, audience members can expect dancers and visual elements onstage and within the seating area of the DuSable Black History Museum. The performance was intentionally sched-

CAPORALE

ROBERT HOOD, SHAUN J. WRIGHT, BLACKCLUB

Kee Merriweather’s artwork for The Story of 400 Years KEE MERRIWEATHER

MARIE STAGGAT

uled on a date essential to the work: When I spoke to Collier and his collaborators, they pointed out that Thursday, December 5, is the 69th anniversary of the launch of the Montgomery bus boycott. That yearlong campaign, which became a turning point in the civil rights movement, began in 1955, just days a er activist Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to surrender her bus seat to a white person—and just months after 14-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till was abducted and lynched in Mississippi and his murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury. The Story of 400 Years isn’t intended to be merely a recitation of the past, though—its 13 movements also celebrate resilience and connection. And just like in community organizing, more movements mean more hope and determination for change.

—SALEM COLLO-JULIN

Robert Glasper See also Fri 12/6. 6 PM and 9:30 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, $55–$78. b

Robert Glasper has seemingly endless creativity and drive. The pianist, producer, and arranger has released nearly 20 albums; he’s written or produced music for the likes of Herbie Hancock, Common, and Brittany Howard; and he’s scored several ﬁlms, including the 2019 documentary The Apollo about the famed Harlem theater. Though Glasper is rooted in jazz, he can shi between styles, sounds, and

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collaborative settings with the fluidity of molten metal.

Glasper demonstrates his versatility and ambition in the four albums he’s released in 2024. In June, he leaned into his relaxed, meditative side with Let Go, which invites you to unwind and reset. Two months later, he explored a crucial ancestral through line in Black American music with Code Derivation jazz helped pave the way for hip-hop with its cool, urbane sounds and boundary-defying experimentations, and the two styles continue to respond to and shape each other. To unpack that relationship, the record includes two versions of most of its songs—a live studio cut featuring Glasper and his band, followed by a remix (guest producers include Black Milk, Hi-Tek, and Glasper’s son, Riley). October’s Keys to the City: Volume One captures Glasper’s energy and magnetism by compiling performances from several years of his annual Robtober residency at New York’s famous Blue Note club (for the 2024 edition, he played 49 shows in 25 nights spread over ﬁve weeks). And the brand-new In December mixes twinkling holiday classics such as the “Joy to the World” (with vocals from R&B singer Alex Isley, daughter of Ernie Isley) and original songs that address the holiday through a modern lens that scuffs up the usual sentimentality and nostalgia. On “Memories With Mama,” guest singer Tarriona “Tank” Ball honors Black mothers who work overtime and max out credit cards to put a smile on their kids’ faces at Christmas. —JAMIE LUDWIG

MONO

OATH 25TH ANNIVERSARY FT. 12-PIECE ORCHESTRA

ML BUCH + DOROTHY CARLOS CLAUDIO SIMONETTI'S GOBLIN PERFORMING SUSPIRIA, DAWN OF THE DEAD + MORE

NEAL FRANCIS + SMUSHIE + LIAM KAZAR × 93XRT

MARIACHI HERENCIA DE MÉXICO A MARIACHI CHRISTMAS

BONEY JAMES SLOW BURN TOUR

KATIE GAVIN + NANA ADJOA

RESAVOIR ORCHESTRA RESAVOIR DEBUT +

BEACH BUNNY PRESENTS ALY & AJ

POOL PARTY ON ICE + BEACH BUNNY / RAFFAELLA / SCARLET DEMORE / MORGAN POWERS

BILL MURRAY AND HIS BLOOD BROTHERS FT. MIKE ZITO & ALBERT CASTIGLIA

SISTAS WHO KILL

JOY OLADOKUN THE BLACKBIRD TOUR

REBIRTH BRASS BAND WINDOWS95MAN

RUBBLEBUCKET

YEAR OF THE BANANA TOUR + HANNAH MOHAN

YAKUZA PLAYS GOLEM

PORRIDGE RADIO + SLUICE

TIM HEIDECKER SLIPPING AWAY TOUR + NEIL HAMBURGER × CHIRP RADIO

BERTHA GRATEFUL DRAG

LAUREN MAYBERRY VICIOUS CREATURE TOUR

SOCCER MOMMY + TOMBERLIN

BLIND PILOT + VIV & RILEY

FRIDAY6

Coalesce Meth. open. 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $25. 17+

When I first got into hardcore music in the early 2000s, I heard bogeyman-style tales about metalcore giants Coalesce and their chaotic live shows. Those stories were easier to believe after I stumbled across the Missouri band’s 1998 second fulllength, Functioning on Impatience (Second Nature). The album opens with the unaccompanied vocals of front man Shawn Ingram, whose bellowing sounds like some kind of massive machine more than it does a human voice—and as he hurls invective at a crowd of invisible enemies, guitarist Jes Steineger and bassist Nathan Ellis kick in with lurching riﬀs.

Coalesce’s music feels like a bitter black mass whose apocalyptic textures are countered only by the band’s dark humor. Most late-90s metalcore outﬁts weren’t releasing entire records devoted to deeply uncool dinosaur rock (as Coalesce did on their 1999 Led Zeppelin covers EP, There Is Nothing New Under the Sun) or giving their songs bitingly funny titles like “Cowards.com” and “Where the Hell Is Rick Thorne These Days?”—a practice that spawned a metalcore trope that was in turn appropriated by mall emo bands.

Despite their caustic wit, Coalesce could also be fractious, and they experienced several bitter dissolutions and fruitful reconciliations between their formation in 1994 and 2010, when they put the band on pause to focus on their personal lives. They played a couple shows over the next couple years, and in October 2024 they reunited a er a 12-year hiatus to headline a stage at esteemed hardcore and emo event Furnace Fest in Birmingham, Alabama, and embark on a U.S. tour. It seems that as they’ve aged, they’ve grown closer. Though Ingram’s March interview with music podcast Riff Worship opened with a discussion on the care of rare action figures, when the topic turned to their Furnace Fest appearance, he mentioned that the members

of Coalesce all spend Christmas together. This fall the band reissued their four full-lengths on vinyl (via Relapse Records) and announced that they’re writing their first new album since 2009’s Ox. These days, their lineup includes drummer Jeﬀ Gensterblum (Small Brown Bike), and recent concert footage shows that a er a decade-plus away they’re still as explosive as ever—though perhaps a little less likely to chuck a floor tom into the crowd during their set. —ED BLAIR

Robert Glasper See Thu 12/5. 6 PM and 9:30 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, both shows sold out. b

SATURDAY7

Robert Hood See Pick of the Week on page 30. Shaun J. Wright and Blackclub open. 10 PM, Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, $25, $20 in advance, $20 students. 21+

WGCI Big Jam

Tonight’s bill includes GloRilla, BossMan Dlow, G Herbo, Tee Grizzley, YTB Fatt, NLE Choppa, VonOﬀ1700, Star Bandz, Queen Key, Real Boston Richey, and 310babii. 7 PM, Wintrust Arena, 200 E. Cermak, $59–$299. b

The WGCI Big Jam, hosted by the Chicago hiphop station, celebrates the season with some of the hottest names in rap. Southern powerhouses GloRilla and BossMan Dlow headline a stacked lineup. The former, born Gloria Hallelujah Woods, came into the limelight with her 2022 single “F.N.F. (Let’s Go).” The Memphis rapper has been on a successful mainstream run ever since, collaborating on singles with rap’s baddest baddies, including Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. And in October, she woke up Tyler, the Creator’s latest opus, Chromakopia, with a banger of a verse on the album’s most exciting track, “Sticky.” BossMan Dlow, aka Devante McCreary, makes music to soothe the money-

making, block-running street entrepreneur within. In March, the Florida rapper released his third mixtape, Mr Beat the Road, whose single “Get in With Me” went hyperviral—and he seized that breakout moment with an onslaught of street anthems, including a remix of his 2023 track “Finesse” featuring GloRilla.

Mr Beat the Road is traditional dope-boy music at its finest, chock-full of motivational speaker knockers. His baritone ﬂow is twangy and a bit whimsical, but it never slacks in its mission—to get us all to the money. One look at Dlow’s concert footage shows just how much his tunes resonate: fans scream every word back at him, drowning him out at his own gigs. The rest of the lineup looks like it’s straight from a chart-toppers list: it includes Michigan rapper Tee Grizzley, local favorites G Herbo and Queen Key, and rising Arkansas talent YTB Fatt. Wintrust Arena will be absolutely turnt with this concert. If you’re into mainstream street rap that’s fun and fully danceable, this Big Jam is for you. —CRISTALLE BOWEN

SUNDAY8

Bettye Lavette 7 PM, Gary and Laura Maurer Concert Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, $48, $46 members. b

Last time Bettye LaVette rolled through Chicago, she performed in front of roughly 60,000 people, opening one of the Rolling Stones’ June 2024 concerts at Soldier Field. By comparison this date at the Old Town School of Folk Music will feel downright intimate, but I’d go see this soul queen reign anywhere. LaVette was born in Muskegon, Michigan, and began recording in 1962, when the Stones were a young R&B outfit struggling to sort out their lineup. She was 16 when she released her first single, “My Man—He’s a Lovin’ Man,” which became a big hit for Atlantic the following year, leading to tours with soul deities such as Otis Redding, Ben E. King, and the godfather himself, James Brown. LaVette’s epic career has hit lots of highs and lows. A er putting out a slew of singles for Detroit labels, she signed to Atlantic in 1972 and headed to the famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studio to record her debut album, Child of the Seventies The label refused to release it, but decades later it would find its audience: French label Art and Soul released it as Souvenirs in 2000, and in 2006 Rhino put it out under its original name with additional Atlantic recordings. LaVette went on to issue molten singles on Epic and Motown, and in 1978 she had another smash on West End Records with the disco-tinged “Doin’ the Best That I Can.” In 1982, she finally released her first proper full-length, Tell Me a Lie, also through Motown. The album’s first single, “Right in the Middle (of Falling in Love),” magnificently displays her powerful pipes—as it climbed the R&B charts, many folks who heard it must’ve wondered why LaVette wasn’t a household name like Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, or Diana Ross. LaVette’s career slowed down after that, but in 2003 she released A Woman Like Me , her first album in 20 years—and she’s been killing it ever since. She performed at a star-studded concert at the Lincoln Memorial celebrating Barack Obama’s

Coalesce COURTESY GROUND CONTROL TOURING

Margaret Chardiet of Pharmakon MARIANO CAYO

GloRilla and BossMan Dlow perform at the WGCI Big Jam. COURTESY INTERSCOPE / COURTESY THE ARTIST

continued from p. 31

MUSIC

2009 inauguration, and in April of that year she collaborated onstage with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr at Radio City Music Hall. She’s continued to release more blues and soul albums, stacking up the awards and salutations. When the Stones asked her to open, LaVette was unfazed. “I’ve been waiting for them to call for sixty years,” she wrote on Instagram. “They ﬁnally found my number!” Her recent set lists compile songs from across her vast, rich catalog, including her gritty and dramatic 1965 single “Let Me Down Easy” and last year’s funky burner “Mess About It” (from the excellent album LaVette!). I sure couldn’t aﬀord to see this legend with Mick and the boys, so it’ll take wild horses to drag me away from this cozy gig.

—STEVE KRAKOW

TUESDAY10

Pharmakon Uniform and Pharmakon coheadline (with Uniform playing last); True Body open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $20. 21+

Pharmakon embraces duality through sound. For 17 years, power-electronics artist Margaret Chardiet has been making bristling, textural chaos under the name Pharmakon—a Greek word that can mean remedy and poison. Deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida introduced the concept “pharmakon” as a container for binaries central to Western logic traditions, like good/bad and internal/external. Chardiet has composed her ﬁve studio albums with these tensions in mind, striving for something visceral and organic with her harsh, mechanical noise. On her latest release, October’s Maggot Mass (Sacred Bones), Chardiet explores natural versus built environments while condemning capital-

ist greed and human-made catastrophes. “Methanal Doll” looks at the irony of the funeral industry and the many ways our bodies are prevented from decomposing back into the earth from which we sprang. “Buyer’s Remorse” links mass consumption to pollution and labor abuses while underscoring our inability to completely opt out of consumer culture. “Splendid Isolation” positions loneliness as a reaction to an artiﬁcial scarcity of aﬀection by describing how technology breeds disconnection.

Maggot Mass is easily Chardiet’s most outwardlooking release as well as her most melodic—though the latter is a relative assessment, given the atonal brutality of her output. Many noise artists approach performances of their work intuitively or improvisationally, so that each show provides a loose reimagining of a recorded track, but Chardiet is exacting about her material. Her silences are as measured as her screams, and her performances are remarkably faithful to her recordings—albeit amplified by her full-throttle onstage delivery. Chardiet is coheadlining a tour with Sacred Bones labelmates Uniform, whose latest album, August’s American Standard, is a raw exploration of the battle that vocalist Michael Berdan has fought with bulimia. This Empty Bottle show should be a night to revel most artfully in the punishment of existence. —MICCO CAPORALE

WEDNESDAY11

ML Buch Dorothy Carlos opens. 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $30, $45 front-of-hall seating, $270 opera box (seats six). 17+

ML Buch’s 2023 album, Suntub , feels like a road tripper’s ultimate companion. Its strummed guitar echoes with enough reverb to swallow you with every note as you ruminate on whatever lyric the

Danish songwriter throws into the ether. On the meditative “Flames Shards Goo,” a song ﬁt for drives down endless highways, she sings, “Here we go with our temporary bodies,” and her muted delivery sounds like bittersweet acceptance.

Suntub is defined by its dreamy gloss and loping verses, and it recalls Joni Mitchell’s 1976 folk-jazz classic, Hejira, to a striking degree while providing an entirely different emotional experience. While Mitchell communicates the process of discovery through lyrics that sound like one question unfurling into another, Buch is unconcerned with thorny internal struggles; her declarations could easily be sung with a sigh. She offers a hug to the world- weary on album closer “Working It Out,” whose musical repetition and narrow dynamic range telegraph a sense of collective exhaustion.

Find

On “River Mouth,” she hints at romantic gestures while couching the care she can provide her partner in an unglamorous metaphor— she describes herself as a “warm puddle.”

On 2020’s Skinned , Buch sang about lurking social-media proﬁles and being a “girl you can hold IRL.” Four years later, she positions the songs on Suntub in the real world, where they can convey the ways the digital climate has irrevocably changed our lives. It also includes instrumentals that provide necessary reprieve from the tracks whose lyrics weigh heavy. “Slide” sounds like an Americanabased take on experimental guitar shredders such

as Henry Kaiser and Hans Reichel, then introduces synths that drip with a digital sheen; “Dust Beam” is little more than straightforward guitar strumming, yet feels like sitting on your porch after a long day; and “Whoosh” twinkles with ﬂickering guitar notes that seem as if they’re in constant search of resolution. Even “Somewhere,” which sounds like stock music for corporate videos, proves unexpectedly soothing. Suntub is o en comforting like that, pulling you into the strangeness of contemporary existence and letting you embrace it all.

—JOSHUA MINSOO KIM v

JOBS

Architectural Builders Hardware Manufacturing Inc DBA

ABH Manufacturing Inc, an Itasca, IL based Door Hardware Manufacturing Firm has multiple openings for JOB ID 11476: Manufacturing Operations Engineer. Education and Experience requirements along with remuneration as provided on the website. Travel/relocation may be required. Details at http://www. abhmfg.com. Send resume to: Poojaj@ abhmfg.com, including the JOB ID. Equal Opportunity Employer.

Biz Devlpmnt Spcialst (Justice, IL): Collct & anlyze data on custmr prferencs to idntfy potntial fctors aﬀctng sales & demnd for in instlltion & dsmantlng servcs for trde show exhibts, corprte evnts (hotls) & prmannt installs. Reqs: 2 yrs exp as Biz Devlpmnt Spcialst, Markt Anlyst, Markt Rserch Anlyst or rel pstion. Fluency in wrtng & speakng Turkish. 20% travl w/in US & to Canada & Europe incldng Turkey. Mail resume to HR, RTA Supervision Inc., 8119 S. 83rd Ct., Justice, IL 60458.

COFCO International Grains US LLC seeks a Senior FP&A Analyst in Oakbrook Terrace, IL to support FP&A Manager in short-term and longterm business modeling, daily profit and loss analysis, monthly forecast, and strategic investment planning; conduct business and financial analysis for margins, expenses, capital expenditures, and market conditions based on different scenarios and models for management to review by creating charts, tables, and graphs with Microsoft Excel to visualize data; prepare daily and weekly market reports by researching latest news and market trends and provide global management predictions on how market conditions may impact North America business; assist the manager in producing presentation slides to present detailed analysis or strategy proposals to the regional North America management and senior global management; make financial analysis to assist the manager in making merger and acquisition investment proposals for North America; discuss with business units regarding their financial forecasts and business plans, analyze validity of their plans, and assist the manager in modifying their plans based on the global management’s comments; cooperate with third-party consultants, appraisers, auditors, tax practitioners, and professionals in financial projects; assist the manager in preparing analysis and presentation slides for monthly and

quarterly financial reviews or forecasts for regional CFO; coordinate with product lines and business units to collect and organize financial data and make presentation slides to support the manager in annual budgeting process; investigate causes and impacts of significant variations in business accounts; assist the manager in preparing urgent financial reports and presentations to internal global committees or external authorities to facilitate the implementation of business plans and assess financial impacts of transactions; respond to requests or questions from management regarding company financials; monitor progress of capital projects, facilitate the progression of the projects, and report any issue to management; assist the manager in implementing global non-trading procurement procedures by analyzing the financial aspects of each transaction to ensure business units in U.S. obtain third-party services or products properly. Position requires a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, or closely related field and 2 years of experience as a Financial Analyst, Accountant, or related occupation, which includes 2 years of experience reviewing grain commodity position reports and grain commodity profit and loss reports and using Agris, Allegro, and SAP BPC reporting software. Send resumes Please apply online at: www. cofcointernational.com.

Financial Modeling Analyst

Federal Home Loan Bank Chicago is seeking a Financial Modeling Analyst in Chicago, IL. Build and support models used within the Balance Sheet Management and Mortgage Capital Markets areas of the Finance Accounting and Markets Group Must live within normal commuting distance of worksite. May work from home 2 days per week. Apply on-line at fhlbc.com/ careers.

Financial Manager (Job #: FM1105) sought by IM Global LLC in Elk Grove Village, IL: Dvlp a longterm finance strategy for the co. & align w/ Sr. leadership’s future ﬁnance capabilities & digital cloud solutions w/ more digital capabilities & ERP & EPM enablement. Lead end-toend bus. process revamp projects, analyze existing processes, identify pain points, & dvlp innovative solutions to streamline operations. Implmt process improvement methodologies/frameworks to identify waste, eliminate ineﬃcien-

cies, & enhance productivity. Implmt automation tools & technologies to streamline repetitive tasks, reduce manual intervention, & improve accuracy & speed. Supv the work of Accountants & Auditors. Reqmt: Bachelor’s Deg in Finance or Bus Admin; 24 mos of work exp as Financial Analyst/Associate, or rltd; 24 mos of exp in strategic fin’l planning & compliance; 24 mos of exp in dsgng finance processes & internal control w/ specific frameworks. Telecommuting is allowed w/in the U.S. To apply, mail CV w/ Job ID#: FM1105 to Jasmine, 2475 Touhy Ave, STE 300, Elk Grove Village, IL 60007.

National Retrofitting Group, LLC (Niles, IL) seeks Energy Engineer (2 positions) to conduct on-site inspections & audits of facilities, prepare reports of luminaries & draft project proposals. Requires bachelor’s in sustainable mgmt., environ. science, engineering (general, civil, environ., chemical or related) or equiv. & 6 mos. of exp. conducting surveys, investigations, estimations, examinations or audits of property or goods & U.S. driver’s license. 50% travel to client worksites nationwide. Send CV to sbernstein@nrgllc.com.

Trading Operations Analyst

Aquatic Group is seeking a Trading Operations Analyst in Chicago, IL. Member of DevOps team providing technical support for systems & networking. Must live w/in normal commuting distance of worksite.

Work hours 4:00 pm to 12:00 am CST. Email resume to HR@Aquatic.com & ref code 1237 in subject line.

Medline Industries, LP in Northfield, IL has multi open’gs: A) Sr. Business Systems Analyst(s) to anlyz sys’m change requests, facilitate reqmnts gather’g, manage sftwr dvlpmnt & implemt’n, resolve issues & enhancemnts, & drive process imprvmnt. No trvl req’d. WFH benefit; must be avail to come into office periodically when needed. Apply at: https://medline. wd5.myworkdayjobs. com/Med line/job/ Northfield-Illinois/ Sr-Business-SystemsAnalyst_R2407039 B) IS Sr. Developer Analyst(s) (RPA) to dvlp robotic process automations (RPA) according to published governance frmwrks & standards. No trvl req’d. WFH benefit; must be in office at least 2 days/wk. Apply

CLASSIFIEDS

SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS

Quickies

Fuck ﬁrst then eat, and other bits of wisdom

By DAN SAVAGE

Q : What’s the sexiest holiday food to eat oﬀ someone’s body?

MATCHES

at: https://medline.wd5. myworkdayjobs.com/ Med line/job/NorthfieldIllinois/Sr-DeveloperAnalyst_R2406639

MATCHES

Renaissance woman, 38, seeks man who can keep up. Must love dogs, Democrats, and dive bars. 4thEstateDate@ gmail.com

HOUSING

AFFORDABLE STUDIOS AVAILABLE AT IMPRINT LOFTS

(7) below-market affordable STUDIO rental units available at 739 S Clark Street! Between $731$1516 per month based on the speciﬁc STUDIO. 40%-80% AMI! 2 occupants MAX! Please email imprint@greystar. com to schedule your tour. These STUDIOS are subject to monitoring, compliance, and other restrictions by the Department of Housing and are available on a first come, first served basis https:// imprintapts.com/ housing-program

a: While food can be sensuous, you don’t eat food oﬀ someone’s body unless you’re fucking or about to fuck. Fucking on a full stomach is uncomfortable, which is why I’m always urging people to “#FuckFirst” on Valentine’s Day (and their wedding days, birthdays, anniversaries). Fucking on a slowly ﬁlling stomach really isn’t much better.

Like many people, I made the mistake of incorporating food into foreplay when I first became sexually active. Putting whipped cream on our tits made me and my first boyfriend feel like we were doing something naughty and sophisticated without either of us having to make ourselves vulnerable, e.g., without either of us having to open up about our actual kinks. And as we both quickly learned, whipped cream quickly liquifies as it rises to body temperature, and then you look and smell like an infant barfed all over you— which is not something anyone you wanna fuck could find sexy.

Anyway, everyone should enjoy holiday food and holiday sex—but not at the same time, and not in that order.

Q: No question here, Dan, just wanted to say we fucked ﬁrst and ate later. Thanks for that great piece of advice!

a: You’re welcome!

Q : How can I come handsfree? I’m a cis male.

a: Like squirting or rolling the edges of your tongue to make a little tube, coming “hands-free” is not something everyone can do. And most of those “hands-free” orgasms you’ve seen in porn? They weren’t entirely “handsfree.” Most of those guys are brought to the edge of orgasmic inevitability with a hand—their own or someone else’s—before being fucked over the edge.

Q : Any tips for quickly preparing your butt for anal?

a: You could do what we used to do before douching became standard: take a dump and cross your ﬁngers. It wasn’t a perfect system (douching caught on for a reason), but it worked reasonably well, meaning, it succeeded more o en than it failed. You should also prep with lube—lots of lube—and prep with PrEP. And remember: in addition to protecting you from all the sexually transmitted infections that PrEP doesn’t (PrEP only protects you from HIV), condoms also keep shit oﬀ your dick!

Q : How do we sneak in some quick sex while we’re staying with the whole family?

a: You oﬀer to do a coﬀee run for the whole family. You head to the nearest “drivethrough” Starbucks in the miserable suburb where you were raised, park your car, and go inside. You place your order at the counter. You head for the restroom—which is empty and clean, as very few people get out of their cars—and then you have sex

(quickly!) standing up while your family’s enormous coﬀee order is being prepared.

Q : A sub wants to drink all of my pee. And not just a little taste—he wants to drink every drop, over a few hours. I’m on an SSRI and while I assume he’d be getting a negligible dose of my meds, I don’t actually know that for sure because WebMD just isn’t cutting it this time. Can you help?

a: I don’t know for sure that your sub has nothing to worry about. Trace amounts of SSRIs can be detected in urine samples. But I feel conﬁdent stating that if trace amounts of SSRIs in urine posed a health a risk to piss drinkers . . . yeah, I would’ve heard about it by now. Also, you’re not talking about that much piss, which makes your sub about as likely to overdose as he is to drown.

Q: Can you get hemorrhoids from rough vaginal sex?

a: “Hemorrhoids are a natural part of our anatomy and it’s only when they become inflamed or start to protrude that they become noticeable,” said Dr. Rachel Gelman. “Typically, things like constipation or anything else that places a lot of downward pressure on the pelvic floor is associated with hemorrhoid dysfunction. And while linking vaginal sex with hemorrhoids is a bit of a stretch—pun intended—if someone had underlying pelvic floor dysfunction and penetrative sex was aggressive enough, that could over time result in rectal issues or bowel dysfunction and lead to hemorrhoids.” v

Learn about Dr. Gelman’s work at pelvicwellpt.com. Read the full column at the url savage.love. m mailbox@savage.love

JOHN AKOMFRAH FOUR NOCTURNES

John Akomfrah: Four Nocturnes is presented at Wrightwood 659 by Alphawood Exhibitions.

Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now is presented at Wrightwood 659 by Halsted A&A Foundation

 IMAGE CREDITS: (TOP) © John Akomfrah; Courtesy of Smoking Dogs Films and Lisson Gallery. John Akomfrah: Four Nocturnes, 2019. Three channel HD colour video installation, 7.1 sound, 50 minutes. (AKOM190001). © 2024 Alphawood Exhibitions LLC, Chicago. Photo: Daniel Eggert.