Chicago Reader print issue of December 14, 2023 (Vol. 53, No. 5)

FREE AND FREAKY SINCE 1971 | DECEMBER 14, 2023

TWO TRAIN RIDES IN NOVEMBER

BY KATIE PROUT A GRIEVING MOTHER AND A CTA CHIEF ARE PUSHING FOR CHANGE IN THE CTA: ONE FROM THE OUTSIDE, ONE FROM WITHIN. P. 10

UNION FIGHTS AT LOCAL COLLEGES P. 16 & 18

WINDY CITY TIMES INSERT P. 23 NEW MUSIC YOU MISSED IN 2023 P. 30

THIS WEEK

C H I C AG O R E A D E R | D E C E M B E R 1 4 , 2 02 3 | VO LU M E 5 3 , N U M B E R 5

IN THIS ISSUE

LETTERS

THEATER

04 Readers Respond You talk, we listen.

04 Editor’s Note Assistant Managing Editor Savannah Hugueley on a vigil

CITY LIFE

06 Street View Two recent fashion shows

FOOD & DRINK

08 Feature Chicago foodies recommend gifts for Chicago foodies.

COMMENTARY

18 Isaacs | On Culture The Columbia College Faculty Union strike is now the longest adjunct strike in history.

ARTS & CULTURE

20 Craft Work Meet Mia Lee, local artist and designer 22 Cardoza | Art review Faith Ringgold’s artwork translates life in America.

24 Reid | Stages of Survival American Blues Theater’s roaming days are over.

26 Plays of Note Dial M for Murder at Northlight Theatre, It’s a Wonderful Life: Live in Chicago! at the new American Blues Theater space, and Just One of Those Things (and More): The Nat “King” Cole Story, created and performed

by Gregory Stewart at the Mercury Theater Chicago’s Venus Cabaret space

FILM

28 Movies of Note American Fiction is bold and daring, Blue Jean excels in the details, and more.

34 The Secret History of Chicago Music A trip to Belfast for the inauguration of the Joe Cassidy Chrysalis Award 37 Early Warnings Upcoming concerts to have on your radar 37 Gossip Wolf The Arab virtuosos of Chicago Maqam play a relief concert for Gaza, and jazz voyager Isaiah Collier celebrates a new album at Dorian’s.

38 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Blind Equation, Freeway, La Rosa Noir, and Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang’s winter solstice series

CLASSIFIEDS

NEWS & POLITICS 10 Prout | Cover story

Harm reduction and the CTA A

grieving mother and a CTA chief are pushing for change in the CTA. 15 Opioid crisis What’s happened since the Reader reported on overdoses on CTA property?

16 Unions UChicago unions join forces after months of fruitless negotiations.

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

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE 23 Caporale | Multimedia exhibit Artists at Roots & Culture investigate our corporeal and digital selves.

30 Galil | Year in review The best overlooked Chicago records of 2023 32 City of Win Chicago rapper Rell Cash cultivates cannabis and community.

42 Jobs 42 Auditions 42 Professionals & Services 42 Matches 42 Adult Services ON THE COVER: PHOTO BY READER ART DIRECTOR JAMES HOSKING. FOR MORE OF HOSKING’S WORK, GO TO JAMESHOSKING.COM.

Comprehensive arts and culture news and reviews, deeply researched coverage of civic affairs, and unique voices from every part of Chicago.

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CEO AND PUBLISHER SOLOMON LIEBERMAN ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER AMBER NETTLES EDITOR IN CHIEF SALEM COLLO-JULIN MANAGING EDITOR SHEBA WHITE ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR SAVANNAH HUGUELEY ART DIRECTOR JAMES HOSKING PRODUCTION MANAGER KIRK WILLIAMSON SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER AMBER HUFF THEATER & DANCE EDITOR KERRY REID MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO CULTURE EDITOR: FILM, MEDIA, FOOD TARYN ALLEN CULTURE EDITOR: ART, ARCHITECTURE, BOOKS KERRY CARDOZA NEWS EDITOR SHAWN MULCAHY ASSOCIATE EDITOR & BRANDED CONTENT SPECIALIST JAMIE LUDWIG DIGITAL EDITOR TYRA NICOLE TRICHE SENIOR WRITERS LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, MIKE SULA FEATURES WRITER KATIE PROUT SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTER DMB (DEBBIE-MARIE BROWN) STAFF WRITER MICCO CAPORALE SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT ASSOCIATE CHARLI RENKEN ---------------------------------------------------------------VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS ANN SCHOLHAMER CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER DIANE PASCAL VICE PRESIDENT OF PEOPLE AND CULTURE ALIA GRAHAM DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS CHASITY COOPER MULTIMEDIA CONTENT PRODUCER SHAWNEE DAY MARKETING ASSOCIATE MAJA STACHNIK MEMBERSHIP MANAGER MICHAEL THOMPSON TECHNOLOGY MANAGER ARTURO ALVAREZ OFFICE MANAGER AND CIRCULATION DIRECTOR SANDRA KLEIN VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES AMY MATHENY SALES TEAM VANESSA FLEMING, WILL ROGERS, GINA JOHNSON DIGITAL SALES ASSOCIATE AYANA ROLLING MEDIA SALES ASSOCIATE JILLIAN MUELLER ADVERTISING ADS@CHICAGOREADER.COM CLASSIFIEDS: CLASSIFIEDS.CHICAGOREADER.COM NATIONAL ADVERTISING VOICE MEDIA GROUP 1-888-278-9866 VMGADVERTISING.COM JOE LARKIN AND SUE BELAIR ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com 312-392-2970 READER INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITY JOURNALISM, INC. PRESIDENT AND CHAIRPERSON EILEEN RHODES TREASURER REESE MARCUSSON SECRETARY KIM L. HUNT DIRECTORS ALISON CUDDY, DANIEL DEVER, MATT DOUBLEDAY, VANESSA FERNANDEZ, TORRENCE GARDNER, ROBERT REITER, CHRISTINA CRAWFORD STEED ----------------------------------------------------------------

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Reader Letters

m EDITOR’S NOTE

Re: “‘Why you talking to a bum?’” by Katie Prout for the April 20, 2023 issue (Volume 52, Number 14) This is probably the best nonfiction I’ve read all year and should be shouted from the rooftops, in my humble opinion.

—DJ Fagotron (@DJFAGOTRON), via X Re: “The moment met the CTA” by Reema Saleh for the November 30, 2023 issue (Volume 53, Number 4) Laying off workers when you need workers makes no sense. Call them all back in.

You won’t have to train them and they can start immediately. Also look for workers that might be willing to come back, ones you have previously let go if the violation was not too severe. Put them on a probationary period and retain them. That should give time to find new hires. Look, CTA, I’ll come be your manager. —Marcia (themarciab21), via Instagram From what I’ve been reading over the past couple years, a part of the problem is that the drivers quit because of poor treatment by riders and by the CTA. They were spit on during the pandemic and get forced to work double shifts with no break. The stories that drivers have shared are wild. It’s a crappy job, unfortunately. —Jackie Dupor (jackie_magdalen), via Instagram Find us on socials: facebook.com/chicagoreader twitter.com/Chicago_Reader instagram.com/chicago_reader linkedin.com search chicago-reader The Chicago Reader accepts comments and letters to the editor of less than 400 words for publication consideration.

m letters@chicagoreader.com

4 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

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n Monday, December 11, I had the privilege of gathering and grieving with hundreds of my Chicago media colleagues for a candlelight vigil memorializing journalists and media workers that have been killed in the war in Gaza; at least 70 to date according to the International Federation of Journalists.

A group of Chicago-area journalists— people I deeply respect, many of whom I’ve worked with and whose work I have followed for years—put together the event to, as they stated in a press release, “honor their fallen colleagues and express solidarity with journalists in Gaza who remain steadfast in their duties while trying to survive. Silence is not an option.”

We shuffled into the Chicago Art Department’s storefront space in Pilsen. Candles framed the room, representing each journalist murdered. Only ten minutes after the event started, the gallery was at capacity, with people filling every crevice of open space.

At the beginning of the event, the name of each journalist was read aloud while their photo was projected.

According to the Associated Press, the war in Gaza (which I categorize as a genocide) has claimed the lives of more journalists than any conflict in over 30 years. At the time the vigil was announced, at least 63 journalists and media workers had been killed. By the time we gathered, that number had risen to over 70 and, as bombardment continues, more are being killed along with hundreds of other Palestinians each day. The majority of these journalists have been Palestinian, with three Lebanese journalists and four Israeli journalists also killed.

Israel and Egypt have prevented international journalists from entering Gaza. As The New Republic reported, those who have been able to enter have primarily done so by embedding in the Israeli military, which includes the requirement that all materials and footage be reviewed by the military before publication.

So Palestinian journalists, in particular, have been a vital force in bringing news to the world. Each of these journalists is simultaneously covering and living the genocide; like most Palestinians, they have been displaced from their homes and cities, they have been cut off from food and clean water, they are losing their homes and their loved ones each day.

As Gaza journalist Motaz Azaiza ‫ةزيازع زَتْعُم‬ said, “The phase of risking my life to show the

Chicago journalists and friends gather at Chicago Art Department.

MAYA DUKMASOVA

world what is happening is now over. A new phase has begun—the phase to survive.”

As the vigil organizers pointed out in their press release, dozens more journalists have been reported missing, injured, arrested, harassed—and journalists have continued reporting while dealing with the ongoing trauma. Journalists like Motaz, Bisan Owda ‫ةدوع ناسيب‬, and Plestia Alaqad ‫داقعلا ايتسلب‬ continue to report each day on the atrocities they and their neighbors experience.

After each name was read aloud, we sat in a moment of silence, tears sitting on many people’s faces.

Journalists, including two former Reader colleagues, gave beautiful speeches. Rummana Hussain of the Sun-Times, Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel of City Bureau, and Maya Dukmasova and Carlos Ballesteros of Injustice Watch each spoke, grieving their colleagues abroad and Palestinian Americans who had been harmed or killed here in the U.S. The speakers shared their support and respect for journalists— particularly Arab journalists—who have been silenced or forced out of their jobs for speaking in support of Palestinians and emphasized the importance of media workers speaking out about injustices in Gaza.

As the speeches wrapped up, everyone stayed in the space to gather resources, talk to each other, and add their notes to the altar

“to the reporters slain and their families in Gaza.” Dozens of ripped pages from reporters’ notebooks slowly filled the wall with messages to those lost, like, “We will tell your stories to our children, their children. Palestine will always live.” And, “We won’t be silent. We won’t forget you.” The notes will remain on that wall through April.

People who couldn’t fit inside the building stayed lined up outside during the roughly 40-minute vigil and slowly went in to pay their respects and add their notes to the altar.

As I walked out of the building and onto the Halsted bus, I ran into people I have worked with around Chicago media, from the Reader to South Side Weekly to the Sun-Times. I was reminded of what a strong and committed community we have in the Chicago media, made up of people who have never seen their jobs as just jobs. As Salon Kawakib—who helped share the call with the public—so aptly shared on an Instagram story the following day, this space was for us to “be reminded of the power of gathering together to grieve and bear witness.” Part of the power of gathering together is the reminder that we are here to protect and advocate for one another. v —Savannah Hugueley, Assistant Managing Editor m shugueley@chicagoreader.com

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DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 5

CITY LIFE

MORE PHOTOS AND COVERAGE chicagoreader.com/city-life

C STREET View

Feels like fashion week Chicago doesn’t have an official Fashion Week, but perhaps we should.

BY ISA GIALLORENZO

hicagoans boast a lot about our visual arts, architecture, music, gastronomy, and comedy scenes. But our local fashion industry isn’t always on people’s radars—a fact that is a bit of a head-scratcher. We are the third-largest city in America, and there’s a lot of talent and interest in fashion here. Our reputation might change soon, though, thanks to the concerted and sustained efforts of a determined few.

“We try to keep busy because there is so much that needs to be done to help elevate Chicago fashion,” said Ian Gerard, the cofounder of the Curio, an organization that has been remarkably successful at connecting our fashion scene and showcasing local designers. The Curio is “turning a lot of our efforts in 2024 to the creation of an official Chicago Fashion Week, bringing together all of the city’s fashion players. We hope that this will be a fi rst step in helping Chicago to be recognized as one of the country’s fashion capitals, as it deserves to be,” Gerard said.

In October, the Curio brought together a

sizable and diverse crowd of local fashion professionals and enthusiasts to 21c Museum Hotel Chicago for Fashion’s Night Out, an event showcasing seven local designers in an innovative vignette format. Models stood on platforms sprinkled across two packed event spaces at the art-filled hotel, serving looks from the design labels Denimcratic, Grévyi, Jeune Otte, Kercher, Neval, Niczka, and Queendom by Romance. Chiefly curated by Maggie Gillette, Gerard’s lead partner at the Curio, the selected designers offered a wide variety of styles—from lingerie to menswear, tailored to sporty pieces, casual to high glam.

Later in the fall, Arabel Alva Rosales organized an edition of Runway Latinx at the west-side CineCity Studios to honor the end of Hispanic Heritage Month. Runway Latinx was filled with fashionable and honorable members of the Latinx community united to support Hispanic designers from Chicago and beyond. The event also raised awareness of Pivoting in Heels, Rosales’s digital not-forprofit outlet dedicated to empowering women

by providing them with insight and professional tips to “successfully pivot through every area of their lives.”

Runway Latinx featured fashion from Zeglio Custom Clothiers, Elda de la Rosa, and Carmen Seminario. All three design houses dressed Latinx professionals who were models for a special portion of the show. The event also highlighted the Miami-based Lazaro Sanchez, the LA label Nina Canacci, and Toribio and Donato, a real gem of a brand hailing from Costa Rica.

These two events prove there is growing excitement about our fashion scene in Chicago and a continued need to support local designers. Gerard said, “What we need now is more support from the broader Chicago business sector and, especially, the city. Remember, Chicago still spends zero dollars [directly] supporting the Chicago fashion sector, which is truly jaw-dropping. Hopefully with [the] new mayoral administration, we can work to change this.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

L-R: Model, musician, and actor Etherio Noon and model Lola Goza at Fashion’s Night Out; blue ensemble by Toribio and Donato at Runway Latinx; Fashion’s Night Out was hosted by actress Yolonda Ross of The Chi (here snapping a photo for a fan); gown by Nina Canacci at Runway Latinx ISA GIALLORENZO

6 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

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FOOD & DRINK

Find more one-of-a-kind Chicago food and drink content at chicagoreader.com/food.

EDIBLE GIFT GUIDE

Chicago foodies recommend gifts for Chicago foodies Toffee treats, pasta kits, and—of course—Malört minis

By JT NEWMAN

A

s the holidays approach, gifting is on everyone’s mind. Whether it’s a hostess gift for a friend throwing a holiday fete, a little something for the office white elephant, or a thank-you present for your mail carrier, your neighbor, or your hairstylist, edible gifts from local chefs and artisans can be a lovely way to express the spirit of the season.

Greg O’Neill, food and beverage coach and cofounder of the late, great Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine, is a huge fan of Crafian Artisanal Toffee for gifting to friends.

Crafian is the brainchild of Shawn Johnson, a participant in the Hatchery, the west-side food incubator. Crafian is sold at stores like the Artisan markets and One of a Kind Show and directly online through Johnson’s website. O’Neill suggests “several varieties, but I crave (see what I did there?) the awardwinning dark chocolate salted almond main offering. Gimme a glass of Ribera del Duero Tempranillo with that, please.”

Chef Dominique Leach, owner of Lexington Betty Smokehouse and master of ’cue from last summer’s Food Network show BBQ Brawl, also has a sweet tooth. She says, “My favorite edible gift is the pecan pralines from Brown Sugar Bakery!” The pralines—which can be purchased at Macy’s and at Brown Sugar’s new site in the old Cupid Candies factory—are a sweet and salty dream.

Meanwhile, up in Evanston, “Belgian Chocolatier Piron is no ordinary candy shop. It’s run by a Belgian-trained master chocolatier, so everything is high-quality and incredibly decadent,” says Jenni Spinner, the chief editor

8 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

Crafian Artisanal Toffee RACHEL MEYERSON/REM PHOTOGRAPHY

of Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery and Rogers Park resident. “They carry a stunning array of chocolates and other handcrafted candies that are totally giftable—though I admit when I’m stopping there, it’s usually for myself.

They don’t normally carry no-sugar-added products, but if you’ve got someone on your list who’s watching their sugar intake, they can make them for you, because everyone deserves amazing treats for the holidays.”

Timothy White, the director of marketing for Half Acre Beer Company, laments the closing of the storied Dinkel’s bakery on Lincoln Avenue: “I was a big fan of gifting Dinkel’s stollen to our holiday hosts for many years.

Alas, that time has ended.” But his family recovered from the loss and made a new holiday tradition. “As part of an annual walk through ZooLights, my family wanders over to Vanille Patisserie, where we choose an assortment of macarons to gift family and friends at holiday gatherings,” he says.

Lauren Bijur, the category manager for adult beverages at Dom’s Kitchen & Market, likes a gift that doubles as two. “My favorite local item is the Italian cookie plate from Tur-

ano. The plates are Chicago-themed, different every year, and just so cool.”

If sugar isn’t quite your thing, Chicago also offers an array of zesty options. Lemaster Family Kitchen and Chilee Oil, two entrants from the One of a Kind Show at the Merchandise Mart, offer gift packages sure to please the gourmand in your life. Lemaster’s Spice Gift Pack offers half-cups of their Backyard Blend (an all-purpose Mediterranean mix), Rub it Right (a BBQ blend that includes a mix of chilis, onion, garlic, hibiscus flower, and Mexican oregano), South of France (their take on Herbes de Provence), and TOSA (Taste of South Asia: a curry blend that includes guajillo and thai chiles). Chilee Oil offers two kinds of traditional Chinese chili oil with a blend of aromatics that includes caramelized shallots.

And Co-Op Sauce in Rogers Park offers a hotsauce-of-the-month club, with one bottle of their famed sauces (such as Chi-racha, Smokey Mole, Jalapeño Lime, and more) in your giftee’s mailbox each month.

If you’re looking to gift a yummy meal at home, Pamela Maass, the executive director of the Wicker Park Bucktown Chamber of

Commerce, recommends heading over toward Division Street to Tortello, where they make their from-scratch pasta noodles and sauces right there in the shop. “One of my favorite Chicago gifts is the pasta meal kit from Tortello. I think everyone can appreciate a nice, fresh pasta, and they have a couple of different options for sauces to choose from. Throw in a bottle of wine, and you’ve given your host a perfect night in!”

Speaking of wine, the storied underground pop-up Sunday Dinner Club has a wine membership that offers a selection of six wines released twice a year. If you’re looking for a perfect gift for a city dweller who prefers something a little stronger, Malört offers a gift pack of six mini-bottles of the classic Chicago tipple. And finally, though it’s not technically edible, this last one was too good not to include: RISE Dispensary has a 12-day weed Advent calendar on offer with 12 strains of pot in chillums, in a typical cardboard Advent calendar with windows that you can open one day at a time. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

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Birds of Palestine

By Oliver Khan

“Their souls are within green birds having lanterns suspended from the Throne, roaming freely in Paradise where they please, then taking shelter in those lanterns.” —Hadith Qudsi 27 They at first scatter when God poses His question. Their emerald

They answer the same.

God asks again. And they remember, Mama drinking her morning coffee,

wings treading through the air making sunlight swerve in seven directions.

massaging her back where the children burrowed into her last night when the sky was exploding.

And for the shortest moment their eyes are darting, tiny hearts firing

They remember the soldiers tearing down the neighbor’s home. They remember Baba saying they arrested your cousin. They shot your uncle.

They

like the cymbals of a riqq. They look up, expecting to hear turbines sucking, the whine and whistle of falling metal.

But instead, columns of light swim and circle the Throne making endless murmurations of praise.

God’s question: Do you wish for anything?

They answer: What could we wish for when we roam free in Paradise?

God is quiet among the sound of millions of wings fluttering, before asking again.

remember pulling funeral shroud one more.

back the white for one last kiss. And

And one more.

please.

Just one,

Some beat their wings, some sing in warning, some are silent, some dive into their lanterns, dark eyes shaking.

Then they cry out, one after the other, Oh Lord! Send us back. Send us, Oh Lord, back!

Send us back.

Oliver Khan received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh in 2005. His poems have been published in a number of literary journals, including Pearl, Archipelago, Eleven Eleven Journal, Gargoyle, Zaum, and Great Coat. He practices law and lives with his family in Lombard, Illinois.

Poem curated by Faisal Mohyuddin. Faisal Mohyuddin is the author of Elsewhere: An Elegy (forthcoming March 2024 from Next Page Press), The Displaced Children of Displaced Children, and The Riddle of Longing. He teaches high school English in suburban Chicago and creative writing at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies; he also serves as a Master Practitioner with the global not-for-profit Narrative 4 and is a visual artist.

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

Hours Wednesday & Friday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM Thursday: 11:00 AM–7:00 PM Saturday: 10:00 AM–5:00 PM Note: The Poetry Foundation will be closed on Friday, December 22 and remain closed through January 2. The Foundation will reopen on Wednesday, January 3.

Harriet Monroe & The Open Door

Visit our latest exhibition to learn about Chicago icon and Poetry magazine founder, Harriet Monroe.

Open through January 13, 2024.

Learn more at PoetryFoundation.org DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 9

NEWS & POLITICS OVERDOSES ON PUBLIC TRANIST

Two train rides in November A grieving mother and a CTA chief are pushing for change in the CTA: one from the outside, one from within.

By KATIE PROUT Editor’s note: This is a follow-up to Katie Prout’s October 4 Reader story, “Lives on the line,” or “How many opioid overdoses occur on the CTA?” Also read, “What’s happened since the Reader reported on the number of overdoses on CTA property?”

O

ne way or another, we all get off the train eventually. Perhaps you arrive at your stop nearest work, clutching your coffee and thanking god it’s Friday; maybe you head for the exit and make the short walk to your friend’s housewarming party, your arms full of flowers.

Or, perhaps, you wake up at O’Hare after midnight and a security guard directs you and a handful of others like you off the train and into the cold. After smoking or snorting or shooting something for the thousandth time, you sit gratefully back down on an allnight line. You’re out of the wind, out of the rain, and not entirely alone. There are others in the car as you sink into your nod. But this time, something goes terribly wrong.

This is a story about two train rides in November. It begins with a death on the Blue Line in 2021; it stops, for now, with an epiphany on the Red Line in 2023, but it doesn’t end there.

BLUE LINE

G

rowing up, David Haennicke, 29, had been an “adventurous, thrill-seeking kid,” his mom, Sheila Black Haennicke, told me this past July. When he was a child, Sheila joked that he would’ve made a great toy tester, to see how kids might actually play with an object: give him something built to spin, for example, and he’d use it as a musical instrument, or launch it delightedly across the room. Around age 16, David, the youngest of her two children, began struggling with a substance use disorder. For more than a decade, the Haennickes, whom Sheila describes as upper-middle class, supported David as he

10 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

attempted treatment programs over a dozen times. But addiction is complex, especially when combined with mental illness, and as he got older, David was periodically homeless.

When Sheila woke up to loud banging on her front door in the early hours of November 16, 2021, she briefly wondered if it was her son. When unhoused, it wasn’t uncommon for David to come by at odd hours. Sometimes he stayed on the Blue Line. But that November, he’d recently moved into an apartment not far from his parents in Oak Park. Besides, he usually rang the bell. “I thought he’d be home safe,” Sheila told me, but when she went downstairs, “it was a policeman at the door.”

The officer told her that David had been found unresponsive at the Rosemont Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) stop. He died on the Sheila Black Haennicke, harm reduction advocate JAMES HOSKING FOR CHICAGO READER

Blue Line, one of 31 fatal opioid-related overdoses to occur on CTA property in 2021, and one of 93 Chicagoans to die on the Blue Line between 2018 and 2022.

In the aftermath of her son’s death, Sheila took six weeks off of work. Channeling her grief into action, she submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the CTA and to the Village of Rosemont. From the medical examiner, Sheila learned that David’s cause of death was an overdose of fentanyl and other opioids. From her FOIA requests, Sheila learned that when he was found by a CTA worker in train car number 2970, David was unresponsive but breathing—but when an ambulance arrived five minutes after the 911 call, David was gone. Putting all these records side by side, “I really saw that everybody did everything they should’ve done,” Sheila said.

But one thing stuck out. Like nearly everyone who loves someone who regularly uses opioids, Sheila knew about Narcan, the opioid overdose reversal medication generically known as naloxone. Sheila fi gured the medication must be accessible somewhere on the CTA’s system, like a defibrillator. But the research she threw herself into after David’s death revealed otherwise. “Come to fi nd out that, no, they don’t keep Narcan around,” she recalled. “And that was that—I went back to work in January and just kind of got through the year.”

If your third-grade teacher was a white woman, she probably looked like Sheila Haennicke: pretty gray bob, welcoming smile, crinkled eyes the same blue as her son’s. She looks like someone who would be good with kids—indeed, her background is in early childhood development, and she

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NEWS & POLITICS worked as a social worker for years. She’s lived in the Chicago area all her life and has taken the CTA since she was a teenager. “Part of what motivates me is love for my son, but also love for the CTA,” Sheila told me. “I truly believe it’s this great leveler. It’s like the city’s artery.” You can hear the sound of Blue Line trains from their house, rushing in and out like a pulse.

After David’s death, Sheila was dormant, buried beneath the snow of her grief. But she still had to work; she still took the train.

Some folks couldn’t understand how she could still ride the CTA. “Part of it is because it’s something I’ve done forever,” Sheila explained. “[Our family has] one car, and frankly, it’s a practical thing, you know? And it is a way to stay close to my son.” But also, there was something else. “On the CTA, you can have these wonderful encounters with people really different than you,” she said. “You can build bridges.” Riding the Blue Line every day brought her into contact with friends and acquaintances, with her “CTA neighbors”—the folks you see on your commute and feel kinship with, even if you don’t know their names.

In the way that a bridge helps a person overcome a chasm, a rushing river, or an empty space that might otherwise swallow them up, riding the CTA was the bridge between Sheila and the rest of her life.

In 2022, at least 60 people died from opioid-related overdoses on the CTA. In November of that year, the fi rst anniversary of David’s death passed. Sheila began to have more energy. She wrote a letter to the CTA president, Dorval Carter Jr., and vice president of communications and marketing, Brian Steele, telling David’s story and asking if they would consider training CTA staff on how to administer Narcan. She talked to a

neighbor who worked at a clinic in Oak Park, and the neighbor connected her to the West Side Heroin/Opioid Task Force, a collective of individuals and organizations working to reduce overdose deaths and other related harm. Soon, Sheila found herself sitting in a storefront on Lake Street, just east of Austin, pushing nasal Narcan into a dummy’s nose.

“It was really surprisingly simple,” Sheila recalled of her Narcan training. “Look at how easily this spray, if you use it, can save someone!” Injectable naloxone, however, still made her nervous. When David fi rst tested positive for heroin, Sheila couldn’t say the word. “I’m 61, and when I was growing up, heroin was something I associated with Vietnam vets in back alleys. I didn’t know anything about it.” The idea of injecting a stranger in a crisis was too high a threshold for her to cross—for now. Learning about both types of naloxone “opened my eyes to harm reduction,” Sheila said. “There is a place for injectable Narcan—there are people for whom it will save their lives.” In harm reduction, there was a place for Sheila, too. The Task Force welcomed her and happi ly met her where she was at.

By February 2023, Sheila was going to Task Force meetings and connecting with others. Many of the members had also experienced terrible loss: sons to gun violence, partners to overdose, years of their own lives to incarceration. But they shared more than tragedy and trauma, and though much of the media coverage of efforts to get Narcan on CTA property has focused primarily on Sheila, she was welcomed, comforted, taught, and gently checked by a community of harm reduction workers, many of whom are Black or Brown and have been doing this work for years. It started with Lee Rusch, whom Sheila reached out to around the fi rst anniversary of David’s death.

“Lee gave me a lot of background [on harm reduction] and was so welcoming,” Sheila said. He connected her to Luther Syas, who runs the outreach team for the Task Force; it was he who trained her on Narcan. Finally, there were Task Force members and outreach workers, many of whom work on the CTA: “Isabella from Haymarket, John and Jen from [Chicago Recovery Alliance], Sophia at Cook

County Public Health, Sarah Richardson at [the Chicago Department of Public Health], Dr. Tanya Sorrell at Rush,” and more. “Afterwards, I said to my husband, ‘I’ve made some new friends!’ It felt like a community,” Sheila told me.

Before long, Sheila learned that others in the Task Force were eager to get Narcan and other harm reduction supplies on CTA property for anyone to use, if not in the hands of CTA workers themselves. Here was something she could do with her personal experience, but also her professional expertise from her years in social work. Sheila knew drug use on the trains and buses was complex, and that it intersected with issues of homelessness and mental illness. And she thought of Oak Park, where the village’s public health department had placed red boxes at overdose hot spots. They looked like newspaper dispensers, but inside was Narcan, free for the taking.

What if something like that was available on the CTA? Along with other Task Force members, Sheila organized the CTA Narcan Work Group under the u mbrel la of t he Task Force. She co-led meetings alongside Tom Nickels from Healthcare Alternative Systems. She took notes. She kept reaching out to the CTA administration. And she kept riding the train.

One morning this past spring, Sheila got off the Blue Line a little sooner than normal.

It was a pretty day, and she wanted to get some steps in before work. Walking up LaSalle, she noticed something on the sidewalk.

At fi rst, she thought it was a pile of clothes; then, she realized it was a person. “Oh my god,” she thought. “They look really out of it.” Sheila bent down and shook the person, a man. “Hey, sir!” she said loudly. There was no response from the man, but a couple of other people stopped, and a security guard came out of a nearby building. He’d already called 911, but it was rush hour—while Sheila could hear sirens wailing, they sounded stuck in traffic blocks away. “So I thought, ‘You know what? I’m gonna do it,’” she told me. “And it was scary, because of all those years of being socialized not to touch a stranger, but you know what, let me try. I took it out and did it.”

The man didn’t immediately wake up, but less

“Part of what motivates me is love for my son, but also love for the CTA.”

than a minute later, the ambulance arrived.

As the paramedics moved in, he started to come to.

“I can’t say that it saved him, but it didn’t hurt him,” Sheila told me. “I hope it helped him, but the biggest benefit was that other people saw me do it. They saw that it’s possible.” After the paramedics pulled away, Sheila and the security guard stayed around to talk through their post-emergency nerves.

“He was like, ‘Thanks for doing that. You didn’t have to do that. Hey, why did you?’ And I told him about my son.”

By spring 2023, 23 people had overdosed on the CTA since Sheila’s son David. She and the others from the CTA Narcan Work Group planned an action. Through Task Force member Sandra Harrison, who at this point had become a friend and mentor, Sheila learned about International Overdose Awareness Day, an annual memorial every August that pairs collective remembrance for people who’ve died with collective action and mutual support. What if this year, Sandra asked the Work Group, organizers brought International Overdose Awareness Day to the CTA? An action that was focused on every passenger, not just those who were unhoused or visibly high.

“I think often people talk about the CTA like, ‘We have to make it better.’ And they’re thinking about wealthy suburbanites like me, who ride it in from Oak Park or other places,” Sheila said. “But it’s everybody, you know— everybody is someone’s child. When you see that ragged-looking person slumped over in the corner, the CTA is for them, too.”

On the morning of August 31, International Overdose Awareness Day, six people walked up the stairs at the Green Line Laramie stop and boarded an inbound train, breaking into pairs as they entered different cars.

They wore purple T-shirts that said “# END OVERDOSE” and lanyards with their names

DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 11

NEWS & POLITICS

and affi liations. They carried clipboards and over 100 kits of Narcan. Each kit contained two doses.

Fresh off the success of the first action, Sheila suggested they repeat it once a month, but they were operating in a gray area. In the months leading up to the action, Sheila consistently reached out to the CTA to invite them to collaborate on the event. Someone would be in touch, she was told, but Sheila never heard back.

“I was ready to charge back onto the trains with kits after International Overdose Awareness Day,” Sheila told me, “and Fanya [Burford-Berr y, cod i rector of the Task Force] helped me realize that any effort our subcommittee made would have to be hand in hand with these longerterm advocates, and take a longer-term view.”

Months later, after my October Reader story featuring Sheila, she was invited by Chicago Transit Board chief of staff April Morgan to speak during the public comment

section of the November 15 Chicago Transit Board meeting. It was one day before the second anniversary of David’s death. Fanya was there, too, tote bags of Narcan for board members in hand.

With Fanya standing by her side as she spoke, Sheila used her allotted three minutes to speak on behalf of the Task Force: they shared the CTA’s goal of making transit safe for all riders and wanted to partner with the CTA to make Narcan available so that riders could help each other. They asked that the CTA build on its existing partnerships with the Night Ministry, Thresholds, and other outreach organizations to increase Narcan distribution, and also that the CTA expand the Narcan public service announcements already on some trains to more lines and platforms.

“In closing,” Sheila said, “we ask that the CTA establish a work group to make Narcan on CTA platforms a reality in the coming year—” “That’s time,” said board secretary Georgette Greenlee, gently.

“It is too late to save my son,” continued Sheila. The room was quiet. “But by November 15, 2024, if we work together, we will save other lives by empowering CTA riders to use Narcan. Thank you.”

RED LINE

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ike Sheila, Denise Barreto, the CTA’s first chief of equity and engagement, has lived in the Chicago area all her life. She is ebullient and profane, an easy talker and an attentive listener, who is as comfortable speaking her mind as she is asking for help.

Like Sheila, Denise has one son and one daughter, whom she speaks of often and with pride.

Where Sheila favors red, Denise wears purple—a purple pantsuit, purple nails, purple braided into her hair. When she picked me up a little before 9 PM on Wednesday, November 29, she was wearing a purple puffy coat.

It was her idea to ride the Red Line together that night. Denise, 52, reached out not long after my fi rst story was published to see if I was interested. It was 19 weeks into Denise’s tenure at the CTA, and she insisted that, to

“Those people don’t want my tears,” she said to me. “They want my f***ing help.”

12 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

her, learning about overdose prevention pos- said. “I just used it on someone at Howard last night.” sibilities was absolutely part of the job.

This is how we fell into conversation with Both she and Nancy-Ellen Zusman, CTA chief of safety and security, were at the Vitale, age 27, from Addison to 95th. He’d reWork Group’s Nove m b e r m e e t i n g .

“CTA is part of the ecosystem of care in the city. We’re not the only place that overdose deaths are happening,” Denise said then. “But we’re the epicenter, the artery, of the city.

Transit is cut along lines that are inequitable. It’s incumbent on the government to fi x that. I want you to have a sense of my ethos, what I’m learning about the CTA, and what we can and can’t do.”

Denise and I pic ke d up CTA spokesperson Kathleen Woodruff and parked at the Addison stop. Neither wore CTA badges.

The plan was to ride t he l i ne to 95t h , check out the brandnew Narcan vending machine, then head north to Howard and meet up with outreach workers from Denise Barreto, CTA chief of equity and engagement Th reshold s a lon g JAMES HOSKING FOR CHICAGO READER the way. Thresholds is one of three outreach organizations the cently lost his job at Ford and had been shelCTA partners with in an effort to connect tering on the Red Line for the last five days.

“Overdoses is very common in Chicago,” unhoused riders to housing. Each outreach group also carries Narcan, though only the he told us. “Me, personally, has saved three Night Ministry is specifically tasked with lives with people ODing. It’s scary, but it’s providing Narcan and other harm reduction sad at the same time. All you can do is pray for them.” supplies to interested riders.

But if he’s reversed three overdoses, Vitale Denise tapped us through the turnstile.

Settling down as the train began chugging does more than pray. “Why do you carry Narto its next stop, I opened my backpack to can?” I asked him. “A lot of people are doing show Denise the Narcan I take everywhere. drugs,” he said earnestly. “It’s good to keep As we began talking about the pros and cons on you because you never know what’s going of injectable naloxone versus nasal spray—I on next to you, if somebody’s yelling help for carry both—Denise listened intently. So did some reason. It’s just a lifesaver.”

“But why do you intervene?” I asked. He the young white man seated on her left. He leaned toward us. “You need that stuff,” he didn’t know any of the folks he’d rescued,

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NEWS & POLITICS “Your story was the fi rst time—and I mean the train to return to Addison, and we were from her own life. At one point, if just a couple and, as Sheila relayed during her recollection of administering Narcan on a stranger, this—that I had heard anything about any the only passengers in our car who weren’t more things had gone wrong, it could’ve been touching someone you don’t know in a med- overdoses on the trains,” she explained. “Ob- sleeping, sheltering, and/or visibly under the him on the Red Line. ical crisis you’re not sure about can be really viously, getting ready to be the equity and influence.

“Those people don’t want my tears,” she In the same way we found Vitale earlier said to me. “They want my f***ing help. They engagement chief, I did all this homework, uncomfortable.

Vitale answered immediately. “You can but that was something that slipped through. that night, the train south also brought us want me to use my privilege. They want me to see the signs of somebody dying. When they But after reading your story, and going on Tanya, a weeping Black woman who needed use my position to do something.” start turning colors, going blue—regardless WBEZ, and starting to talk to La Shawn Ford clean pipes and money for her kids (“I’m so A week and a half after our ride, no one of what you feel, that’s the sign to step in and [a state representative whose 8th District sorry,” Denise said softly), as well as John, a we’d met had reached out. “But I don’t blame includes neighborhoods with high overdose middle-aged Black single father sheltering them,” Denise said. “I wouldn’t necessarily help,” he explained.

The train chugged and roared. Denise and death rates], I felt like I needed to come on the on the train (“This is temporary,” Denise re- take me serious either.”

Vitale fell into conversation, with Kathleen train at night and meet somebody like Vitale peated to him in earnest). Denise gave both of So what are her next steps? I asked. Denise them her business card. occasionally chiming in. Vitale rated city so that it became real.” sat even straighter and leaned into my mike.

And as we exited the train and pushed There are three things she came away with That’s why she was there: “I wanted to do outreach groups, offered advice on where to get food, and wondered why the city doesn’t this. I’m so shocked that we sat down for two through the turnstiles, I was surprised to see from our ride. have a robust crisis response “Number one, I’m absolutely and violence prevention team— convinced that [this] is where all ideas he’d written to the we should be. We are in the mayor, the governor, and the transit business; we’re in the president about, he told us. He business to move people. We asked, what if someone with the are not in the human services CTA regularly walked the train business,” she said firmly. Becars? Vitale wanted Narcan on fore, Denise had felt opposed to CTA trains but was worried requiring CTA workers to carry people might vandalize it or Narcan, but she was open to throw it around. Maybe, he said, changing her mind. Now she’s it could be in a break-in-case-ofsure that they shouldn’t, that emergency box. Like a trigger, it’s too big a problem for the CTA Denise offered. “Yes!” he said. “I to solve itself. feel like what they doing at 95th, She continued, “The second that’s a smart idea. But on a thing that I’m absolutely doutrain physically, there should be bling, tripling down on, ten toes a panic button that [notifies] the deep, saying it with my chest: fi re [department] and the police we’ve got to fi nd more partners and to CTA—all three already [who can provide harm reducon their way to wherever the tion services].” And to do that, emergency is.”

“We gotta fi nd more money.”

Before we got off the train, Which leads us to her third she took out her business card. point. “Philanthropy has a role “Thanks for talking to us,” she in this, right? Government has said. Vitale smiled. He suddenly a role, philanthropy has a role, “It begins with a death on the Blue Line in 2021; it stops, for now, with an epiphany on the Red Line in 2023, but it doesn’t end there.” and the private sector has a looked very young. “You’re wel JAMES HOSKING FOR CHICAGO READER come,” he replied. Denise pointrole,” she explained. “So for me, ed out her email address. “Literally, you can seconds, and we ran into somebody [with tears running down Denise’s face. I asked her this story is a catalyst for me going out there lived experience]. But that’s actually really later what they were about. She was thinking and asking people to join us, because the email me any resource we can direct you to.” about her dad, she told me, a teamster whose CTA—we can’t carry this by ourselves. And “ O K ,” h e s a i d , t a k i n g h e r c a r d . informative.”

Denise hadn’t met with any outreach work- fingernails are still stained from working those cars were full that night.”

“Thank you.”

Arriving at 95th, we found that the vend- ers yet but was eager to do so. “I’m still in under a car his whole life, and how his daugh“And let me say another thing on the reing machine is accessible near the station’s learning mode.” Two people in blue Thresh- ter is now in a C-suite job. Then there was her cord,” she continued firmly. “We fund our entrance before you’d have to tap in your olds vests joined us at Belmont and we rode emotion from seeing the looks on people’s transit the least in the country [out of the faces when she handed them her card.

Ventra card. Despite being less than two on toward Howard. largest cities] for the size of the metropolitan “In a city that has as many resources as we area that we are, and we should be ashamed Once there, we exited the train. It was weeks old, it was out of order, and the sharps boxes were full. Denise frowned. Neither she nearly midnight. Suddenly, a loud, grating, have, to see people suffering like we saw?” of that. For 40 years, we have starved our sysnor Kathleen were aware that the vending mechanical sound drowned out our speech. she recalled, visibly emotional again. “The tem. We shouldn’t be having to beg, because I asked one of the outreach workers if the tremendous amount of responsibility I feel, we are the heartbeat of our city. So I’m glad machine was out of order.

As we reboarded and rode the train north, sound we were hearing was supposed to making the money that I make, to make a dif- that we’re raising [CTA funding] in the conI asked Denise what we were doing there rouse passengers to exit at the end of the ference.” And fi nally, in John, the last man we text of caring for people because we happen line. “Yup,” she said. “Hate it.” We got back on met, Denise was reminded of someone else to be a spot where those folks can get shelthat night.

DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 13

LIMITED ENGAGEMENT

NEWS & POLITICS ter.” The approximately $2 million a year that the CTA now spends on outreach services comes out of their operating budget. “That’s not easy to pull.”

But she was committed. She was already planning for another night ride, this one on the Blue Line, where most overdoses on the CTA occur. She needed to see the faces, to hear the stories—for data points and information, but also for focus and motivation during long meetings and bad days. “Vitale, Tanya, and John are seared in my brain, and in my heart,” she said. “Vitale, Tanya, and John need me to do this work.”

EPILOGUE

S

heila Black Haennicke continued to ride the Blue Line. She figured it was a matter of time before she’d see the train car where her son took his last breath. One morning in March 2022, while on her way to work, number 2970 pulled up to the platform.

She got on.

“Part of me was like, ‘What the heck are you doing? Is this just gonna blow up your

DECEMBER 21 - DECEMBER 31 day?’” Sheila recalled to me later. “But the other part of me was like, ‘I can’t not do this.’” She boarded the train and made her way to the spot where, from all the reports she’d gathered, her son likely died. She sat there and thought about his last moments.

The train kept moving. “And then I looked up.” Unusua l for the cold weather, the transom window was open. Cold, clean air rushed in.

W hen she boa rded t he t ra i n , Shei la half wondered, half hoped that she would get some sen se of her son’s presence.

But now, looking up at the open window, Sheila felt something else. He’s not here, she rea lized. A nd why wou ld he be? She k new her son. Li ke she sa id, Dav id was a n adventu rous, t h rill-seek ing k id. The open w indow was ver y helpf u l, she told me. It helped her remember t hat. Tr ue to form, “ he was outta there,” she sa id.

David was on the Chicago wind streaming alongside the train. He was every where.

He was gone. v

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NEWS & POLITICS TIMELINE

What’s happened since the Reader reported on the number of overdoses on CTA property?

In two months, the CTA has opened its first Narcan vending machine and extended contracts with outreach agencies.

By DILPREET RAJU Editor’s note: This is a companion piece to Katie Prout’s page ten story, “Two train rides in November.”

O

n October 4, the Reader published Katie Prout’s story “Lives on the line,” or “How many opioid overdoses occur on the CTA?” The piece examined previously unreported data about overdoses on public transit and efforts to slow the rate of overdose deaths across Chicago’s rail systems.

Two months after the Reader found that more than 150 people have died from opioidrelated overdoses on the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) in the last four years, the CTA has increased its engagement with harm reduction advocacy groups and extended, and expanded, a contract with outreach agencies.

Here is a look at what the CTA has been up to since the Reader published its fi ndings:

October:

•Oct. 4: “How many opioid overdoses occur on the CTA?” and the investigation methodology are published.

•Oct. 10: A CTA press release touts low crime, saying, “Instances of reported crimes on the transit system remain rare.”

•Oct. 16: WBEZ’s Reset with Sasha-Ann Simons interviews Prout and two people who have experienced loss due to overdose, Sheila Black Haennicke and Daniel Rusick.

•The guests discuss overdoses in Chicago and the lifeline the CTA can present to people experiencing homelessness.

•Oct. 17: WBEZ’s Reset with Sasha-Ann Simons interviews Denise Barreto, CTA chief equity and engagement officer, and Sarah Richardson, substance use program manager for the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH).

•“The reality is that there is not a single community in the city of Chicago that is unaffected by drug overdose,” Richard-

son said on the radio show.

•“[Employees are] not going to be trained on Narcan because, again, it is outside of our, you know, our—physical—folks are not going to be interacting with them,” Barreto said.

•“We have been boosting our mental health services to them—to the employees—because it’s trauma, it’s trauma they’re adjacent to,” Barreto continued.

•“We don’t have the ability to take this on, not in a comprehensive way we should, so it would be silly for me to say we can do that,” Barreto continued.

•Barreto emphasized the CTA’s intention to partner with agencies focused on outreach to folks experiencing substance use disorders in lieu of giving CTA workers Narcan and training.

November:

•Nov. 15: Sheila Black Haennicke, volunteer with the West Side Heroin/Opioid Task Force, attends a CTA board meeting two years after her son David died of an overdose on a CTA train car.

•“Despite everyone doing everything they could, David died on the floor of that train from an opioid overdose. His was one of 31 fatal overdoses on CTA property in 2021,” Black Haennicke told the board.

•In addition to asking the CTA to form a work group to address these issues, she said, “We ask that you build on these amazing partnerships [with Thresholds, Haymarket Center, and the Night Ministry] by empowering CTA riders to help one another with Narcan placed on CTA platforms.” She and other Task Force members distributed Narcan kits and information to the entire transit board.

•Chairman Lester Barclay thanked the speakers. “I wanted to highlight you, Ms. Haennicke, for addressing the board

to discuss this important issue,” he said.

He asked President Carter to connect her to Nancy-Ellen Zusman, CTA’s chief safety and security officer, and to the chief of community engagement, “to have further discussions and dialogue with you as to how we may be helpful in dealing with this very critical issue.”

•The same day, the CTA Committee on Finance, Audit, and Budget extends an intergovernmental contract with Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) to continue funding Thresholds and Haymarket Center, who operate on the Red and Blue lines, respectively, through 2024.

•CDPH funds the Night Ministry’s outreach for two nights a week.

•Brian Steele, CTA spokesperson, told the board and CTA president Dorval Carter Jr., “For this particular announcement, we have been working with our partners at DFSS for about two weeks now to come up with a full outreach plan.”

•Nov. 17: The first harm reduction vending machine on a CTA platform is up and running, about seven months after the announcement of a public health vending machine coming to the 95th/Dan Ryan Red Line station.

•“It is our responsibility as leaders to meet the reality and extend compassion, and most importantly, our resources to safeguard the lives of our residents, and I mean all of our residents,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said at the announcement of the 95th/Dan Ryan vending machine.

“We cannot ignore the fact that too many of our neighbors are at risk of overdose-related harms every day.” He attended a Narcan training demonstration, lasting about five minutes.

•The vending machine is one of five in the city’s pilot program, but it is the only one on a CTA platform and one of two that are accessible 24/7.

•Each public health vending machine has boxes of Narcan, fentanyl and xylazine test kits, general and menstrual hygiene kits, and packages of socks and underwear.

•Nov. 21: Denise Barreto and Nancy-Ellen Zusman make their first appearance at a Task Force virtual meeting.

•“It was clear that both Denise and NancyEllen were ver y interested,” Black Haennicke wrote of the November 21 meeting. “They listened to us and proposed immediate next steps.” Now, the

Task Force is focusing on drafting a proposal to put Narcan on trains and platforms across the city. It will be shared with Barreto and Zusman by December 15 for review.

•Nov. 29: Barreto, Prout, and CTA spokesperson Kathleen Woodruff ride the Red Line together, and they fi nd the 95th/Dan Ryan vending machine to be out of order and the platform’s sharps boxes full.

•Barreto and Woodruff were unaware that the vending machine was out of order, though CDPH says, “Anytime there’s been an issue with that machine, we alert our CTA contacts who have been involved in standing up the machine.”

The vending machine at 95th has continued to experience technical issues, but CDPH is working to resolve them.

The CTA has custodial staff assigned to regularly empty sharps boxes.

December:

•Dec. 4: Prout interviews Zusman and Tom McKone, CTA chief administrative officer, after trying to interview Zusman since July.

•“I never got your interview request,” said Zusman. “The fi rst time I read about it was in your story, which was very frustrating to me. I’m happy to talk to the press.” If she had talked to the press, Zusman could’ve clarified a point raised in Prout’s fi rst story by harm reduction workers: the CTA does have sharps boxes throughout its line, and they have since 2015. There are 17 across the ends of the train lines.

•Dec. 12: Haymarket Center currently employs 25 outreach workers who will begin servicing the entire Blue Line in January.

Since October 4, without accounting for the lag time in toxicology reports, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office counts more than 50 opioid-involved overdose deaths in Chicago. The rest of Cook County as a whole saw 23 opioid-involved overdose deaths in that same time, when looking at the same publicly available data from the Medical Examiner’s Office.

CTA workers, overdose witnesses, and other members of the public continue to contact the Reader with updates and feedback.

There remains no accurate, public-facing database to track opioid overdose-related deaths on the CTA. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 15

NEWS & POLITICS LABOR

University of Chicago unions join forces in fight for a fair contract Nearly 6,000 graduate students and medical workers are turning up the pressure on the university after months of bargaining without an agreement.

By PASCAL SABINO

A

s the University of Chicago negotiates with labor groups representing nearly 6,000 workers, graduate students joined in solidarity with the university medical center’s nurses Monday, December 4, to demand the school settle on a fair deal.

Nurses at the rally, represented by National Nurses United, called on the university to address staffi ng shortages and training plans that threaten their safety, as well as the quality of care delivered to patients. UChicago Medicine’s previous contract with nurses expired November 25, and workers want a new agreement that will protect both nurses and patients as hospital conditions continue to change.

A different set of issues are on the bargaining table for the graduate student workers, who make up a substantial portion of the University of Chicago’s teaching staff. UChicago Graduate Students United began negotiations with the university in May, and student workers aim to win a contract that guarantees a livable wage, benefits, and policies that promote transparency and accountability.

The labor groups each claim the university has deliberately stalled negotiations, and they have joined forces to offer mutual support in reaching agreements that give workers a voice in shaping the conditions of their workplaces.

“The nature of our asks are very different.

But fundamentally, workers know what they need to do the work well and live their lives well,” says Micah Gay, a bargaining committee member and graduate worker in the math department. “Ultimately, we both face pushback from the university. And that pushback is coming from a place of the university wanting to maintain control over the way we do our work.”

The nationwide nursing shortage has worsened since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The UChicago Medical Center has

16 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

been short-staffed across many units in part due to high turnover rates, says ER nurse Scott Mechanic.

“It becomes unsafe conditions for the patients. Patients aren’t getting the care they deserve. Nurses aren’t able to give the level of care they want to give,” Mechanic says.

had no way to ensure the university actually followed those plans, says union member Stephanie Gamboa. “We are looking for the hospital to have some accountability to safely staff all units,” she says.

Training is another key issue on the bargaining table. A state law that takes effect in

Two unions representing nearly 6,000 UChicago workers rally for a fair contract ANDREW SEBER

“They’re just running from room to room putting out fi res, which drives more nursing turnover.”

The hospital has lost about half its nurses since the start of the previous contract four years ago, Mechanic says. The shortage isn’t necessarily because of a lack of qualified workers, he says, but rather because “the working conditions are just so terrible that they leave the profession.”

The bargaining committee wants to settle on a new contract that would hold the university accountable for patterns of chronic short-staffi ng through arbitration. While the UChicago Medical Center currently has staffing plans that guide how many patients each nurse should be assigned, the prior contract

the new year requires that survivors of sexual violence who present themselves at Illinois hospitals be treated by clinicians “trained on how to care for this vulnerable population,” Gamboa says. The union wants a contract that allows nurses to choose whether to perform this difficult and sensitive work and offers incentives and administrative support to gain the necessary credentials, Gamboa says.

Union members also want to ensure adequate training for nurses who assist obstetric surgery. Labor and delivery workers are often expected to step in to work on complex surgeries—work normally performed by nurses with an additional six months of training, says nurse Lamonica Jones.

“It takes a nurse with additional scrub

training to provide care when one of our deliveries suddenly turns into an emergency cesarean section,” Jones says. “These are life-threatening situations, and our patients deserve care from properly trained staff.”

Black women in Chicago die during pregnancy or soon after childbirth at rates several times higher than white women, a report by the city’s public health department found.

Since many women on the south side also face risk factors or chronic conditions that increase the chances of complications during pregnancy, it is essential to provide them with the highest quality of care, Jones says.

“Well-trained nurses and staff [are] the best way we can ensure women survive childbirth to enjoy and care for their newborns.”

Ashley Heher, a spokesperson for UChicago Medicine, says across 11 bargaining sessions, there has been progress and “important conversations on key topics, such as workplace safety, nurse education, and staffi ng.”

During three additional bargaining sessions planned for December, the university will be “committed to working collaboratively and respectfully for a fair and equitable contract that allows us to continue to attract exceptional nurses who meaningfully contribute to our institution and its reputation for excellence,” Heher said in a statement.

Graduate Students United, in current negotiations with the school, aims to settle its first contract with the university since the group won recognition in 2017. The university previously refused to bargain on a contract for years, union representatives say, resulting in graduate workers going on strike for recognition in 2019.

But after 11 rounds of bargaining, the school has been unable to come to an agreement on a grievance process for incidents of discrimination or harassment. Graduate student workers want a contract that can “create a culture shift on this campus and erode the conditions that allow discrimination to take place in the fi rst place,” says graduate worker Soham Sinha.

While the bargaining goals of each union are different, it is important for the groups to stand together because they share the same employer, Gay says. “We are able to amplify each other’s voices. And, ultimately, our power as labor unions is that we are the ones who do labor. We are the ones who are actually making this university run.” v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

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DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 17

COMMENTARY ON CULTURE

Columbia College chaos

see, they say top administrators are making too much money. They wonder why, for example, if the school is facing deficits, President A lengthy strike teaches a bitter lesson.

Kwang-Wu Kim got a $252,000 bonus in fiscal

By DEANNA ISAACS year 2021-2022, when he also received over $500,000 in salary and about $300,000 in other compensation and benefits.

It’s obvious that this stalemate, which each he weather, at least, was cooperative. person, reported that 237 part-timers were side blames on the other, is harmful to stuLast Friday, on the 40th day of a strike crossing the picket line last week, while 347 dents. The union claims that administrators by part-time faculty at Columbia College remained on strike. are also risking Columbia’s accreditation by That sounds like a lot of dissension in the Chicago, the temperature rose to a balmy 56 attempting to complete the fall term with degrees. Sunshine warmed the determined ranks, but it makes more sense if you know full-time faculty and scabs taking over strikfaces of 50 or so demonstrators gathered in that Columbia is, in effect, a closed shop ers’ classes, whether qualified to teach those front of the Alexandroff Campus Center at 600 for adjuncts. All part-time faculty must pay courses or not. Many of those classes became S. Michigan for a rally and press conference union dues (or basically equivalent “fees”), “asynchronous” online sessions; some, they even though many of them choose not to be that featured local and state union officials. say, haven’t happened at all; and “Get up, get down, Chicago is a some will be permitting students union town,” they chanted, while to name their own grade. A call Scabby the Rat looked on and to return to English department passing drivers leaned on their classes last month promised this: horns to show support. To no one’s “Your word is good enough for us. surprise, Mayor Brandon Johnson If you say you had a C when the had already weighed in with a symstrike started, you will earn a C or pathetic statement. better in this course.”

The strike by CFAC, the CoOn December 6, the adminislumbia College Faculty Union, tration issued a strike update, is setting records for length and announcing that mediation so far impact. As you might remember, has only continued a deadlock on CFAC used to be PFAC, which stood key issues and it is now necessary for “part-time faculty.” The name to make decisions about the spring was changed five years ago to term. They withdrew some previreflect the union’s broader aspiraous offers, noting that “at this late tions, but it still represents only date” there is no chance of striking part-timers. faculty returning to the classroom They, however, are legion: the this term, which ends December 15. college now has 584 adjunct inIn response to questions about structors, some of them only nomithat, college spokesperson Lamnally part-time. brini Lukidis sent this comment, An arts and media school with acknowledging a sea change: “The a practical bent, Columbia was a pioneer in the use of adjuncts.

CFAC President Diana Vallera addresses a rally for striking Columbia College part-time faculty, Dec. 8, 2023. DEANNA ISAACS central issue in the labor dispute with the part-time faculty union is That’s now a widespread, notothat a larger share of courses will riously exploitative practice in now be taught by full-time faculty.” higher education, but Columbia’s “Our full-time faculty are also people who original rationale was admirable: successful members. Columbia also employs two types of spring schedule, reducing class offerings for that working professionals in various creative full-time faculty: tenure track, which can lead term by about 20 percent. Vallera says this was work in industry and contribute to creative fields would take the time to share their exper- to tenure, with all its obligations and rewards; a unilateral decision, made by “a handful of top practice just as our adjunct faculty do,” Lukidis wrote. tise by teaching a course, and classes would be and the less academic teaching track, which administrators,” without faculty input.

Says Vallera: “Students come to Columbia But the administration claims the cuts were small enough to allow for personal attention, comes with some benefits, but is a contract pomentoring, and the formation of valuable, re- sition, lacking job security beyond the length necessary due to a “structural” deficit: with for the small class sizes and one-on-one relaa post-pandemic decline in enrollment, they tionships with working professionals. That is of the contract. al-world workplace connections.

It’s not hard to see that the part-time facul- say, tuition income is not enough to cover the what our college advertises, and that is what Adjuncts are now 72 percent of the Columwe are fighting for.” v bia faculty. But not all of them are striking. ty, who have historically been the heart of the college’s expenses.

The union wants management to open the The college’s student paper, the Columbia school, make up the bottom rung of this hierChronicle, citing an administration spokes- archy, working without health-care benefits, financial books. From what little they can now m disaacs@chicagoreader.com

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18 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

for little more than subsistence wages.

The CFAC contract expired in August. According to the union’s firebrand president, Diana Vallera, the administration has been dragging its feet, not bargaining for a new contract in good faith. The union has filed multiple complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, and the two sides have been meeting with a federal mediator since December 4.

The major issue: Two weeks before the start of the current term, the administration announced significant cuts to the class schedule for this academic year and raised caps on class sizes.

According to the union, 53 sections were cut in fall semester and 317 sections were cut from the

DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 19

ARTS & CULTURE

instagram.com/hotfunmia R hotfunmia.com

The artist in her studio MIA LEE BBL

CRAFT WORK

Mia Lee turns moments of stillness into art The Chicago painter and designer credits her family with encouraging her creativity.

By BOUTAYNA CHOKRANE

M

ia Lee only visited Roatán once, for a cousin’s wedding four years ago, but she finds herself drawn to the Caribbean island.

Roatán is an isle off the northern coast of Honduras, encircled by the breathtaking Mesoamerican Reef. Picture dense forests, sandy beaches, and seaside villages. The local cuisine, a rich fusion of Spanish, Creole, and West and Central African influences, boasts a delectable assortment of fresh seafood, baleadas, and tropical fruits. “No big chain restaurants.

No McDonald’s. No Starbucks,” says Lee, the 31-year-old visual artist of Honduran descent.

What does she love the most about Roatán?

“You feel like you’re disconnected, but in a good way,” she says. “You don’t realize how fast life is moving around you, and how fast you’re moving.” Her words sound like a lowkey warning, and I catch myself also yearning for those precious memories of quietude that she so intimately cherishes, despite never having visited myself.

Moments of stillness are the pulse of Lee’s work. In her piece, A Lady From Roatán Always Fixes Her Dinner Last, she paints a seemingly mundane tableau of a couple at a dining table. The man eats his meal while the

20 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

woman, cigarette in hand, chats with a smile.

A snapshot of everyday life—with the title hinting at a habit so instinctive that it’s often unrecognized, but she notices these profound interludes that define the human experience.

Raised in Chatham, Lee’s south-side roots date back to the 1960s when her grandparents moved to Chicago. Her paternal grandmother, a pianist, was originally from the South. In high school, under her grandma’s guidance, she learned how to play the piano, which inspired her to explore other creative realms, from the visual arts to fashion design.

Her maternal grandmother, a seamstress who migrated from Honduras, also encouraged her artistic hand. As a child, she repurposed scraps of her grandma’s sewing projects to fashion garments for her dolls; she’d later pursue a degree in costume design at the University of Illinois. “I never had to convince them, ‘Hey, can I do this?’” she recalls, referring to her family’s unwavering support of her art. “The time I spent around my grandparents really introduced me to the untraditional ways of work.”

Even in her earliest years, Lee was a fashion whisperer, naturally gravitating toward streetwear and sneaker culture. “I grew up

around my cousins, and they were heavily into sneakers, so I was like, ‘I gotta keep up because they are gonna clown me,’” Lee, an only child, says and laughs. At school, where uniforms were mandatory, Lee found an avenue for self-expression through footwear. Her first pair were the timeless Air Force 1s; little did she know that, years later, she’d be collaborating with Nike.

Lee’s larger-than-life canvases are drenched in color: lots of greens and blues, rich shades of brown, reds and oranges, and black. She draws inspiration from the abstract and cartoon-esque styles of artists like George Condo and Jean-Michel Basquiat. “You got to draw people like what they look like,” says Lee, referring to the conventional norms of visual art. “But I want to make the eyes here, and the nose over there, and the teeth jagged.”

For Lee, everything starts with a sketch: “I take the sketchbook to the party.” Whenever she’s drawing—which is almost always—or painting, she listens to classical music. “I like [Frédéric] Chopin,” she says, describing his compositions as “an emotional roller coaster” that grounds her through the creative process.

Each piece tells a different story, but three central characters reappear in her work and are

meant to represent everyone: the Gentleman, the Lady, and the Demon. The first two are an embodiment of all of us, while the demon is a personification of our shadow selves.

At the End of the Day It’s Dark illustrates a lone woman in an armchair, smoking a cigarette. She dons a trendy red ensemble, hinting at the aftermath of a lively night. But now, as the night settles, she finds herself alone.

Still, her smile and the vibrant colors evoke a moment of solitude that isn’t sad but rather peaceful. “I don’t have any expectations because I wouldn’t want anybody to put that on me,” she says. “My work might not be for everyone. I just want people to feel something.”

Among her favorite creations are her silk scarves and do-rags with her original patterns. The idea came after Lee needed something to tie her hair with. “I was just wearing it on my head, people are making shirts, tying it to bags, doing all types of things,” says Lee. “I was not expecting any of that, but it’s definitely my favorite because it’s the most versatile.”

Another standout moment is her capsule collection for Urban Outfitters. This collaboration unfolded serendipitously after a friend of a friend wore one of her scarves to a wedding, where a guest noticed it and loved it, leading to an invitation to design a genderless collection. “They gave me a lot of freedom, which is really nice because that’s not been the case for a lot of projects for big companies,” says Lee. “I’ve always had this vision that I wanted to work with my peers, and little by little over time, even if we move away, we still find our way back to each other, and it all started here, [in Chicago].”

When I ask Lee what was the toughest hurdle she’s overcome in the industry, she says it was the struggle to be taken seriously and feeling that the validity of her work hinged on a substantial social media following. But she quickly recognized that her art wasn’t about proving her worth to others but rather to herself.

“I grew up with my grandma, every day, playing piano, so I’m like, ‘You think you can break me down?’” she says. “No one’s harder than my grandma.” v

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DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 21

ARTS & CULTURE

“FAITH RINGGOLD: AMERICAN PEOPLE” R Through 2/25/24: Tue 10 AM-9 PM, Wed-Sun 10 AM-5 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago, visit.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/faith-ringgold-american-people, suggested admission $19 Chicago residents, $10 Chicago students, teachers, 65+, $22 non-Chicago residents, $14 non-Chicago students, teachers, 65+, free on Tuesdays for Illinois residents

VISUAL ARTS

Faith Ringgold’s America

The MCA’s survey of the artist’s work shows the country in a stark, yet hopeful, light.

By KERRY CARDOZA

The Wake and Resurrection of the Bicentennial Negro, Faith Ringgold SHELBY RAGSDALE © MCA CHICAGO.

F

aith Ringgold is one of the preeminent translators of American life. In the course of her six-decade career as an artist, educator, and activist, Ringgold has worked in painting, graphic design, soft sculpture, and quilting, among other mediums, penning children’s books and an autobiography. Throughout it all, she has remained an astute cultural observer, telling the true stories of American and art history through images and words—all of which are on view in “Faith Ringgold: American People” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

In her early oil paintings from the 1960s, Ringgold depicts Black and white people alike in grim, almost sinister poses. Most subjects are straight-faced and dead-eyed, with lines worrying their foreheads or under their eyes.

Her style, which she calls “super realism,” is flat, with simplified shapes and backgrounds.

The race relations of the day are shown in subtle but unflinching relief. In The In Crowd, from 1964, a group of besuited men are crowded into the vertical frame; one white man has a hand covering the mouth of a Black man below

22 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

him. The Civil Rights Triangle, from 1963, shows a line of Black men standing in a row, while a white man looms above them in the background.

Later that decade, Ringgold’s outlook grew more stark, as in her large-scale, Guernica-inspired 1967 painting Die, wherein a jumble of bloodied white and Black figures are shown in frightened disarray. One woman is seen hurrying her injured child off the canvas; two small children, one white and one Black, huddle together on the floor beneath the carnage, the only unbloodied subjects. While the period was certainly a violent one in American history—between martyred Black activists, subsequent uprisings, and the Vietnam War—Die feels even more poignant in our era of endless mass shootings.

Works from her “Black Light” and “American People” series have a similar unabashed realism. (Her “Black Light” paintings, inspired by the nascent Black Power movement, sought to depict Black people using black pigment instead of white, similar to the work of Kerry James Marshall.) In U.S. Postage Stamp Com-

memorating the Advent of Black Power, a grid of many-hued faces are seen on a light blue stamp. Running diagonally across the grid in black paint are the words “BLACK POWER.” Turned on their side and running vertically down the faces are the words “WHITE POWER;” in white paint, those words are much harder to discern, an insidious depiction of the ways white power and privilege maintain their grasp on society. Flag for the Moon: Die Nigger, from 1969, the year of the moon landing, is another graphic feat. A gray-toned American flag has the word “DIE” painted faintly among the stars, while the n-word, painted vertically, makes up the flag’s “stripes.” The painting preceded Gil Scott-Heron’s similarly themed song “Whitey on the Moon” by one year. Both works take the billions of dollars that the government spent on the Apollo program as a slap in the face to the millions of Americans living below the poverty line.

Ringgold’s reworking of the American flag extended into her activist work as well. In 1970, she was one of three people arrested for organizing the antiwar “People’s Flag Show,” in violation of a law prohibiting desecration of the flag. She was also active in the Ad Hoc Women Artists’ Committee (which protested museums for their failure to include Black and women artists in their exhibitions), Where We At (which fostered art in the Black community and in 1971 organized New York’s first-ever exhibition of all Black women artists), and Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation (which organized shows and protested art-world discrimination). She created posters and graphic work for the Black Panther Party and other political causes, such as the movement to free Angela Davis. Her work undoubtedly paved the way for the slightly better representation we see in museums today, as well as the current movement to decolonize art institutions.

“My goal as a young artist was to get past male chauvinist domination in the art world,” Ringgold said, in a 2012 PBS program. “That’s number one, because no matter whether I was with the African Americans or the white Americans, I was still a woman, and women are not supposed to make art. That kind of double struggle empowers me. It gives me a reason to move on and to tell that story.”

In the early 70s, Ringgold began to move away from the western art canon, taking inspiration from Tibetan and African traditions and experimenting with textiles. Her gorgeous thangka works feature acrylic painted directly on fabric, with colorful borders. In her “Slave

Rape” series, nude Black women are seen in vibrant nature scenes, seemingly on the run— one carries a hatchet. Their eyes and mouths are wide open, all the better to witness and to speak out, a pose that Ringgold would include in many of her figurative soft sculptures as well.

Working with fabric wasn’t just an aesthetic choice—it was also practical. Fabric works could be stored and shipped much easier (and cheaper) than stretched canvas.

Around this time, Ringgold also began collaborating with her mother, Willi Posey—a seamstress and fashion designer—on quilt pieces. Her detailed, large-scale “Tar Beach” series tells the story of a young girl living in Harlem who dreams about flying over her neighborhood at night; in 1991, it became a prized children’s book. These quilt pieces tended to have one large painting in the center, bordered by a written story and a colorful patterned edge.

Her brilliant “French Collection” series tells the story of a fictional Black American woman, Willa Marie, who travels to Paris in the 1920s in order to become an artist. Ringgold masterfully incorporates scenes from art history into the protagonist’s tale, taking artistic liberties with timing. In one scene, a group of Black women (including Rosa Parks and Sojourner Truth) are having a quilting bee in Arles; van Gogh hovers in the background. In another (unfortunately not on view at the MCA), Willa Marie acts as a model for Picasso, engaging in conversation with the African masks in his studio. Dancing at the Louvre shows the protagonist with a friend and her friend’s children dancing in front of the Mona Lisa, a scene of lively joy that contrasts sharply with the staid paintings on the gallery wall.

In much of Ringgold’s work, her characters act as a sort of stand-in for the artist herself.

In the Arles scene, Willa Marie tells the historical women gathered, “Art can never change anything the way you have. But it can make a picture so everyone can see and know our true history and culture, from the art.” In another scene from “French Collection,” Willa Marie speaks even more clearly about her, and perhaps Ringgold’s, artistic intentions: “Today I became a woman with ideas of my own. Ideas are my freedom. And freedom is why I became an artist. The important thing for the colored woman to remember is we must speak, or our ideas and ourselves will remain unheard and unknown.” v

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“UNIDENTIFIED AND FLYING” R Through 12/23: Fri 4-7 PM, Sat noon-6 PM, Roots & Culture, 1034 N. Milwaukee, rootsandculturecac.org/show/bun-stout-jessica-tucker

Jessica Tucker’s discoordinate, on view at Roots & Culture KEVIN MICHAEL BRIGGS

MULTIMEDIA

The hint of new beginnings

Artists Jessica Tucker and Bun Stout use tech and mythology to ask questions about identity.

By MICCO CAPORALE

“U

nidentified and Flying” invites viewers to deconstruct and refashion themselves as a declaration of personhood. Using 15 objects—animation loops, resin-cast shrouds, handmade mirrors, a digital collage, and a silicon garment—multimedia artists and recurring collaborators Jessica Tucker and Bun Stout overwhelm Roots & Culture with the fleshy pink hues of new beginnings. The title suggests something exuberantly alien, as if being unknown offers great heights to explore, but much of the work is tempered with reminders of isolation and restriction. They’re quiet reminders—nothing that screams, “Hey Icarus, you fly too close to the sun and your wings will melt!” But they’re there, making “Unidentified and Flying” nei-

ther celebratory nor instructive but richly, warmly honest.

Many of the cautionary elements come from Tucker, who is fascinated by questions around surveillance and digital embodiment.

She frequently uses her own body or likeness to illustrate how technology can recast understandings of the individual. The video installation attachment shows a close-up of the artist’s face breaking into multiple faces to fashion a skin on the silhouette of a person, while discoordinate uses four monitors connected by gauzy, intestine-like wiring to present the narrative possibilities for four such creatures. Each screen displays a figure made from hundreds of faces that moves in its own jilted, awkward way, as if for the first

ARTS & CULTURE time. Both works emphasize an assembly of self through the integration of multiple selves and the strangeness and discomfort of doing that within a digital panopticon.

In her shrouds—each one a numbered part of a series called something other than a shroud—Tucker uses digital collages printed on fabric and cast in resin to explore the revelation of a crowdsourced identity. The series’s title comes from a line in Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” that says, “In the fraying of identities and in the reflexive strategies for constructing them, the possibility opens up for weaving something other than a shroud for the day after the apocalypse that so prophetically ends salvation history.” Combining elements of her face with others using face-swapping apps, then applying distortions—little visual glitches—the shrouds exist like crumpled, oversized photos that show excitement as much as terror. They’re unsettling, but they also capture an emotional range of possibilities that are neither inherently good nor bad; they simply are—all suspended in epoxy, like fossils of this technological moment in a human-made amber.

Stout’s work is more romantic and optimistic. Their first piece encountered in the show is Tail for a Double Siren, a gaping mouth of red and white silicone, organza, and crinoline that cascades down the gallery wall like a portal eager to swallow visitors. It’s inspired by “Red Meat: Fragments of Stesichoros,” a poem in Anne Carson’s genre-defying novel in verse Autobiography of Red which borrows from Greek mythology to tell a queer coming-of-age story about romance and suffering where red is a metaphor for survival and self-creation.

Threaded through the book is a recurring image of a volcano, which many can and do fall into only to be transformed by the heat.

The red continues in three of Stout’s mirrors, which are something of figurative abstractions. At nearly seven feet tall, Diva I and II and The Boys amalgamate poses and iconography popular in drag and club land to create vividly rendered surfaces that read almost-but-not-quite like figures with larger-than-life qualities. They reflect the world back to itself through wiggling hints of stars, butterflies, flowers, and horns etched in fluid red lines. Stout’s other mirrors are small—less than two feet in height—and are rendered in blue: a ghostly little wanderer called Visitor and a bull-like head called Taurus that seems as much a reference to astrology as the magical cattle of Geryon, Autobiography of Red’s protagonist—though in the Greek myth, the

cows are red. Stout seems to play with Carson as source material as much as Carson plays with the story of Geryon, which is to say the references are loose and inexact. It’s a queering of stories and mediums.

This culminated beautifully in a selfdescribed “mixed reality” performance at the gallery on December 2. I arrived late because the blue line never runs as scheduled on weekends (fuck you, CTA), so I only caught the tail end of Tucker standing in a red suit guiding a packed audience through a series of openended questions about their relationships to the Internet and online networks. A backdrop of soft pinks and peaches hung from the ceiling, its outer edges knotted with tendrils of red fabric, and electronic musician Spacey Lacey filled the space with droning hums.

Stout’s Tail for a Double Siren was set up like an altar between two velvet chairs that looked like elegant pink clam shells, and when Tucker finished, Stout set up with another longtime collaborator, new media artist Ále Campos, who performs drag as Celeste.

In costumes of red and pink satin and silicone that made the artists look something like glamorous alien mermaids, Celeste tattooed Stout. During the process, Stout held a light and phone to their chest so audiences could see a projection on the backdrop of the daisy chain blossoming in ink on Stout’s skin.

Once completed, a program read the image, which triggered an animation that overlaid on the live feed of Stout’s chest. As Stout breathed, the circle looked like a window into their heart, their top scars like arrows directing the audience’s eyes to the poetry within them. A mix of text and images danced across the screen congratulating viewers on sharing this voyage of self-discovery and transformation with the artists. In the dim gallery light, I could see two people holding one another, crying.

Medical transition, which umbrellas surgery and hormone replacement therapy, is only one form of technological intervention in the pursuit of body freedom. Stout’s performance situates that in a longer history of fashion and tattooing to reveal the flexibility of gender and the body as a text to be edited and revised. In conversation with Tucker’s work, which raises more questions than it answers about the cybernetic self, visitors are presented with a spectrum of what it means to abandon certainty and exist freely, just soaring into the unknown. v

m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 23

THEATER The mainstage venue at American Blues Theater MICHAEL BROSILOW

STAGES OF SURVIVAL

Home at last

American Blues Theater’s roaming days are over.

By KERRY REID Stages of Survival is an occasional series focusing on Chicago theater companies, highlighting their histories and how they’re surviving—and even thriving—in a landscape that’s become decidedly more challenging since the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown.

A

merican Blues Theater was founded nearly 40 years ago by, as its website notes, “a director, playwright, actor, and designer.” That list demonstrates the commitment to ensemble values that the company has publicly embraced since its founding, along with its mission of “producing new and classic American stories that ask the question: ‘What does it mean to be an American?’”

Since coming together in 1985, the company transformed one existing rental space into a theater (in 1993, they took over a former warehouse at 1909 W. Byron); changed their name to American Theater Company in 1998; changed their name back to American Blues Theater in 2009, when most of the ensemble walked away from ATC in a dispute with then-artistic director PJ Paparelli (who died in a 2015 traffic accident in Scotland); and produced as an itinerant company for the past 14 years.

They’re not singing the blues now. ABT just

24 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

opened its brand-new venue at 5627 N. Lincoln—the first building they’ve ever owned in their history—with the seasonal favorite, It’s a Wonderful Life: Live in Chicago! (see review on page 26). And according to executive artistic director Gwendolyn Whiteside, the company plans to have the mortgage on its new home paid off within a couple of years.

Pretty impressive, considering that in 2009, the reconstituted American Blues Theater was, as Whiteside puts it, “penniless” after the split from American Theater Company. (ATC hung on after Paparelli’s death for a couple of years with Will Davis as artistic director; the board closed the company in 2018.)

Whiteside joined the ATC ensemble in 1998 (she notes her very first ensemble meeting was the one in which ABT changed its name to ATC) and took on her current position in 2010, after the split from ATC. She tells me the decision to own a building, rather than rent, came out of problems the company observed with the former ATC home and the aggravation of finding suitable rentals in Chicago. (Since the COVID-19 pandemic, several theaters that formerly offered rental possibilities, including Royal George, Stage 773, and Prop Thtr, have either ceased to exist entirely or are no longer functioning as rental venues.)

“During the ATC years, I remember being an ensemble member rep on the board,” says Whiteside. “And there would be a lot of concerns. The roof was leaking, and certain facilities and other things weren’t being taken care of by the landlord. So even when we were at ATC, we were looking into getting a building and doing capital campaigns and starting that whole process. So when we started this search, we were looking for either a long-term rental agreement, if we could find something that was a ten-year option or a 20-year option, or looking for actual ownership of a facility that we could maintain.”

Renting, as Whiteside points out, also limited ABT’s ability to stage all the work it wanted, particularly in the area of developing new plays. “It was really difficult to find space to do a workshop because we couldn’t afford the rent for a workshop. And now that we have our own space, instead of the money that would be going for rent, we can actually put that into artistic programming, the artist salaries [ABT operates on an Actors’ Equity contract], and making sure that there’s more opportunity.”

With two spaces in the new building—a 137seat proscenium mainstage and a flexible 40-to-50-seat black-box studio—there are more options for expanding the season and

tailoring work to whichever space will best serve the show’s needs.

Editha Rosario, ensemble member and covice president of the ABT board (as well as a public defender), tells me, “When I walked into that black-box space, I cried. Because as much as that [mainstage] theater is beautiful, that black box is where a lot of the work is going to be done.”

A couple of things dovetailed to make ABT’s move to the current location doable. The first was a $2.5 million endowment from the Davee Foundation. The company was one of five nonprofit theaters in the area to receive money from the foundation as it wound up operations in 2019—the others, notes Whiteside, were Goodman, Steppenwolf, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and Writers Theatre in Glencoe.

“That was a huge moment for us institutionally,” says Whitehead, who notes it gave the ABT board even more impetus to be thinking about a permanent home for the company and step on the gas with fundraising.

Lincoln Avenue between Western and Catalpa has long been more notable for a string of budget motels than for the arts. But 40th Ward alderperson Andre Vasquez had been searching for cultural organizations to help with revitalizing the neighborhood, where no professional theater company had ever put down roots. When ABT started looking at its current location (which, over the years, had been a Mobil gas station, a Walgreens, and most recently a Dollar General), they reached out to Vasquez to see whether he’d support the plan.

“He was like, ‘Are you punking me? Of course we want this; this would be amazing,’” says Whiteside. The new American Blues venue is directly across the street from the Chicago Public Library’s Budlong Woods branch.

Designed by longtime Chicago theater architect John Morris and built by Lo Destro Construction, the 17,965-square-foot building boasts a large and airy lobby and comfortable restrooms, as well as offices and spacious green rooms for the actors. There is also basement storage for scenery. Completed at a cost of around $7 million, the building also represents, according to Rosario, a chance to demonstrate ABT’s commitment to the surrounding community.

“We haven’t been a part of that particular

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THEATER

“EXTRAORDINARILY MOVING”

American Blues Theater’s new lobby bar MICHAEL BROSILOW

community, and so there’s still a lot to learn,” says Rosario. “I think just the fact that the stories that we tell or have been telling are about people from diverse backgrounds means it’s very exciting to me that the community is as diverse as it is. One of the cornerstones of the stories that we tell are that they’re about working-class people and what it means to have an identity within a diverse community.” Whiteside notes even before the building opened, they were offering “40 for 40”—special free tickets for 40th Ward residents to check out their shows in other venues.

For Rosario, the new space also represents a chance for more of the ensemble to come home to ABT. But she points out the pandemic shutdown, in some ways, made the company closer than they had been. In addition to frequent ensemble meetings over Zoom, ABT produced a robust lineup of online offerings, from concerts to readings, with some members who no longer live in Chicago able to participate. “I think that’s the bright side of Zoom,” says Rosario.”The members who have moved away that are still connected were able to be connected in a different way.” (ABT still offers online events through its @Home series.)

As the 2009 split demonstrated, maintaining strong ensemble ties and communication can be a challenge. Whiteside notes the season selection committee, which was disbanded before the 2009 split at ATC, has been back in full force at ABT for several years. “We haven’t limited the number of members who can serve on it. So if everyone in the ensemble wanted to be on the committee, they certainly could,” Whiteside says. Currently, the committee is “usually between six to eight people who are reading 50 plays and talking about them—why

this one, why now, and who in the ensemble would this serve, and who in the community would this serve? And then we rank them, read them, and then present our curated season to the remaining ensemble members to be voted on.”

ABT has always offered free theater education programming, and that will continue and expand in the new space, according to Whiteside. And given ABT’s adventures in renting, it hopes to make the spaces available to other companies at a good rate.

“Many times we would rent, and the venue would say, ‘Please make a donation to X theater because we subsidized the rent for American Blues Theater,’” says Whiteside.

“And I would say to the landlords, ‘But you’re not subsidizing, you’re actually charging us market value right now and not even nonprofit value. How are you getting grants for subsidizing when you’re not?’ We want to make sure that we are being transparent with our rental, and if we say we’re subsidizing, which we hope to do, that we’re only charging [the difference] between when we are dark and when we have staff on for your shows. And that, we hope, is gonna be a revolutionary way to do rent in nonprofit land.”

Meanwhile, ABT (whose operating budget this year is just about $1 million) is looking forward to producing the rest of its season in its new home. Next up in February: The Reclamation of Madison Hemings, a drama about the son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, by former Victory Gardens Theater playwrights ensemble member Charles Smith and directed by former longtime Goodman resident director Chuck Smith. v

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MANUAL CINEMA’S CHRISTMAS CAROL

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THEATER OPENING

R Five reasons to kill

a holiday offering with a blistering take on Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” as, of course, “Enter Santa.”)

If you’ve seen it before, you’ll appreciate the upgraded environment. If you’ve never gone, there’s no better time to check out a show that is, next to Goodman’s A Christmas Carol, probably the most reliable and longest-running local holiday theatrical treat. That both shows are about a man being shown his past life suggests that regret and the hope of rebirth are the twin engines for the season. —KERRY REID IT’S A WON-

Dial M for Murder is a stylish thriller.

Originally a 1952 teleplay, Frederick Knott’s thriller hit the West End before being turned into a 1954 film by Alfred Hitchcock. Dial M for Murder got another theatrical makeover from Jeffrey Hatcher in 2021. Though still set in the 50s, Hatcher’s version, now in a nifty local premiere at Northlight under Georgette Verdin’s direction, updates the story for our contemporary sensibilities.

Here, wealthy socialite Margot Wendice’s former lover is not another man, but Maxine Hadley, a writer on the verge of publishing a crime thriller with the piquant title Your Death Is Necessary. To add intrigue and professional jealousy to the mix, Maxine’s publicist is Margot’s husband, Tony, a failed writer (instead of a former tennis player, as in the original).

The story neatly illustrates what Maxine (Elizabeth Laidlaw) anatomizes early on as the five reasons for killing another person: money, fear, jealousy, revenge, and the desire to protect someone you love. Tony (Ryan Hallahan) wants Margot’s money and to avenge himself for the affair with Maxine that Margot doesn’t know he knows about—she thinks a stranger who found a love letter is blackmailing her. Tony sends a hired killer, Lesgate (Felipe Carrasco), to their sumptuous flat (lovely design by Mara Ishihara Zinky) to murder Margot. But when Lesgate bollixes up the assignment and Lucy Carapetyan’s Margot kills him in terror, Tony shifts gears. Will he outwit Maxine and Scotland Yard’s Inspector Hubbard (Nick Sandys, in fine buttoned-downbut-watchful mode) and get away with murder by proxy when Margot is sentenced to hang for Lesgate’s death?

It all ticks along like a stylish and well-oiled clock, with Hallahan’s villainous husband and Laidlaw’s protective Maxine both focused on Carapetyan’s frazzled and vulnerable Margot for completely different motives.

Earlier this fall, Verdin directed the thriller Night Watch at Raven, which also featured a slippery husband and a wife haunted by the past. In Dial M for Murder, she once

26 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

DERFUL LIFE: LIVE IN CHICAGO! Through 12/31: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 and 5 PM; 2 PM only Sun 12/31; American Blues Theater, 5627 N. Lincoln, 773-654-3103, americanbluestheater. com, $45-$75

One of Those Things (and R Just More) is a loving tribute

Gregory Stewart’s cabaret show celebrates Nat “King” Cole’s musical legacy.

Dial M for Murder at Northlight Theatre MICHAEL BROSILOW again shows her formidable skills at building narrative tension while subtly fleshing out the personal revelations and connections among the characters. —KERRY REID DIAL M FOR MURDER Through 1/7/2024: Wed 1

and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; open captions Fri 12/22, open captions with audio description and touch tour Sat 12/23 2:30 PM; Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, 847-673-6300, northlight.org, $49-$89 ($15 students)

place like home for the R No holidays

It’s a Wonderful Life: Live in Chicago! opens American Blues Theater’s new venue.

As small miracles go, American Blues Theater opening their lovely new two-theater venue on North Lincoln just in time for their annual presentation of It’s a Wonderful Life: Live in Chicago! is pretty impressive (supply chain issues and city permits being what they are, that is).

Though the 137-seat mainstage space may have that new-theater glow, warm nostalgia permeates this show, which has been a staple for American Blues for over 20 years (some of those years when the company was going

by American Theater Company).

Done as a live radio play version of Frank Capra’s beloved 1946 film, complete with onstage sound effects by foley artist J.G. Smith, this production (directed by ABT executive artistic director Gwendolyn Whiteside) feels like a homecoming in more ways than one. Brandon Dahlquist returns as beleaguered George Bailey, with ensemble members Audrey Billings as sweet but steelspined Mary and Joe Dempsey doing angel-devil duty as Clarence and Mr. Potter.

The broadcast features the usual aw-gee “audience grams” (love notes read on air by the cast) and jingles for local businesses, composed by music director Michael Mahler. (Mahler also serves as the onstage nearly-oneman band and warms up the crowd precurtain with Christmas songs—the day I attended, he accepted the audience challenge to perform a contemporary song as

Gregory Stewart’s tribute to Nat “King” Cole doesn’t break the predictable mold of biographical concerts/ plays, but in the cozy environment of the Venus Cabaret space at Mercury Theater Chicago, it’s a lovely night out nonetheless. Even if the book doesn’t delve deep into the controversies around Cole (his affairs, his early willingness to play for segregated audiences), it definitely makes the case for the needle Cole had to thread as a successful Black singer coming up through Jim Crow.

From being the first Black man to buy a home in LA’s upscale Hancock Park neighborhood to being the first Black entertainer to host his own television variety show (which at least initially aired without a sponsor—as Stewart’s Cole notes, “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark”), Cole was undeniably a trailblazer. That he battled as much as he did while maintaining a public persona that was upbeat, romantic, and warm comes through pretty clearly in Stewart’s beguiling performance, if not the narrative dialogue.

Backed by a stellar three-piece band (Will Oats on piano, William O. Whitehead III on drums, and Isaiah Horne on bass), Stewart nails the sweet baritone and liquid phrasing that worked magic on Cole’s audiences.

From “Sweet Lorraine” to “Mona Lisa” to the inevitable seasonal closer (“The Christmas Song”), Just One of Those Things (and More) works just fine as a love letter from a younger artist to a man who died too young but whose influence has never waned. —KERRY REID

JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS (AND MORE): THE NAT “KING” COLE STORY Through 1/7/2024: ThuSat 12/21-12/23 7 PM, Fri-Sat 1/5-1/6/2024, 7 PM, Sun 1/7/2024 2:30 PM; Mercury Theater Chicago Venus Cabaret, 3745 N. Southport, 773-360-7365, mercurytheaterchicago.com, $55-$65 v

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DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 27

R READER RECOMMENDED

FILM

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

NOW PLAYING

R American Fiction

In American Fiction, Jeffrey Wright plays Monk, a belligerent, beleaguered, and self-professed “raceblind” writer frustrated by the publishing industry’s obsession with race. To assuage his anger and release the stress from his tumultuous family, Monk pens My Pafology, a derisive and parodic takedown of white America’s obsession with Black misery. But his insincere attempt is read as very, very sincere, forcing Monk to pick between his convictions and his savings account.

For his feature film debut, writer-director Cord Jefferson adapts the novel Erasure by Percival Everett. This dark comedy feels novelistic in its approach; despite its shorter runtime, its bevy of side characters have their own arcs and psychological depths. And that is only the tip of the iceberg, as we’re restricted by Monk’s limited perspective. Though it’s publicized as a satire of the publishing world, American Fiction is mostly a character study of the reclusive and snobbish Monk. In one scene, someone states a writer has to understand their characters without judgment. Wright applies that same ethos to his performance; we simultaneously resent and root for Monk because we understand him. We cannot judge him with simple metrics because he is complicated, as are his wants and his world.

The oscillation between satire and dramatic fare leads to some whiplash, though the film’s comedic elements heighten Monk’s moral conundrum. While the actors move between modes with ease, the film’s music struggles to do the same. The blunt score melds well with comedic performances of white guilt, but the subtlety of actors like Wright and Sterling K. Brown suffer under its overbearing auditory weight.

Much like Monk, Jefferson makes some bold and daring moves as an artist. Unlike Monk, those moves pay off, creating a vivid dissection of American racial politics and a complex examination of art and compromise.

—MYLE YAN TAY R, 117 min. Wide release in theaters

R Blue Jean

In Blue Jean, Jean has a lot to be blue about.

She’s a lesbian who teaches P.E., and it’s 1988, the year Margaret Thatcher’s government passed Section 28, a set of vague laws designed to censor homosexuality from public life, like schools, that remained in effect until 2000. At night, Jean hangs with her partner Viv, a motorcycle-riding bull dyke with a spiked leather vest, and their coterie of tattooed, pierced, and underemployed friends who live out and proud lives. By day, Jean goes to great lengths to keep physical and emotional distance from her peers to avoid questions about her private life because she loves teaching, and she’s very good at it. The income also supplements the livelihoods of her friends who are out.

Jean is surrounded by reminders that society sees her existence as threatening to children. Every morning,

28 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

Poor Things ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA/SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

she jogs past a billboard with an image of scissors severing two overlapping venus symbols that says, “Are your children being taught traditional moral values? Cut the politics out of education.” When her sister drops by unannounced to ask Jean to babysit, she later reprimands Jean for “confusing” her five-year-old nephew because he encounters Viv, who’s introduced as Jean’s friend before immediately leaving. Against posters about the dangers of AIDS, coworkers comment on homosexuality and the vulnerability of young minds.

When a new girl arrives at school, Jean quickly realizes the student is gay and watches her get bullied for it. Jean worries about outing herself if she intervenes— then worries the student will out her for not intervening after she encounters the student at a gay bar. Over the course of the movie, we learn how deeply Jean has been scarred by living in multiple worlds, in none of which she can be her full self, and watch her piece together how she was a gay child who was failed by the same rhetoric failing her student. Blue Jean excels in the subtle details—from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival–style wardrobe of Jean’s friends to the moments when archival BBC radio clips and news footage about Section 28 are used to heighten the tension of passing exchanges.

It’s a powerful, cerulean-tinged debut from filmmaker Georgia Oakley with timely reminders about the toll of systemic bigotry—the same kind that can be seen today with gender panic. —MICCO CAPORALE 97 min. Gene

Siskel Film Center

R Eileen

In Eileen, desire is often smoldering, yet it seldom erupts. Instead, William Oldroyd’s film adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s debut novel thrives on this prolonged suspense. It festers until the simmering unease is intolerable. That is, really, until Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) finds her monotonous life propelled into sudden and unbridled intensity.

Eileen is crestfallen. She’s wound tight—bitter and suppressed. In many ways, she foils her own desires or dreams. When we first meet her, she’s masturbating while watching a couple have sex in a nearby car, only to snuff out her desire by shoving a handful of snow down her tights. Here, we understand there’s an insatiable yearning behind Eileen’s temperate composure. She is

teetering on the edge of self-restraint and the chaos of her unfulfilled longings.

Her father (Shea Whigham) is an ex-cop plagued by the death of his wife. Often, he’s not only menacing the neighborhood but also Eileen, relentlessly criticizing her ordinaryness. Eileen’s only reprieve is her clerical nineto-five job at the local juvenile penitentiary, where her curiosity about the interned boys is a blend of longing and sympathy, specifically toward Lee Polk (Sam Nivola), a young boy charged with patricide who never speaks.

Then, before Christmas, the prison hires a new psychologist, Rebecca (Anne Hathaway), a platinum-blonde Harvard grad who dropped like a bombshell into Eileen’s life. Rebecca is everything Eileen is not. She’s confident, charming, and severely out of place. Outside Eileen’s rose-colored glasses, it’s obvious Rebecca’s composure isn’t bulletproof. Her motivations and history are obscure, adding to her allure. She’s intoxicating—to Eileen most of all—and together, their disparate stories tangle and quickly unfurl in a truly shocking sequence.

One that’s best left unspoiled.

Eileen is triumphant, a rousing directorial success from Oldroyd. In this grainy period thriller, he captures the essence of the original novel (a timelessly challenging endeavor). But above all, Hathaway and McKenzie deliver dynamite performances that disturb, seduce, and shock the audience, tied together in a single assuming film. —MAXWELL RABB R, 97 min. Wide release in

theaters

R Poor Things

Poor Things is an assemblage—a Frankensteinian chronicle fabricated less by surgical precision but rather by a pure hunger for life. It’s a phantasmagoric epic, where its settings feel just as unreliable and intoxicating as its characters. In short, the world is imagined—first by Alasdair Gray in his novel of the same name and now by Yorgos Lanthimos—to entice the curious. Here, our terminally curious heroine is Bella Baxter (Emma Stone).

Bella lives with Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a respected yet experimental surgeon marked by facial scars. He revived Bella from the dead—using methods I’ll save for the movie to tell. Throughout the house, Godwin’s biological experiments include bewildering collages, such as a bulldog-bird crossbreed. They wander the halls, and among them, Bella waddles around speaking like a baby and compelled by a strange infantile interest in the world. To help watch Bella, Godwin enlists protege Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), who shortly after falls in love with Bella and asks her to marry him. She agrees, and “God” approves, but everything is upturned by the salacious lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo).

Bella’s internal curiosity rapidly evolves into a hedonistic impulse. For her, Max represents a reserved, trapped life, whereas Duncan offers the allure of vast travels. Most of all, he offers a much more exciting

sexual escapade. Like everything else, the sex—which Bella calls “furious jumping”—is hyperbolic, framed by a rampant impulse to experience everything. Duncan and Bella travel from London to Lisbon to Paris, where Bella’s whimsical demeanor first entices and then perplexes Duncan. Then, as Bella learns more about life and the world, her tremendous odyssey unfurls into prescient observations of love, suffering, and experience.

What makes Poor Things a titanic—and undoubtedly long-remembered—film is how Lanthimos balances playfulness with far more intricate themes. Stone’s performance, embodying the act of self-awareness, is no small feat, either. But above all, Poor Things urges us, if not compels us, to approach life with new vigor. —MAXWELL RABB R, 141 min. Wide release in theaters

R Wonka

In case you haven’t noticed, Willy Wonka is weird. He’s a weirdo. He doesn’t fit in, and he doesn’t want to fit in. Have you ever seen him without that stupid hat on? That’s weird. Paul King’s portrait of the chocolatier as a young man, Wonka, leans hard into this vision of the iconic Roald Dahl character, played here by Timothée Chalamet as a manically quirky (and quirkily manic) outsider. With all the odds stacked against the film—namely, a trailer so cloying and dense with puns it’s spawned at least two memes that will have a minimum of six month’s more mileage in my group chats—it somehow ends up being . . . really cute!

King’s experience as writer and director of Paddington and Paddington 2 shines through in the pop-up book production design and whimsical, wordplay-heavy sense of humor, albeit this time it seems targeted toward a younger audience than those films. Yes, Hugh Grant is a computer-generated Oompa Loompa, and yes, Chalamet belts out original musical numbers in a voice so autotuned and nasally he sounds somewhat like the lead singer of They Might Be Giants. The unqualified sincerity of all these big swings is infectious enough to look past Chalamet’s actual performance, in which he seems to perpetually be on the verge of popping a blood vessel trying to be twee. The man doesn’t have a wacky bone in his body, but that doesn’t stop him from committing hard to a breathlessly high-energy register for the full two hours, usually to irritating effect.

It hardly matters, though, when he’s surrounded by so many clever visual gags and wonderful character actors in supporting roles, chief among them Academy Award–winner Olivia Colman as a cartoonishly villainous sweatshop owner named Mrs. Scrubbit and Matt Lucas as the funniest of three business owners comprising the chocolate mafia in London, where Willy is trying to make a name for himself. I can’t be upset at a movie with this much warmth and craft across the board, one that believes so earnestly in the power of following your teeth and rotting your dreams. Wait . . . scratch that, reverse it. —JOEY SHAPIRO PG, 116 min. Wide release

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www.hardstoprecords.com DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 29

MUSIC YEAR IN REVIEW

The best overlooked

May this list of deserving obscurities encourage you to explore the uncountable local releases that aren’t covered here—or anywhere else.

By LEOR GALIL

CHICAGO RECORDS OF 2023 I

n October, WGN ran a story on its website about Illinois’s top “hidden gem” for fall foliage, and I still don’t know why. News organizations are supposed to inform us about our communities by giving us fresh information or building on what we already know— ideally using well-reported details we can’t search out ourselves. But this story used the results of a survey by Mixbook, a California photo-book company, to share something that almost nobody needs to be told. That number one hidden gem? Starved Rock State Park.

I’ve lived in Chicago for 14 years, and I have yet to visit Starved Rock. This isn’t because I don’t want to go—my friends are always posting Instagram pics of the park’s serene waterfalls, and I’m totally sold. I’ve deliberately decided not to go, because Starved Rock is so popular. I don’t want to experience nature as part of a throng, so I seek out parks with less foot traffic. In 2018, Starved Rock and nearby Matthiessen State Park collectively drew more than three million visitors.

Why did a Chicago news outlet bow to the dubious authority of a west-coast business that conducts surveys to promote itself? Who could that story possibly have served? It certainly doesn’t do WGN any favors to abuse the trust of its audience by pretending that one of the most popular natural destinations in

30 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

Illinois is actually a little-known secret.

Every year I write about my favorite overlooked Chicago albums, and as I’ve worked on my 2023 roundup, I’ve thought a lot about the phrase “hidden gem.” I take this project seriously, and I want it to showcase local releases that haven’t gotten their proper due.

My work covering Chicago music gives me a better sense for what’s been overlooked, but I still wouldn’t call a record a “hidden gem.” For one thing, I can never confidently say who it’s hidden from.

For another, the phrase “hidden gem” has been tainted by its association with a genre of professional-grade TikTok videos. Most clips I’ve seen tagged with #hiddengem are about chic boutiques, high-end speakeasies, or tourist attractions. You might’ve heard about an infamous example that gushed over a sinceshuttered Walgreens in a historic Wicker Park bank building—though I’m not 100 percent sure it wasn’t a parody. These recommendations tend to feel obvious or ordinary to me.

I appreciate the desire to share information—I mean, it’s my job—and I appreciate the best TikTokers’ ability to make their viewers feel like they’re being confided in. But I’m constantly disappointed by what’s presented to me as a “hidden gem.” That’s mostly just marketing gibberish for the incurious.

My knowledge of the city is necessarily incomplete, so I always try to learn more about subcultures and communities, no matter how tiny or hyperlocal. I don’t want to passively absorb fake revelations—I want a window into this world that encourages and sustains my own search.

I also want to engage my readers, of course.

And by that I don’t just mean I hope you follow my writing and care about the subjects of my stories. I’d like you to feel invested in the larger creative worlds from which those subjects come, so you’re motivated to make your own musical discoveries outside these pages. My annual roundup of overlooked local releases couldn’t be a more obvious nudge for you to listen more widely.

I usually use this space to revisit the ongoing decline of the infrastructure for music journalism. As more outlets close, shed staffers, or shrink freelance budgets, the wider public has fewer opportunities to be surprised or enlightened by coverage that could’ve been. This fall, Epic Games sold music retailer Bandcamp to a B2B music-licensing company called Songtradr, and Songtradr promptly laid off half Bandcamp’s staff, including the union’s entire bargaining team and several employees of the editorial operation Bandcamp Daily.

In recent years, Bandcamp Daily has had

few peers on the international stage when it comes to documenting lesser-known independent musicians (though the Daily is limited to material available through Bandcamp).

Bandcamp Daily still exists, but the remaining employees have a hard road ahead of them.

And given that Songtradr sees Bandcamp’s employees as expendable, what must it think of the musicians whose work built Bandcamp’s thriving marketplace?

I use Bandcamp as a music-discovery tool more than any other platform, so these changes have filled me with dread as a listener and critic. Bandcamp’s tagging and navigation system makes it easy for me to find all sorts of local albums, and I hate to think of what I’d miss without it. Everything on my 2023 list of overlooked Chicago releases is available on Bandcamp, whether or not I originally found it there. It’s so rich as a resource that I’ve started to wonder if I should dig around more on other platforms—maybe they’d turn out to be treasure troves too, with a little extra effort.

This list is informed by my blind spots as much as it is by my tastes and biases. After all, if I’ve written about an album or EP already, I can’t very well claim it’s overlooked. I’m not just hunting for music other journalists have ignored—I’m pushing myself to look where I haven’t looked before. I hope you do the same.

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MUSIC

The top five In alphabetical order

a cue from Melvin Knight and have fun with it. The slippery, kaleidoscopic R&B instrumentals on his Booty Goblin EP hiccup with samples—particularly “I Got No Hoes,” whose halting rhythms sometimes sound like a skipping record. No matter how busy his tracks get, though, Knight delivers his buttery vocals with an unruffled cool, making himself the center of gravity around which every other element revolves.

Honorable mentions Balkanist Discourse, Last Dance Gerfety, Into the Bark (First 4 Songs) Erik Kramer, Where the Fish Are As Fine as the Color of Colors

they navigate each left turn on Ordinary Monsters so casually, never telegraphing it before it arrives, every one can hit us with a jolt of surprise.

Rigid, 00LMK23 Sweat FM, For Whom the Bell Also Tolls v

m lgalil@chicagoreader.com

Kalyn Harewood Blooming Blooming is Kalyn Harewood’s debut release, but she embellishes its ornate chamber pop with the graceful touch of a seasoned veteran.

Harewood’s music sounds like the work of someone who’s studied the craft at an august institution for years and years, and in fact she recently earned a master’s in music composition from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Blooming often feels almost regal, with its lush soulfulness and emotionally charged restraint, but Harewood’s powerful singing is always down-to-earth. It pulls me in every time.

MB03 Jackie World 3 Eight years ago, Chicago footwork producer Miles “MB03” Brooks released Jackie World through Czech label Genot Centre, and it’s become a cult hit—its tracks combine sugary, dizzying collages of samples with sensitive reflections on loss. In October, Brooks selfreleased Jackie World 3, the final volume in the series, where he manages the same sort of balancing act: its irresistible, lightheaded instrumentals twinkle with optimism and glow with wistful atmospheres.

Toosh Ordinary Monsters

Melvin Knight Booty Goblin If you’re gonna be raunchy on record, take

Toosh make off-kilter indie rock, bumping their songs in unexpected directions with herky-jerky performances and playfully elastic tempos. On “Sewing Machine,” the band’s tight, springy interplay carries the song through several different modes in less than 30 seconds—Toosh know just when to let go of the reins, and they careen from exuberant to brooding to enraged in an acrobatic and bewildering display. I especially like how nonchalantly they do it, as though they’re already thinking three steps ahead. Because

Henry True Only the Wicked Henry True (son of former Reader editor in chief Alison True) is a known quantity in Chicago music, but this EP hasn’t found the audience it should. True previously played in a teen rock band called the Blisters, whose drummer, Spencer Tweedy, has written at length in his newsletter about his creative relationship with True. The finely detailed, easygoing indie rock on Only the Wicked has charmed me so thoroughly that I feel like True ought to be headlining the Riviera tomorrow. On “Something Made Me Think of You Today,” his mellow voice skips along over a tight, bouncy bass groove and a loose tumble of twinkling keys and guitars. He creates a sublimely chill vibe, then gives it a little extra bustle toward the end of the song by dropping in a funky, swinging electronic drum loop.

DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 31

MUSIC CITY OF WIN

Rell Cash cultivates cannabis and community The Chicago rapper fights the inequities created by criminalization and perpetuated in the legal marketplace.

By ALEJANDRO HERNANDEZ

Rell Cash is working to launch a vertically integrated cannabis company called Garden of GIN. THOUGHTPOET FOR CHICAGO READER

City of Win is a series curated by Isiah “ThoughtPoet” Veney and written by Alejandro Hernandez that uses prose and photography to create portraits of Chicago musicians and cultural innovators working to create positive change in their communities.

R

ell Cash has lived a lot of lives, and he could’ve ended up on several different paths. Growing up, the Milwaukee-born Chicago rapper and entrepreneur showed exceptional skill at basketball—he played on scholarship at several colleges, and he became a top ten nationwide scorer in his division.

He even played overseas in Germany, but he stepped away from the game he loved because he didn’t see a way to earn enough money to support his son.

Rell has been making music for a decade, but around two years ago he started treating it as a potential career path rather than merely a hobby. He’d just spent months in jail for possession of cannabis and paraphernalia after an arrest in Alabama—as he tells it, he’d bonded out but was declared a fugitive for missing a court date he never heard about. Though the charges were eventually dismissed, he was keenly aware that his life could’ve taken another drastic turn if fate had played its cards differently.

“My biggest legal situation was when I was

32 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

surrounded by cannabis charges and extradited to the state of Alabama,” he says. “I was locked up there for six months, got out, and spent another six months fighting the case.”

Rell’s experience nearly losing his freedom didn’t just push him to get serious about music—it also put a motor in his back to start a new chapter as a cannabis cultivator. His Chicago-based company, Garden of GIN (which stands for “Get It Now”), is on a mission to hire Black and Brown community members from top to bottom in a vertically integrated cannabis business. It will handle every step of the process in-house, from breeding seed to packaging for distribution.

So far Garden of GIN has two employees, both Black, and though it’s still operating in a legal gray area, Rell says he’s working toward the proper licenses. “I don’t even want to sugarcoat it—this is kinda like my lick back,” he says. “It’s about a lot of lives that have been played with over [cannabis prohibition].”

According to recent report by MJBizDaily, 24 percent of executives at U.S. cannabis cultivation businesses are people of color, and nonwhite ownership of such companies declined from 20.7 percent to 15.4 percent between 2021 and 2022. It’s rebounded this year, but only to 18.7 percent. Those numbers look especially bad when you consider the hugely disproportionate impact that the criminalization of can-

nabis has had on people of color. Rell wants to push back against inequity in the Illinois market and help make it easier for aspiring Black and Brown cultivators to join the industry.

“We got our own cannabis garden, our own strain—right now the bridge is growing,” he explains. “The direction in which we moving, we making the necessary connections to where it makes [legal] sense. Because you have to know what you’re doing before jumping into a social-equity situation. We want to make sure that we display vertical integration, because I understand that in certain markets, that’s damn near required for you to even obtain a certain license. And we want to make sure we highlight kicking the government in the ass for fucking with the real.”

As an artist and as a cultivator, Rell wants to touch as many lives as possible for the better.

He calls himself “your trapper’s favorite trapper,” and his music plays like a motivational soundtrack. “My ambition is just to share my story and talk about it,” he says. His bars detail his trials and triumphs, like he’s making gospel songs for street hustlers, but no matter what your background, they’ll resonate with you if you’ve ever had to work hard to achieve your goals.

The video for Rell’s 2022 song “Chemist,” from the album Million Dollar N--ga in the Trenches, shows him walking through his

cannabis garden as he raps about his extradition to Alabama and other obstacles he’s had to overcome. On his most recent single, last month’s “CVSH,” he spits viciously over a soulful piano loop that echoes the sounds of eastcoast rappers Conway the Machine and Roc Marciano. “Just some n--gas that came from nothing,” he raps on the hook. “Last name Cash ’cause I got my name from hustlin’.”

Rell also plans on someday opening a store for his streetwear brand, Rell CVSH Worldwide, that could double as a community space to host events and provide a safe space to young people. “I done lived out multiple lives already. Coming from the environments that our people come, it shapes us as human beings,” he says.

“Spaces serve the community as well, and I want to be able to have a space that’s available for members of the creative community all across the city,” Rell explains. “Everything we produce for the community is geared towards positive energy.”

m letters@chicagoreader.com Photos by ThoughtPoet of Unsocial Aesthetics (UAES), a digital creative studio and resource collective designed to elevate communitydriven storytelling and social activism in Chicago and beyond.

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DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 33

MUSIC THE SECRET HISTORY OF CHICAGO MUSIC

The late great Joe Cassidy links music scenes across the Atlantic A Metro memorial show in my old friend’s honor funded an award for emerging artists in Northern Ireland. I was flown to Belfast and helped pick the winner.

By STEVE KRAKOW

Joe Cassidy’s sister, Frances Macklin, poses with a wall display at the Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast, which presents the Northern Ireland Music Prize. The portrait of Cassidy is by Paul Elledge. COURTESY FRANCES MACKLIN

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.

L

ast month I traveled to Belfast to attend the Northern Ireland Music Prize ceremony, because this year it included the debut of the Joe Cassidy Chrysalis Award—named for the late Belfast-born artist who’d become one of Chicago’s most important and beloved musical transplants. Cassidy, who led the group Butterfly Child, was an old friend of mine as well as a globe-trotting songwriter, performer, and producer. I’d been invited to join the board of judges.

On my trip I saw some of the famous faerie trees of Ireland, which are believed to act as doorways between the realm of the fae folk and our world. Farmers plow around these trees and protect their trunks with rocks, and lore abounds of motorway construction being delayed because a faerie tree was in the way— in one case by ten years. Cutting down a faerie tree is supposed to bring a lifetime of bad luck, and even after one falls on its own, mere mortals risk the consequences of its intense

34 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

enchantment if they clear it away. Cassidy clearly also has this sort of residual magic: even though he’s left the physical sphere, he continues to have an artistic life that brings people together.

I wrote a long and passionate eulogy for Joe Cassidy after he died at age 51 on July 15, 2021. Front and center in that tribute was the humbling amount of energy he’d put into uplifting other people—including me. In the early 2000s, I fell into Joe’s orbit of pals and collaborators, and I was privileged to call him my friend for 20 years. Cassidy produced several albums for my old bands, including Plastic Crimewave Sound, and other people in his orbit often contributed to the sessions.

Cassidy was only a few years my senior, but by the time he arrived in Chicago in 1997, Butterfly Child had released music through several high-profile UK labels—so I was keenly aware of his epic songwriting skills and postshoegaze indie-pop symphonies. After his band Assassins started playing live in early 2002, I was fortunate to open shows and do artwork for them. They might’ve been Cassidy’s breakout project, if they hadn’t suffered from the sort of major-label woes that have killed so many great groups.

It’s given me some solace to be drawn deep-

er into Cassidy’s world since his passing, and it meant so much to me to be involved with an award given in his honor.

The Joe Cassidy Chrysalis Award arose in part from a memorial tribute to Cassidy called Hear in Heaven, held on August 28, 2022, at Metro—coincidentally where I’d met Cassidy at a Primal Scream show in 2000. Many of Cassidy’s friends, bandmates, and accomplices performed his songs or their own (my band

kicked out a Plastic Crimewave Sound tune that Cassidy had produced in 2003).

Metro proprietor Joe Shanahan had come up with the idea for the tribute, and Cassidy’s dear friend and former roommate Sarah Marmor actualized and produced it. She met Cassidy in 2004 and hosted his 40th and 50th birthday parties; he lived in her house from 2018 till 2021. She’s not a fellow musician, though—if you’ve heard of her, it’s probably

Artwork by the author for Joe Cassidy’s band Assassins STEVE KRAKOW

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MUSIC because she’s a partner in the largest certified women-owned law firm in Chicago, Scharf Banks Marmor. Hear in Heaven was hosted

by Joe Lindsay, a Cassidy cohort from Belfast, and by local DJ, writer, musician, and Metro staffer Jill Hopkins.

At the same time, Cassidy’s sister, Frances Macklin (a force of nature like her brother), was incubating a tribute of her own in Northern Ireland. “I’d been working on a legacy project to honor Joe’s memory, music, and friends since Joe died,” she says. “In June 2022, my brother Michael and I met with Charlotte Dryden at the Oh Yeah center in Belfast.

Amongst other ideas, we wanted to present an award to support local musicians in Joe’s name at the Northern Island Music Prize in 2023.”

That’s where Cassidy’s Chicago connections enter the picture. “When I told Joe Shanahan and Sarah Marmor about our planned award, they offered the proceeds of the Hear in Heaven event to fund it,” Macklin continues.

“Since then, the ongoing incredible support and involvement of Shanahan, Marmor, and Lindsay has been hugely important in giving the Joe Cassidy Chrysalis Award its ‘wings.’

This award has become the most meaningful coming together of all Joe’s family and friends, and I am so thankful to everyone involved.”

Many of the performers from Hear in Heaven joined the panel of judges for the Chrysalis Award, including Justin Webb of the Webb Brothers, Greg Corner of Kill Hannah, former members of Butterfly Child and Assassins, and of course me. The award proposed to give 3,000 pounds (about 3,800 dollars) to an emerging artist making original music in Northern Ireland.

The award ceremony was held on November 15, 2023, as part of the Northern Ireland Music Prize event at Ulster Hall (where several folks told me a little band called Led Zeppelin had premiered “Stairway to Heaven”). I’d been invited to come to Belfast for the occasion by the Oh Yeah Music Centre, which produces the NI Music Prize every year (and runs an amazing venue and museum). Tourism Northern Ireland pitched in to cover flights and accommodations, making it a proposal I couldn’t turn down—especially since everyone gave me the freedom to write only what I wanted to write.

The chance to judge and report on the award was more than just a gig. To me the prize came to symbolize a new beginning born of Cassidy’s physical demise. To experience this alongside his peers, family, and old cohorts was a precious gift.

Joe Cassidy as Butterfly Child STEVE DOUBLE

Cassidy would’ve loved the bands that applied for the Chrysalis Award. They played gothy new wave, psychedelia, stripped-down singer-songwriter fare, and shoegaze, so it was no easy task picking a winner. The honor went to young three-piece Chalk, whose intense, subversive sound combines all the aforementioned genres—they even remind me a touch of Assassins.

Chalk also nabbed the NI Music Prize trophy for best live band. Before the announcement, they played a couple songs that demonstrated why: front man Ross Cullen rode the band’s build-and-release dynamics with nuanced ferocity, and drummer Luke Niblock played regimented postpunk beats with a skill and vehemence I rarely witness. Think of a postgrunge Bauhaus, perhaps, or “Berghain-rock blended with techno-punk,” as Cullen described Chalk’s music in a February interview.

It’ll be interesting to watch Chalk evolve as they use the prize money to further their musical journey—I’ve heard from Macklin that they’ll be using it to support an upcoming run of U.S. dates.

BBC Radio Ulster broadcast the awards live.

This year’s Legend Award went to elder statesman singer-songwriter and ace guitar player Paul Brady, and all the younger artists who took the stage gave me insight into the current Belfast scene. I enjoyed Problem Patterns’ giddy, Kathleen Hanna–approved riot-grrrl punk as much as I dug Conor Mallon’s fusion of traditional uilleann pipe music and prog rock. Mallon was also up for the Northern Ireland Music Prize’s flagship album award, and I’d been asked just before my trip to join the judge’s panel for that honor too. I didn’t feel qualified (especially seeing the list of BBC broadcasters, TV personalities, promoters, journalists, and others who were already on the panel), but I relented and agreed when the organizers told me their goal was an outsider’s perspective.

The dozen judges for the album prize ended up sharing a private room at Belfast club the Limelight, where the organizers delivered pizza and let us hash it out. They were kind enough to indulge me with a heretical vegan pizza, and they brought another judge a keto-friendly salad. I’d been anxious, but the judging turned out to be a lot of fun.

Ultimately we agreed that Arborist’s An Endless Sequence of Dead Zeros had the ambition, breakout potential, and nuanced songwriting to win. Its Americana-influenced sound had me imagining Lambchop’s quirky, rustic music produced with the icy spaciousness of a Talk Talk record. The album was recorded at Spacebomb Studio in Richmond, Virginia, where my partner Sara Gossett lived for a decade before moving to Chicago—and she turns out to know the owners of the studio.

Throughout my visit, I kept seeing connections between Chicago and Belfast. Joe Cassidy connected Chicago and Belfast, after all, and the NI Music Prize screened a video montage of Cassidy’s musical life that had been meticulously assembled by Cassidy’s brother, Michael. Not much video exists from Cassidy’s early days, but the older clips had been lovingly restored, linking Joe the shaggy Belfast boy to Joe the confident Chicago electro-pop wizard.

The night before the awards, I was standing outside a meet and greet for Cassidy’s family and friends at the American Bar, near the docks in the Sailortown area of Belfast. Gary Green, who’s married to Cassidy’s cousin Kate Holohan, came over to share stories. “I used to ditch school to see young Joe play around the corner at places like the Rotterdam,” he said, pointing down the block. “This whole area was a dangerous mess then, but we didn’t care— we were kids and there for the music.”

Today that neighborhood is touristy looking and barely populated, so it was hard to imagine what Green described. But whether he meant to or not, he’d summed up something important about Cassidy’s musical magnetism and the history of his hometown.

Nearly everyone I encountered in Belfast talked of the Troubles, a conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s till the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. To oversimplify, the conflict pitted loyalists, unionists, and Protestants on one side against nationalists, republicans, and Catholics on the other.

The complex ethnic and sectarian dimensions of the Troubles are difficult for an outsider to fully grasp.

I had the good fortune on this trip to conduct an interview with original Thin Lizzy guitarist Eric Bell (it’ll run in Ugly Things magazine). He told me about returning to a formerly peaceful Belfast after the Troubles began and encountering a grim scene of tanks, machine guns, and explosions. The mournful eloquence of his description really stuck with me.

DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 35

MUSIC continued from p. 35

Our city likewise has a worldwide reputation as dangerous—no matter where you go, when you mention Chicago, someone will mention Al Capone. Chicago’s modern-day violence makes it a right-wing punching bag, even though in 2022 its rate of gun homicide was lower than in Saint Louis, Birmingham, New Orleans, Baltimore, and dozens of other cities. In Belfast, house-by-house divisions between loyalists and republicans could make it dangerous to walk down the wrong block—the same sort of warning many Chicagoans have received (especially from suburbanites or people who don’t live here).

Chicago and Belfast also share a bit of a “second city” complex. I started the Secret History of Chicago Music in part to push back against pop-cultural bias toward artists from New York or Los Angeles. I felt a similar underdog passion in Belfast, which often gets short shrift next to Dublin. Once Cassidy got to Chicago, I think, he discovered a scene that resonated with the dark-horse history and philosophy of his hometown, and he found his working-class people yet again. Of course, it helped that he was a friendly, charismatic, talented, and down-to-earth guy.

I got extra perspective on Cassidy and his

life by meeting his mother, a kind soul and busy community organizer, who showed me his childhood home and primary school. Both are located in a neighborhood in the shadow of Cavehill—a low mountain whose impressive cliff faces include a feature called “Napoleon’s Nose” (look it up) and whose pastoral slopes are home to the current Belfast Castle, where Cassidy used to hang out. The Cavehill area was also where Cassidy shot his first music videos, according to his mother. His grave is next to his father’s in Carnmoney Cemetery, northeast of the mountain. Going there was an experience I need to keep for myself.

Cassidy’s childhood friend Tony McKeown, an early bandmate in Butterfly Child, showed me spots where he and Cassidy used to get into trouble as teenagers. They’d hop the fence into the Belfast Botanic Gardens, and because the fence would be coated with a nondrying paint as a deterrent, they’d wear easily cleaned PVC goth pants. In the alley behind a bar called Lavery’s, they’d sneak drinks when they were still underage.

McKeown also showed me some of the extant venues where they’d played as Butterfly Child, including the flourishing but grimy Limelight and the majestic Queen’s University (where the band gigged in the student union).

We visited the Crown Bar, a beautiful but crowded establishment beloved by Cassidy and seemingly everyone else. When we finally got a booth, McKeown realized that it was his old pal’s former favorite spot.

Mutual friends spotted a very out-of-season butterfly inside Belfast Castle, another magical coincidence seemingly summoned by the memory of a man who’d named his band Butterfly Child. I started to see Cassidy as epitomizing the best aspects of Ireland: he seemed connected to the phantasmagoric world of the faerie folk (to me Joe always resembled an elf or sprite), and he was a big-city survivor who could make great art no matter how rough the conditions.

When my old band Plastic Crimewave Sound made our second excessive double concept album, No Wonderland, in the winter of 2005 and ’06, we tracked it with Cassidy in an unheated warehouse off Lake Street in February. Thankfully we relocated to his much more comfortable abode near Augusta and Ashland to add overdubs and mix, but as we were leaving after a session, Cassidy noticed that a stray bullet had gone through his front door and embedded itself in the stairs. We all looked at one another, agreed that we were glad to have been elsewhere at the fateful in-

Sarah Marmor and Aaron Miller of Assassins join presenters Gemma Bradley and David O’Reilly onstage at the Northern Ireland Music Prize for the presentation of the Joe Cassidy Chrysalis Award. STEVE KRAKOW

stant, and then finished our days. We all go on with our lives and try to make our cities a little better along the way.

Cassidy got by for years with music as his sole source of income, and in the early aughts he directly inspired me to hustle and go freelance. That choice has let me live and breathe my passions 100 percent. It’s been difficult, but it’s also infinitely rewarding—if I hadn’t taken that path in my “career,” I never would’ve found my way to this trip.

It’s not yet a given that the Joe Cassidy Chrysalis Award will continue, but I hope it can keep on supporting and encouraging musicians the same way Joe encouraged me, so that they can commit to the same path I did.

Joe Cassidy would love to know that he’s having this continuing influence, and throughout my adventure in Belfast, I couldn’t help but feel his impish presence grinning down at me from above. v

Above: Carnmoney Cemetery in Belfast, where Joe Cassidy and his father are buried side by side STEVE KRAKOW Left : A wall of childhood photos at Joe Cassidy’s mother’s home STEVE KRAKOW

36 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

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.

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EARLY WARNINGS

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FEBRUARY

WED 1/3/2024 Sawamura No Hitter, Boy Clothes, Constant Headache, Carson D. Bell & the End Times, D’Funk & the Grease Monkeys 8 PM, Burlington

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FRI 1/5/2024 Spun Out, Caroline Campbell, Bajomar (DJ set) 10 PM, Empty Bottle SAT 1/6/2024 Bowie Ball featuring DJ Heaven Malone, mistress of ceremonies Lucy Stoole, and more 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Erabella, Luca, Bind the Sacrifice, End Path, Rose of Demise 6 PM, Cobra Lounge b SUN 1/7/2024 Max Bessesen, Ethan Philion, and Devin Drobka; Russ Johnson, Mark Feldman, Tim Daisy, and Ethan Philion 9 PM, Hungry Brain Wayne Baker Brooks 7 PM, City Winery b FRI 1/12/2024 Buddy Guy, Bobby Rush, Matt Hendricks 5:30 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Rebirth Brass Band 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b SAT 1/13/2024 Buddy Guy, Toronzo Cannon, Tracye Eileen 5:30 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Sébastien Léger 9 PM, Chop Shop Rebirth Brass Band 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ SUN 1/14/2024 Buddy Guy, Carlos Johnson, Ivy Ford 5:30 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends SAT 1/27/2024 Sleeping Village Sixth Year Celebration featuring Rezn, Lockstep, Emily Beisel 9 PM, Sleeping Village

FRI 2/2/2024 Peezy 8 PM, Avondale Music Hall b SAT 2/3/2024 Bonnie Koloc and her band with Rose Snyder, Steve Eisen, Andy May, and Al Ehrich; Ed Holstein 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b THU 2/8/2024 SaxKixAve (Alfred Banks, Albert Allenback) 9:30 PM, Hideout TUE 2/13/2024 Vickeblanka 7 PM, Park West b

FRI 2/16/2024 Paige Alice Naylor, Olivia Block, Lula Asplund 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+

WED 4/3/2024 Kiltro, Nina de Freitas 8:30 PM, Sleeping Village THU 4/4/2024 One Hallelujah featuring Tasha Cobbs Leonard, Jonathan McReynolds, Erica Campbell, Israel Houghton, Jekalyn Carr 6:30 PM, Auditorium Theatre b SAT 4/6/2024 Austin Millz 10 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Scary Pockets 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ FRI 4/12/2024 Hippie Sabotage 9 PM, the Vic, 18+ WED 4/24/2024 Nicki Minaj 8 PM, United Center b SAT 5/4/2024 Sweet Pill, Equipment, Taking Meds 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ THU 5/9/2024 Evangelia 8:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ FRI 5/17/2024 Architects, Of Mice & Men, While She Sleeps 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+

THU 2/22/2024 Mehro 7 PM, Subterranean b

SUN 5/26/2024 Echo & the Bunnymen 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+

BEYOND

TUE 6/11/2024 Sarah McLachlan, Feist 7:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion b

SAT 3/9/2024 Otoboke Beaver, Drinking Boys and Girls Choir 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ SUN 3/10/2024 Otoboke Beaver, Drinking Boys and Girls Choir 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+

SAT 6/15/2024 Dada 8 PM, Park West, 18+ SAT 6/29/2024 Caifanes, Café Tacvba 8 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion b

TUE 3/12/2024 Destin Conrad, Amaria 6:30 PM, House of Blues b

SAT 7/20/2024 Loserville featuring Limp Bizkit, Bones, N8noface, Corey Feldman, Riff Raff 6:30 PM, Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre, Tinley Park b

FRI 3/15/2024 Hulder, Devil Master, Worm, Necrofier 7:30 PM, Reggies Rock Club, 17+

SAT 8/24/2024 P!nk, Sheryl Crow, the Script, Kidcutup 6:30 PM, Soldier Field b

WED 3/27/2024 Alexa Valentino, Rob Eberle 7:30 PM, the Promontory b

WED 9/18/2024 Idles 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ v

ON SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16, Constellation hosts a Gaza benefit concert by Chicago Maqam, a five-piece that melds traditional Arabic music and contemporary improvisation. The group came together in response to the earthquake that devastated Syria and Turkey earlier this year, and they booked a February 19 gig at Constellation just days after solidifying a lineup: Karim Nagi on percussion, Ronnie Malley on oud, Naeif Rafeh on nay, Issam Rafea on oud, and Wanees Zarour on buzuq and other instruments. “It was a very unique chemistry that night, because we didn’t really rehearse for the gig—there wasn’t any time,” Malley says. “We really just wanted to respond quickly and see what kind of funds we could generate.” All proceeds benefited D.C.-based nonprofit Syriana.

“We really appreciated working together,” Malley says. “We said, ‘We need to do this again.’ This was such a wonderful experience. We were all really moved by the music we created and the improvisation that we created together.” In early September, the group scheduled a Constellation show for December 16. The following day, Morocco was hit by an earthquake, and Chicago Maqam turned their second gig into another fundraiser— though the beneficiary changed after Israel’s military began bombarding Gaza in response to Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

“Several of us in the group were personally affected, with friends and colleagues in Gaza, in Israel, and in the West Bank,” Malley says.

“My family is from the West Bank—from Jerusalem and Ramallah. Colleagues and people I work with on a professional level in the field of music and film production were unreachable.

Some lost their entire families.”

Malley is a first-generation Palestinian American, born and raised in Chicago. He’s been immersed in music all his life, partly because his percussionist father owned a restaurant and nightclub. At age 12, Malley began playing guitar and keys in his family’s band. By his late teens he was familiar with Middle Eastern music and yearned to play it on a traditional instrument. He began to learn the oud (a short hop from guitar), and after finding a tape by Palestinian American Simon Shaheen in Tower Records, he got serious about it. “It was a really eye-opening experience for me,” Malley says. “I never thought that I would find classical Arab music in such a prominent and well-known establishment.”

Malley has a long history with the other

members of Chicago Maqam—two decades long in some cases. He met Naeif Rafeh and Wanees Zarour in the early 2000s through the University of Chicago’s Middle East Music Ensemble. He crossed paths with Issam Rafea when Rafea toured through Chicago more than ten years ago. (Rafea is cousins with Naeif Rafeh and moved here in 2013.) And when Nagi arrived in Chicago from Boston in the late 2010s, Malley was one of the first musicians he contacted.

The past two months have been draining for Malley and his Palestinian and Arab communities. “I haven’t had any desire to play any music anywhere if it didn’t have some component of bringing people together to help us decompress and shed anger,” he says. “I don’t just mean Arabs or Palestinians—my Jewish friends as well. I want to create spaces where people can congregate, decompress, formulate their thoughts, and kind of check their anger at the door.”

Saturday’s Constellation performance benefits Doctors Without Borders and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. “I want to raise awareness about what’s happening overseas,” Malley says. “If you feel helpless and there’s nothing that you can do, the very least you can do is at least help an organization that is trying to help people.”

SAXOPHONIST ISAIAH COLLIER is one of Chicago’s most celebrated jazz musicians, and you don’t have to take Gossip Wolf’s word for it—the Guardian has described him as “a shamanic saxophone prodigy” whose “admiration for the spiritual jazz of Coltrane, Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders is about inspiration rather than imitation.” Last month, Collier released a new LP, Parallel Universe, that taps into a staggering variety of jazz stylings—“Eggun,” “The Lean,” and “Open the Door” variously recall 1940s big-band music, 1950s R&B, and 1970s fusion, sometimes in the same song. Collier’s band for the session draws on top-shelf local talent, including trumpeter Corey Wilkes, guitarist Michael Damani, kalimba player Radius, singer Jimetta Rose, and three of his longtime compatriots: bassist Micah Collier, drummer James Russell Sims, and keyboardist Julien Reid. On Saturday, December 16, Collier will celebrate the album with two back-to-back shows at Dorian’s. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or email gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 37

Recommended and notable shows with critics’ insights for the week of December 14

MUSIC

b ALL AGES F

PICK OF THE WEEK

THURSDAY14

Blind Equation fly cybergrind’s freak flag on the new Death Awaits

Bloodyminded Nika, Palais Intrige, Lula Asplund, and Mortido open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12. 21+

ANGEL GASM

BLIND EQUATION, CHOKE CHAIN, THOTCRIME, BEJALVIN, DAWN DIVISION Sat 12/16, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $15, $12 in advance. 17+

ON A MONDAY in June, the downstairs venue at Subterranean hosted a concert nicknamed “Cybergrind Prom.” It marked the end of a tour that glitchy Urbana-based metalcore four-piece Thotcrime had taken with local underground pop miscreant CocoJoey; joining the lineup for the occasion were noisy Minneapolis hip-hop duo Bejalvin and Chicago eight-bit grind trio Blind Equation. It felt like a watershed moment for the tiny but burgeoning cybergrind movement, even to some of the bands. “I was like, ‘Holy shit! This is sold out?? We’ve never sold out Sub-T Downstairs before.’ It was sold out on a Monday,” Blind Equation founder and bandleader James McHenry told PunkNews. “People had traveled from Michigan, Tennessee, and Iowa to be there. It ended up being one of the most surreal shows I’ve ever played or been a part of.”

As Blind Equation began promoting their second album, September’s Death Awaits (Prosthetic), Brooklyn Vegan asked McHenry to explain cybergrind. “Right now, I view cybergrind as more of an ethos than a genre with certain boxes to check to fit the sound,” he said. Blind

38 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

Equation retool the hyperactive brutality of grindcore for sequencers and synthesizers, which can execute high-speed details more cleanly than the occasional guitar in their songs—they often sound like 1980s arcade cabinets going feral in the back of a dimly lit pizzeria. Though I appreciate McHenry’s vision of an anything-goes cybergrind utopia—an absence of orthodoxy will enrich the music everyone makes—I consider Blind Equation’s sound the template for the genre. When I first listened to Death Awaits, the electronic tantrums and jackhammering drum spasms couldn’t have spelled out more clearly the two halves of cybergrind’s portmanteau. That’s not to say Blind Equation adhere to a strict formula, of course. “You Betrayed the Ones You Loved” opens with an eerie synth melody played at a brisk walking pace, which feels like a snail’s crawl compared to the eight-bit freak-outs elsewhere on Death Awaits. When McHenry dials backs his scarred screeches to sing cleanly, it’s as though he’s thrown off a scratchy winter coat to reveal an interjection of summery pop punk—and his sugary singing is cybergrind too. —LEOR GALIL

Have you seen that clip of Trent Reznor from Lowlands in 2013 where he hypes up the festival crowd by saying, “How are you doing tonight? Having a good time? Ready to party? Have fun? Well, that was the last guys. Wrong fucking band. We’re here to have a bad time.” But “bad” is relative, of course.

If the danceable melancholy of Nine Inch Nails is punishing, then the mechanical chaos of Bloodyminded is downright gory.

Bloodyminded are often called “industrial.” That label is not unfair. Formed in New York in 1995 from the remains of power-electronics outfit Intrinsic Action, the Chicago-based group use synthesizers and distortion to explore themes of power and control. But I think “noise” is a more revealing term, because their songs crush listeners with grindcorelevel efficiency while aggressively eschewing traditional song structures.

There are a lot of dogshit noise projects, but Bloodyminded aren’t one. In fact, they’ve built a template their peers would be wise to borrow: a reliably sparse but visceral aesthetic and fantastically energetic live shows that leave listeners fractured by sound. “In the Mood,” the first track of their 1996 debut, Trophy, has become such a set staple that Bloodyminded have included live versions on multiple subsequent records. Against the droning buzz of something that sounds like a washing machine on meth, vocalist Mark Solotroff screams, “Can’t you see I’m in the mood / But what about you / I hope you’re not / It’s better that way / And rougher / On you. . . . And now comes the time for you to take it / Like a man / ’Cause I’m in the mood.”

Clocking in at a brief but blistering 77 seconds, the song evokes what’s at the root of rape—control through sexual violence—and dramatizes it with appropriate ugliness. Taken on another level, it frankly states what to expect at a Bloodyminded show. They’re in the mood to pierce their audience with sound, like a ritual bloodletting—provided people consent by showing up. Are you in the mood for that too? —MICCO CAPORALE

Freeway Special guests include Panamera P, IAMGAWD, Vic Spencer, and others TBD. Frankie Robinson hosts. 9 PM, the Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park West, $40. 21+ Philadelphia rap legend Leslie Edward Pridgen, better known as Freeway, is held in high regard among the genre’s elite. He can rack up numbers with the broader listening public too: his 2003 solo debut, Philadelphia Freeway, peaked at number five on the Billboard 200 upon its release.

Handpicked by Roc-a-Fella execs Jay-Z and Dame Dash during the label’s tastemaking heyday, Freeway is one of Philly’s absolute GOATs. His call of “Early!” (which he still shouts out at random at shows) is one of street rap’s classic ad libs, and he’s got lots of other trademarks—including his menacing growl, his adventurous time signatures, his extreme lyrical grit, and his work ethic. That’s all made him an in-demand collaborator. Among the

MUSIC ly found the inner strength to overcome his personal struggles, and he channels that energy into his music. He’s not slowing down any time soon—and that’s a good thing for rap.

This show at Promontory is part of Freeway’s 20th-anniversary celebration of Philadelphia Freeway. Special local guests include Streetz 95 radio host Frankie Robinson, modern trap-music dealer Panamera P (who dropped the great new album La Familia in November), esteemed MC IAMGAWD, and sedulous bar agent Vic Spencer. Any lover of classic and innovative street rap should make this event a priority. —CRISTALLE BOWEN

FRIDAY15 Hollyy Jacob on the Moon and Wyatt Waddell open. 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $22, $18 in advance. 18+ The “retro” music trends that emerged in the late 90s and early 00s have been around long enough that you could argue they’ve become retro themselves. Case in point: You might expect Chicago seven-piece Hollyy, whose music is steeped in classic R&B, rock, and soul, to count 60s and 70s icons among their top influences. But on their latest Bandcamp track release, “By My Side,” they namecheck soul-revival acts such as St. Paul & the Broken Bones and Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. Cynics might view that as a sign that the music is being diluted by a telephone game of imitation, but more charitably, it’s evidence that the sort of grooves and hooks that have captivated music fans for generations remain alive and relevant—regardless of what’s on the charts.

If you’re a fan of Rod Stewart, Yola, or the dreamy rock and soul associated with Muscle Shoals, you’ll certainly find a lot to like in Hollyy’s midtempo grooves and heartfelt horns (the latter courtesy of Blasé Cermak on trumpet and Nathan France on sax). And while I doubt front man Tanner Bednar would claim to compete with the likes of Sam Cooke or Otis Redding, his warm voice shows he’s well schooled in his soul forebears’ techniques. On the April Bandcamp release “After Every Storm,” he mutters, swoops, and soars up to a falsetto, using phrasing that recalls Al Green—and as he attempts to slide out from under his own emotions, tasty guitar licks from Brandon Couture chase him down.

This isn’t challenging stuff, and it isn’t meant to be; Hollyy are ultimately a band of highly skilled music fans with polished chops who invite us to celebrate these well-loved, time-honored styles alongside them. —NOAH BERLATSKY

Hollyy DASHAUN KNIGHT

The Armed AARON JONES

rap gods he’s worked with are the aforementioned execs, Ye, Snoop, the late Nate Dogg, Just Blaze, Nelly, and Rick Ross.

Two decades into his solo career, Freeway is as frenetic and prodigious as ever. This year alone he’s released a flurry of singles, and last month he announced 365, a collaborative rock and hip-hop record with Dash and the Black Guns that’s set for release in early 2024. About ten hours before I filed this piece, he announced another project—a yetto-be-named joint album with slick Houston rapper

Sauce Walka.

Though Freeway is an established big dog, he still sounds like a guy with hunger pains and a lot on his mind. That may be because he’s survived traumas that could stop other artists in their tracks.

Early in his career he was arrested and briefly incarcerated for drug-related charges; he was diagnosed with kidney failure, which necessitated a life-saving transplant in 2019; and in 2020 and 2021, he suffered the loss of two of his children. But Freeway, a devout Muslim and health advocate, has consistent-

SATURDAY16 The Armed Model/Actriz and Kipp Stone open. 7 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $30, $25 in advance. b Since 2009, experimental Detroit hardcore act the Armed have attracted a lot of online hype with a mythos they’ve built up around themselves.

They act more like a collective than a band, with a revolving-door cast of interesting musicians, and

for years they operated largely anonymously. People only learned a few names, including that of their producer, Kurt Ballou, and a small handful of contributors, namely techy hardcore drum wizards such as Nick Yacyshyn (Sumac, Baptists), Chris Pennie (Dillinger Escape Plan), and Ben Koller (who plays with Ballou in Converge). The Armed’s early releases sounded like an amalgamation of all their guest drummers’ bands—the group played shreddy, proggy hardcore with unexpected melodic flourishes and unhinged intensity. As more and more records rolled out, so did theories about who was masterminding the project. Was it Tony Hawk? Maybe fellow Michigander Andrew W.K.?

During the lead-up to their fifth studio album, August’s Perfect Saviors (Sargent House), the Armed dropped the anonymity schtick, though the reveal was arguably less intriguing than fans might have hoped. The core members are seemingly normal-ass Detroit dudes, including singer Tony Wolski, an advertising creative who’s worked on campaigns for the likes of Jeep, Chevy, and McDonald’s—and whose expertise in his field might explain how the Armed generated a rabid fan base despite operating without a face. Perfect Saviors features the band’s most impressive roster of guest players yet, including Matt Sweeney, Chris Slorach of Metz, Troy Van Leeuwen of Queens of the Stone Age, Josh Klinghoffer of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins of Jane’s Addiction, and Jacob Bannon of—naturally—Converge.

On the Armed’s 2021 LP, Ultrapop, they augmented their hardcore sound with layers of electronics and passages of intense harsh noise, but on Perfect Saviors they lean into their poppier side, trading brutal screams for hooky, earnest choruses and earwormy alt-rock instrumentation. It’s yet another unexpected turn from a band who’ve made it their number one priority to keep listeners on their toes.

—LUCA CIMARUSTI

Blind Equation See Pick of the Week on facing page. Choke Chain, Thotcrime, Bejalvin, and Dawn Division open. 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $15, $12 in advance. 17+ La Rosa Noir The Renters, Future Nobodies, and Machin open. 9 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, $18, $15 in advance. 21+ On their Instagram page, La Rosa Noir say they play postpunk and dark surf, but that’s just a starting point for describing the Chicago band’s eclectic sound. They’ve built some buzz since forming a few years ago, and in September they landed a coveted slot at the Taste of Chicago. They spent two years in the studio making their debut album, Arellano (released in October by My Grito Industries), and they seem less concerned with fitting into a niche than with following their interests and instincts.

Singer-guitarist Yeshi Regalado named the record after her grandmother (her maiden name was Arellano), who inspired her passion for music.

It opens with a touching voicemail set to a simple backdrop of synth chords, which speaks of love and care over coffee and doughnuts. That sets the tone for the album, which stays rooted in warmth and connection even when it’s also bleak or forlorn.

When Regalado was 21, she lost her mother to can-

DECEMBER 14, 2023 - CHICAGO READER 39

MUSIC continued from p. 39

cer, and she says many of her lyrics respond to that grief—and to what she calls a “broken” relationship with her father.

The track “Silk + Blade” explores the bittersweet pride and strength you can find in the face of loss when you know your loved one’s spirit lives on in you. “I’ll Take You” leads you on a dynamic journey with its boy-girl vocals, Spanish-style acoustic guitar, triumphant trumpets, and a proggy alt-rock finale that evokes the fusion of swaggering brass and west-coast surf in Dick Dale’s version of “Misirlou.”

The 60s vibes carry on through other tracks as well, including “Chicano Stomp,” an upbeat banger that’s become one of the band’s signature numbers, pairing sing-along gang vocals with a groove that recalls the theme from The Munsters. But while La Rosa Noir celebrate retro influences (“Darling” recalls the Beatles’ “Oh! Darling” and classic doo-wop a la the Drifters), the most interesting moments on Arellano are the tracks that feel rooted in contemporary indie rock, including the simmering “Red Motorcycle” and the gothy “Pax,” where Relagado’s vocals tangle with postpunk atmospheres and Jannese Espino’s fiery guitar leads. La Rosa Noir are still relatively new, but the thoughtful experimentation they’ve brought to Arellano has me expecting more good things from them. —JAMIE LUDWIG

MONDAY18 Boybrain Something Is Waiting and the Baby Magic open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western. 21+ F Chicago singer-guitarist Patti Gran is probably best known from beloved early-00s punk and power-pop band the Dials, though you might also have heard her in the New Black or Ratattack. Unfortunately, the Dials are probably best known for a tragedy: in 2005, drummer Doug Meis, the Returnables’ John Glick (husband to the Dials’ Rebecca Crawford), and Silkworm’s Michael Dahlquist all died in a car crash.

More recently, Gran has returned with a new punk outfit, Boybrain, who’ve been steadily hitting the boards the past couple years. On last February’s all-killer, no-filler six-song EP, In the Company of Worms, lead guitarist Inga Olson (also of Wanton Looks) reinforces Gran’s fierce mountain-lion shrieks with her slinky and soulful lines. That dynamic persists whether they’re playing lean power pop, such as “Blood Wolf Moon,” or something spookier and more sinister, such as “Owl,” a remarkable track with a fearful vibe evocative of trauma. “Scabs” has a rough, streetwise swagger right out of the gate, then startles with the clean, eerie harmonies of a chanted chorus: “She said tomorrow, it’s witching hour.” Likewise, the roaring title track gets up in your face with slasher-flick imagery: “It’s such a fucked-up world / I’ll be your final girl.”

On Boybrain’s new single, “Cayo Hueso,” they slow down and branch out. It’s metallic, heavy, trippy, and witchy, and builds to an entrancing climax powered by the forceful rhythm section of drummer Colin Tahi (Propane! Propane!) and new bassist Jonny Acosta (former Lost Sounds). I’m already looking forward to more explorations from these seasoned veterans. They share the bill at this free show with catchy, hook-driven punk-pop duo the

40 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/musicreviews.

Baby Magic (who put out their first new album since 2014, Rough Dance, this summer) and fuzzy, greasy metal outfit Something Is Waiting (who recently released their long-awaited second full-length, Absolutely). In the best possible way, it’s like a tapas spread of Chicago’s noisy underground rock.

—MONICA KENDRICK

TUESDAY19 Ira Glass; Sunshy; Truth or Consequences, New Mexico 8 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, $10, $5 in advance. 21+ I’m surprised it took till 2023 for me to encounter a local band called Ira Glass, though I suppose it’d be easy to miss one online. If you’ve got the chutzpah to borrow your unknown posthardcore group’s name from one of public radio’s most famous personalities, you’d better be prepared to get buried in search results. Fortunately, Ira Glass the band released a forthright and moody demo in July that cut through the Internet noise and got my attention.

The lo-fi recordings lend depth to the distorted guitars and give the songs a fuzzy sort of fullness, and Ira Glass’s tight, intense playing retains its magnetic pull even when the drums sound a little too muffled or the quieter passage get lost in the haze. Also on the bill for this show are Chicago alt-country crew Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, who have a similar Google problem—though while researching the band, I learned that the actual town of Truth or Consequences named itself after an NBC game show in 1950. On their self-released January EP, TCNM, Truth or Consequences, New Mexico crisscross twangy, laddering guitar lines over giddyap rhythms; even their up-tempo numbers feel more laid-back than Ira Glass, but when TCNM build from hushed tension to the slashing, rollicking outro of “I Remember Everything,” I can picture them playing a crowded punk basement. Playing between these two acts are local dream-pop duo Sunshy, whose eruptions of densely fuzzy guitars sound big enough to blot out the sun. On the few songs that Wes Park and Haoshu Deng have released in the band’s brief career, half-whispered vocal harmonies give their colossal riffs a gossamer mystique.

—LEOR GALIL

La Rosa Noir FRANCISCO GARCIA

THURSDAY21 Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang Winter Solstice Sunrise Concerts See also Fri 12/22 and Sat 12/23. Drake and Zerang improvise as a duo. 6 AM, Links Hall, 3111 N. Western, $37. b Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang Winter Solstice evening Concerts See also Fri 12/22. Drake and Zerang perform in a trio with Nicole Mitchell. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $25. 18+ Whether you scan the headlines, read your private messages, or watch concert calendars, there’s no escaping news of loss—even something as mundane

Ira Glass COURTESY THE ARTIST

UPCOMING CONCERTS AT

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

drumbeat knocking around.

Every track on The Window possesses the tremendous dynamic tension that comes from holding back till you explode in a rush of relief. On “Making Noise for the Ones You Love,” drummer Marcus Nuccio provides a static beat over which the guitars can wrestle. The effect sounds like a wind tunnel, with Steiner’s voice comfortably situated inside the noise, and when the beat switches up, her melodies follow suit as she slowly reckons with the loss of a loved one. Elsewhere, “It’s Alive!” chugs along before effervescing in a cathartic outro, where guitars fill up the space with hissing riffs. Even when Ratboys opt for long-form repetition, they construct sturdy frameworks that invite the listener to dance inside; on “No Way” guitars lope around to create a sense of confident self-talk, while the plinking pianos on “Empty” telegraph pure celebration.

—JOSHUA MINSOO KIM

SATURDAY23 Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang COURTESY THE ARTISTS as a gig cancellation might be due to the untimely passing of an artist you’d assumed you’d have a chance to see again. This makes the things that do persist more precious.

Every year since 1990, percussion masters Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang have convened before dawn on the winter solstice (and, most years, on some adjacent mornings) to play a concert that welcomes the sun, with its promise of a new year and longer days ahead. With the exception of 2020— when the duo streamed their performance from an apartment overlooking Lake Michigan—the formal setting has always been the same. The two musicians walk into Links Hall, which is lit only by candles, and make a selection from an array of percussion instruments arranged in the center of the room. From that point, each performance takes its own path to the moment when sunlight shines through the windows and signals the end of the concert.

Summoning their shared knowledge of ceremonial and celebratory musical traditions from around the world, Zerang and Drake roam from instrument to instrument, shifting among styles, savoring atmospheres, and locking into shared grooves. On evenings that fall between the first and last dawn performances, Zerang and Drake often present additional concerts that revive old connections or present new projects. On Thursday evening they’ll play with flutist and vocalist Nicole Mitchell, an old friend and former Chicagoan. And on Friday, they’ll convene the multidisciplinary collective Moment to Moment, which for the occasion also includes fabric artist and vocalist Zahra Glenda Baker; guimbri player Joshua Abrams; painter, fabric artist, and harmonium player Lisa Alvarado; and guest multiinstrumentalist Isaiah Collier. Moment to Moment originally formed to participate in the research that Ananda Marin, a professor of social research methodology at UCLA, was doing into the influence of

relationships and improvisation upon learning. But the group, whose performances include real-time creation of visual as well as musical art, has taken on a life of its own. —BILL MEYER

FRIDAY22 Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang Winter Solstice Sunrise Concerts See Thu 12/21. Drake and Zerang improvise as a duo.

6 AM, Links Hall, 3111 N. Western, $37. b Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang Winter Solstice evening Concerts See Thu 12/21. Drake and Zerang perform as part of the collective Moment to Moment, where they’re joined by Joshua Abrams, Lisa Alvarado, Zahra Glenda Baker, and Isaiah Collier. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $25. 18+ Ratboys Disq opens. 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $22. 17+ Chicago four-piece Ratboys have delivered unassailable indie rock for more than a decade, and on their fifth LP, August’s The Window (Topshelf), every little thing goes right. The songwriting is tighter than ever, front woman Julia Steiner sings more effusively, and the production by Chris Walla (Death Cab for Cutie) transforms every song into a miraculous feat of down-home power pop. On the title track, synth pads arrive like mist at daybreak as guitar melodies evolve into plaintive strums. Soon, shakers conjure up a contemplative atmosphere as Steiner paints a picture of her grandfather locking eyes with her grandmother, singing with love that softly bubbles up until it overflows in the form of a

Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang Winter Solstice Sunrise Concerts Thu 12/21. Drake and Zerang improvise as a duo.

6 AM, Links Hall, 3111 N. Western, $37. b Sincere Engineer The Brokedowns and Canadian Rifle open. 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $25, $20 in advance. 18+ Local singer-songwriter Deanna Belos specializes in the kind of roughed-up, showing-its-scars pop punk that germinated all over Chicagoland during the Fireside Bowl’s late-90s salad days.

Belos began making music as Sincere Engineer in the mid-2010s, and in her lyrics and performances she’s finessed a balancing act between vulnerability and vindictiveness—the first feels painfully earnest, while the second is so over-the-top it’s clearly at least half a joke. Belos’s throaty howl and impatient guitar riffs go down easily, though, thanks to the soulfulness her grainy voice lends to the gristly songs. She usually plays with a full band these days, and their arrangements accommodate and even exploit the contradictions in her style.

On September’s Cheap Grills (Hopeless), Sincere Engineer adorn their music’s ragged edges with filigree that exposes Belos’s beating heart to even the meekest listener. The dewy keyboard notes that interrupt the gnashing rhythms on “Fireplace” bring a glimmer of sensitivity to a song that foregrounds a cartoonishly intense loathing. (Its opening lines? “I hate your guts / Wouldn’t even help if you were stuck in some guy’s basement / And he was gettin’ ready to chop you up.”) Those keys, along with the tune’s sun-dappled bass solo, suggest the hurt and grief that Belos has chosen to leave unsaid. It helps that her delivery never goes 100 percent nasty—she emphasizes the humor by punching out her syllables like she’s lifting weights while she sings. This lets the negativity of “Fireplace” come across as what it really is: an expression of life-affirming triumph over shitty circumstances. All over Cheap Grills, when Belos reflects on her terrible times, she does so with the relief of having gotten through them in her own way. —LEOR GALIL v

NEW SHOWS ANNOUNCED • ON SALE NOW! 2/17 Parker Millsap 3/1 William Fitzsimmons 3/3 Lúnasa w/ Daoirí Farrell 3/10 Rickie Lee Jones 3/25 El Perro del Mar w/ Vera Sola 3/27 Altan 4/11 Birdtalker 5/1 Isaac et Nora SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17 4:30PM

The Nut Tapper In Maurer Hall FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22 7PM SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23 2PM, 5PM, 8PM

Mariachi Herencia de México: A Mariachi Christmas In Maurer Hall SUNDAY, JANUARY 14 7PM

Corey Harris & Cedric Watson In Szold Hall SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3 8PM

Bonnie Koloc In Maurer Hall SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 4 7PM

Alash In Szold Hall THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8 8PM

Reverie Road In Szold Hall SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10 8PM

Sam Bush In Maurer Hall

WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY NEW SEASON!

JAN 10 Silvia Manrique with Marcel Bonfim JAN 17 Chicago International Salsa Congress JAN 24 Guillermo Paolisso’s Guitar Odyssey JAN 31 Julián Pujols Quall FEB 7 Lunar New Year Celebration feat: Tzu-Tsen Wu & friends FEB 14 Valentine's Day Celebration w/Peter Jericho & MGeni Black History Month Celebration FEB 21 Beppe Gambetta FEB 28 Nani FEB 6 Cecilia Zabala Tribute to Violeta Parra MAR 13 Sara Curruchich MAR 20 Ballaké Sissoko & Derek Gripper MAR 27 Altan FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS IN LINCOLN SQUARE! $10 SUGGESTED DONATION

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JOBS Financial Quantitative Analyst Electronic Knowledge Interchange Company. Chicago, IL. Responsibilities: Determine technical efficiency of existing financial models, products, and analytics. Research opportunities for integration with sophisticated and advanced statistical, quantitative, or econometric software applications.

Report solutions to IT management. Design and rearchitect technology application environment and systems used for daily production of financial metrices and reports.

Remote work allowed 100% of the time. Must have a Master’s degree in Finance, Financial Engineering or related field.

Must have one (1) year of experience as a Financial Analyst. Must have one (1) year of experience in cleaning and manipulating raw data using statistical software and ETL (extract, transform, and load) of unstructured data. Must have Power BI Data Analyst Associate certification. Qualified candidates should send their resume to lgriffin@ eki-digital.com and reference FQA1402 code.

Stantec Consulting Services, Inc seeks Project Engineers for Chicago, IL to dev advanced electrical systems & perform power systems studies in healthcare, high-rise commercial, & residential building projects. Bachelor’s in Electrical Eng/related field of study+3yrs exp req’d. Req’d skills: Performing lighting calculations, performing power studies, translating power studies into reports, power systems analysis tools, interpreting technical documents & specifications, & Project Management SW. 40% telecommuting permitted. Occasional (10%) domestic travel to job sites req’d. Interested applicants should email their CV to HRApply@ stantec.com & specify “Project Engineers” in subject line. REQ ID: 23004C6 Trade Consultant Trade Consultant - Chicago, IL: Research & consult on product imports from China, incl procedures, tariffs & taxes, & product research; conduct due diligence on potential trading partners in China; review & negotiate terms for trade contracts w/ companies in China; assess legal & fin’l risks pertaining to trade deals & advise regarding alternative solutions; & liaise w/ outside counsel in both the U.S. & China for contract prep’n & closing, import/export compliance, & registering int’l trademarks. Candidates must have a Bach deg in

42 CHICAGO READER - DECEMBER 14, 2023

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Y D N I W ITY C ES M I T

VOL 39, NO. 1 DEC. 14, 2023

Award-winning actress

Angelica Ross

on politics, Hollywood, Buddhism and more

Speaking

HER MIND

BY ANDREW DAVIS

A

ngelica Ross had already made her imprint on society in various ways.

She is the founder of TransTech Social Enterprises, which helps transgender and gender-nonconforming people become part of the tech industry; an activist who hosted the 2020 Presidential Candidate Forum on LGBTQ Issues; a singer who has already released several singles; and an award-winning actress who has been on shows such as Pose and American Horror Story as well as on Broadway (the production Chicago, in 2022).

However, in September, Ross became even more widely known thanks to social-media posts in which she called out super-producer Ryan Murphy and actress Emma Roberts, among others. Windy City Times spoke with Ross in early November about her current relationship with Hollywood, her political aspirations and her deep friendship with a prominent local trans politician.

Note: This conversation was edited for clarity and length.

Windy City Times: You’re going to return to Chicago on Nov. 15 for an LGBTQ+ Victory Fund event. Why is that important to you?

Angelica Ross: It’s the work they’re doing in making sure that LGBTQ+ folks see ourselves as viable players in politics, and that gets us to see how important our participation is. But, to be honest, the person with the plug to get me there was [MWRD Commissioner] Precious Brady-Davis.

Continued on page 6

OWEN KEEHNEN

DULCE QUINTERO

COL. JENNIFER PRITZKER

5

9

12

New book explores ‘Man’s Country’

Reflections from IDHS head

On philanthropy, republican ties

SPECIAL QUARTERLY INSERT IN THE CHICAGO READER, PRODUCED BY WINDY CITY TIMES. SEE WINDYCITYTIMES.COM FOR MORE LGBTQ NEWS AND CULTURAL COVERAGE.

IMPORTANT FACTS FOR BIKTARVY®

This is only a brief summary of important information about BIKTARVY® and does not replace talking to your healthcare provider about your condition and your treatment.

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MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT BIKTARVY

POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS OF BIKTARVY

BIKTARVY may cause serious side effects, including:  Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. Your healthcare provider will test you for HBV. If you have both HIV-1 and HBV, your HBV may suddenly get worse if you stop taking BIKTARVY. Do not stop taking BIKTARVY without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to check your health regularly for several months, and may give you HBV medicine.

BIKTARVY may cause serious side effects, including:  Those in the “Most Important Information About BIKTARVY” section.  Changes in your immune system. Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections that may have been hidden in your body. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking BIKTARVY.  Kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do blood and urine tests to check your kidneys.

If you develop new or worse kidney problems, they may tell you to stop taking BIKTARVY.  Too much lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious but rare medical emergency that can lead to death. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you get these symptoms: weakness or being more tired than usual, unusual muscle pain, being short of breath or fast breathing, stomach pain with nausea and vomiting, cold or blue hands and feet, feel dizzy or lightheaded, or a fast or abnormal heartbeat.  Severe liver problems, which in rare cases can lead to death.

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BIKTARVY, the BIKTARVY Logo, GILEAD, the GILEAD Logo, and KEEP BEING YOU are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc., or its related companies. © 2023 Gilead Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved. US-BVYC-0292 04/23

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WINDY CITY TIMES

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VOL 39, NO. 1 • DEC. 14, 2023

Danny Sotomayor.

Photo

by Rex Wockner

COVER CREDITS: MAIN STORY: Photo of Angelica Ross by James Anthony Cover of Man’s Country: More Than a Bathhouse; photo of IDHS head Dulce Quintero courtesy of IDHS; photo of Col. Jennifer Pritzker courtesy of TAWANI Enterprises, Inc

Documentary examines the activism of

PUBLISHER Terri Klinsky EXECUTIVE EDITOR Matt Simonette

Danny Sotomayor

DIGITAL DIRECTOR Jean Albright ART DIRECTOR Kirk Williamson BUSINESS MANAGER Ripley Caine SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Terri Klinsky CONTRIBUTORS Andrew Davis, Carrie Maxwell, Matt Simonette WEB HOSTING LoveYourWebsite.com (lead programmer: Martie Marro) (773) 871-7610 FAX (773) 871-7609 Editorial: matt@windycitymediagroup.com Sales: terri@windycitymediagroup.com

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Copyright 2023 Lambda Publications Inc./Windy City Media Group; All rights reserved. Reprint by permission only. Back issues (if available) for $5 per issue (postage included). Return postage must accompany all manuscripts, drawings, and photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no responsibility may be assumed for unsolicited materials. All rights to letters, art and photographs sent to Windy City Times will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication purposes and as such, subject to editing and comment. The opinions expressed by the columnists, cartoonists, letter writers, and commentators are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Windy City Times. Publication of the name, photograph, or likeness of a person or organization in articles or advertising in Windy City Times is not to be construed as any indication of the sexual orientation of such person or organization. While we encourage readers to support the advertisers who make this newspaper possible, Windy City Times cannot accept responsibility for advertising claims.

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P

ractically everything the late Chicago AIDS activist Danny Sotomayor did was “a fight.”

So says fellow activist Victor Salvo in the WTTW documentary The Outrage of Danny Sotomayor, which is part of the station’s Chicago Stories series.

Salvo is one of numerous Chicagoans interviewed for the program—among them historian/author Owen Keehnen, activist Lori Cannon and former Alds. Tom Tunney and Helen Shiller—which traces Sotomayor’s life from his childhood through his activist work in Chicago at the height of the AIDS crisis, and documents his relationship with his partner, the late playwright Scott McPherson.

Writer/Producer Dan Andries said that he was “riveted” by Sotomayor’s story when he came across it during his work on the 2008 documentary Out and Proud in Chicago.

“I really felt, after that experience, that his life, times and death could be a film,” Andries added. “Whether it was a narrative film or a documentary, I just felt that [his story] had the proper shape, feel, trajectory and truth that would make it a great movie.

I spent a lot of time talking to people about that, including colleagues here [at WTTW] and people close to him who were part of it all. I entertained the idea of writing a screenplay, and talked to lawyers about it.”

Ultimately, however, Andries settled upon the documentary format, and he said that he was fortunate that a great deal of archival footage of Sotomayor still existed.

“There was a vast video archive wherein you could see Danny Sotomayor in action,” he explained. “It was not like if you had Henry Gerber, for example. There’s not a lot of film of Henry Gerber.”

Andries’s bosses at WTTW ultimately ac-

Dec. 14, 2023

cepted a pitch to include Sotomayor’s story as part of the Chicago Stories series: “You have my passion and their faith in it. That gave me the chance to make it.”

He sees Sotormayor’s endless pursuit of attention, education and funding for people with HIV/AIDS as occupying a pivotal moment within the city’s history. Andries said, “He made life better for so many people—people who were suffering from stigma, suffering from underfunding, suffering from neglect.”

He added, “The growth of Richard M. Daley into a mayor who was supportive of the gay community was very much impacted

by Danny. Some people would say that he singlehanded moved the man into the right camp.”

Indeed, Sotomayor was a persistent thorn in the administration’s side during the height of his activism. The Outrage of Danny Sotomayor chronicles numerous runins between Sotomayor and Daley, who attended the activist’s funeral. When Daley was at Sotomayor’s casket, someone joked that’s how they knew Sotomayor was really gone—Sotomayor would have sat up in his coffin and confronted Daley otherwise.

Andries felt it was important to underline Sotomayor’s influence as an organizer in the program.

“Danny was aligned with ACT UP Chicago,” Andries said. “Danny was not just Danny, and ACT UP Chicago was a powerful group of people who worked together. For better or worse, he was the torch-bearer. I think groups like that need that kind of person. He says in the documentary, ‘I need the movement and the movement needs me.’ I think he was dead-on.”

Chicago Stories: The Outrage of Danny Sotomayor can be streamed at http:// www.wttw.com/chicagostories.

WINDY CITY TIMES

Author Owen Keehnen.

Photo by Israel Wright

Owen Keehnen

more complex than a lot of people had seen them. Bathhouses had been demonized, but the culture was [complicated]. When Man’s Country opened in 1973, you could go there for entertainment; it was like a men’s club where you could go for the weekend.

The role that bathhouses played actually changed over the 45 years Man’s Country was open. After HIV/AIDS hit Chicago, part of Man’s Country became the queer techno club Bistro Too; when that closed, another portion became the Chicago Eagle. So I wanted to write how this compound restructured itself to fit what the community needed. For a while, there was even a clinic there, as well as a store.

WCT: I think something that might surprise some readers is that there was a Man’s Country in New York City as well.

Keehnen: Yes. Chuck wasn’t looking to buy Man’s Country but he was interested in the bathhouse business, and he had purchased half of the property of the Club Baths, in Chicago.

When he opened Man’s Country, he went to his original investors and they were going to open

takes readers to an ‘oasis of pleasure’ in ‘Man’s Country’

BY ANDREW DAVIS

I

n the book Man’s Country: More Than a Bathhouse, Chicago historian Owen Keehnen takes a literary microscope to the venue that the late local icon Chuck Renslow opened in 1973.

Over decades, until it was demolished in 2018, the Andersonville spot hosted tens of thousands of locals and celebrities (from ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev to Boy George to the Village People) who went there (or the adjoining dance club Bistro Too or the leather club Chicago Eagle) to entertain and/or be entertained in various ways.

In a talk with Windy City Times, Keehnen talked about Renslow, history and, of course, Man’s Country.

Note: This conversation was edited for clarity and length.

Windy City Times: There are so many aspects of Chicago, including LGBTQ+ Chicago.

You’ve written another book about Chuck Renslow, with [Windy City Times Owner and Co-founder] Tracy Baim. So why devote

WINDY CITY TIMES

a separate book to Man’s Country?

Owen Keehnen: I didn’t plan it that way. I think what happened was that bathhouse culture had always interested me, and I felt that the narrative had been hijacked by AIDS. [The view was] that it was just a sex den, when [bathhouses] were much more complex than that.

When Chuck passed away in 2017, the building was torn down in 2018, and the intersection of Clark and Carmen had the Chuck Renslow Way street sign there; it seemed like it was time to tell the story. I had worked on Leatherman with Tracy, I had interviewed Chuck several times for the newspaper, and I knew him socially.

I wasn’t sure I had enough material, but I went to an exhibit at the Leather Archives [in Chicago] and saw in the Man’s Country exhibit that the front desk kept a journal—but it turned out that the journal had nothing I wanted to use. But by then I had started interviewing people—and it became so clear that Man’s Country, and bathhouses in general, was a lot

one here and one in New York.

Chuck wanted to model his Chicago Man’s Country much more along the lines of The Continental, in New York—like a private club. But the Man’s Country in New York was described as 10 floors of sex and the partners decided to part ways. As I understand it, Chuck took Chicago and the partners took New York.

WCT: You also write about celebrities being at Man’s Country, which I found fascinating.

Keehnen: Yes. It shows how the place evolved over time. People took this main stage when the music hall was part of Man’s Country—people like [singer/comedian] Rusty Warren, [puppeteer/puppet duo] Wayland Flowers and Madame, and Charles Pierce. It was an opportunity to showcase talent. The fact that it was a gay bathhouse wasn’t that much different than if it were a gay nightclub.

Then, as Man’s Country evolved, that same stage that had different people in the original bathhouse circuit later had celebrity acts like Divine, Village People and Boy George. The stage at Man’s Country had a long history—and so did the hallways. There were a lot of celebrities who walked along those—sometimes after they performed. [Laughs] WCT: And I think a question should be devoted to Sally Rand alone.

Keehnen: [Laughs] Sally Rand was a dancer who had been in silent films with Cecil B. DeMille. She was arrested three times in one day at the [1933] Chicago World’s Fair for public nudity, even though she was never actually nude. Her thing was “the Rand was quicker than the eye.”

Her fans and balloons covered her, so she was never exposed.

This was all big news in the 1920s and into the early ‘30s. So, 40 years later, when Sally was

Dec. 14, 2023

going to be the headliner at Man’s Country, she was in her 70s. If there was any apprehension about having a gay bathhouse in the neighborhood, Chuck told me that the older people would say, “You can’t be all bad if Sally Rand’s playing there.” And Chuck loved Sally; she also came back to perform for “Cruising the Nile” and she was a huge ally.

My favorite quote from Sally was when someone asked her what it was like to perform at a club of gay men. I’m paraphrasing but she said, “I haven’t seen you guys in action. All I know is that there’s a room of half-clothed men and they’re paying attention to me.” I think, for stories like that, I want the audience to feel the good nature and “almost-innocence” of bathhouses. It was as much good, clean fun as you could have in a bathhouse.

WCT: I actually never visited Man’s Country so almost all of the information here was new to me.

Keehnen: Well, part of the reason I wrote this was so I could almost make it like time travel. I collected these anecdotes, personal stories, news clippings and other things so that people would almost feel like they were there—not just people who had been there but people who never had the opportunity to visit. Again, the scene was more complex than people thought.

WCT: If Man’s Country were around today, especially in the wake of the COVID pandemic, how do you think it would be?

Keehnen: Truthfully, I can’t imagine it surviving any longer than it did without being revamped. After Chuck passed away, it’s so hard for me to imagine that story continuing. That’s where Chuck’s office was; Man’s Country was his home base.

Turn to page 6

5

KEEHNEN from page 5

WCT: I read that, when he was 87, he was still going in three times a week.

Keehnen: Oh, yeah. Man’s Country was such a big part of what Chuck wanted to give the community—which was just this gathering place that wasn’t about sex, although it could be about sex. It could be anything you wanted it to be. He originally called it “an oasis of pleasure.” Chuck wanted people to experience pleasure in whatever form that meant to them.

That’s what Man’s Country was about—a place to deepen your sense of community in whatever way you wanted.

WCT: What does this book say about you?

Keehnen: I think this book says that I want to expand the way we think of gay history to include the way I remember gay history.

When I talk about wanting to make this time travel, it’s selfish, too. I want to time-travel, too. I think if I see places disappearing, my focus has been more on re-creating the places.

Like with Dugan’s Bistro, with the downtown disco scene; the Belmont Rocks; and Man’s Country, I want to show the importance of the community physically coming together.

I don’t feel that the fabric of community is quite as tight [these days] because of social media. I also think that, with all the threats out there, it’s going to be put to the test in the future. There are so many malignant forces out there. I worry that the bonds we have right now are not strong enough.

I also like to write about people having fun, having sex and hanging out together. I want to write about things that younger people may have an easier time connecting to.

WCT: Yes and, speaking of social media, I think a lot of bar owners started to worry when it became popular. It can take away that physical connection.

Keehnen: Our whole movement—our rights and community—happened because we came together and told our stories. We did things together—physically together. Maybe I’ll be surprised.

WCT: But social media can bring people together—like with rallies—so there is hope.

Keehnen: Oh, yes. It can certainly be used to bring people together—not as a substitute for being together. That’s when the problem happens. And if we don’t tell the stories, the stories are going to be told for us. If somebody tells your story … well, we know how that narrative works out. It’s never a good scenario.

WCT: So what do you think you’ll cover next?

Keehnen: I have a couple ideas. I want to do something on the importance of different sex spaces other than bathhouses, like the Lincoln Park bushes or Montrose Harbor or the Back 40 at [the shuttered gay club] Manhandler. I want to write from the perspective of the change of surveillance culture.

Man’s Country: More Than a Bathhouse is available on online retailers such as Amazon as well as brick-and-mortar spots like Unabridged Bookstore, 3251 N. Broadway.

6

Cover art for Angelica Ross’s single, Grand Theft Lover.

Courtesy of Ross ROSS from cover

She is a longtime friend of mine who I knew when I was doing drag shows at the Kit Kat Lounge and she first came off the bus from Nebraska looking to do drag and various things. I said, “Girl, this drag stuff will be here when you get ready. Go to school and get your degree.”

And she went to school and did drag. So to have this full-circle moment [is incredible]. I’ve been a maid of honor at her wedding. She’s just breaking so many personal and professional barriers, and I feel so blessed to be a part of her journey. Lending my star power to this moment is why I’m showing up for her. It’s all about Precious, for me.

WCT: I don’t know you very well, but you’re an outspoken activist and strike me as someone who’s had very few regrets in her life.

AR: [Laughs] That is absolutely correct.

I am very, very blessed to have been introduced to Nichiren Buddhism. It has given me the perspective to understand what things mean.

When you look at something like a lotus flower, it’s one of the central symbols of Buddhism; it’s because the flower has to take this journey through murky, muddy territory in the water to break through to the surface and blossom—unsullied by its environment. So I thought, “How could I regret the soil that helped me blossom?”

It’s not an easy place to get to, but my spiritual practice has definitely gotten me to understand the value in every single moment of my life.

WCT: And one of the reasons I feel you’ve had few regrets, if any, is what happened regarding your posts [about Hollywood] and your interview with The Hollywood Reporter. I’ve talked with people who’ve said, “Oh, she’s burned her bridges now”—and I said, “If she has burned them, she didn’t regret it.”

AR: Trust me: If I burned a bridge, I meant to.

I don’t ever want to go back there. It’s not about burning bridges because I tell you this: So much goes on in Hollywood that’s not spoken about and Angelica is not about that life. I’ve always spoken truth to power. The whole Hollywood game is about privilege; once they get

in, most people try to hang on to the privilege they gain and they know that they have to play a certain game to do so. I’m not about those games. I’m not looking to trade my power for privilege.

Something else that people don’t know is that everybody is calculating everybody else’s purses and wallets. It’s all a business. I’ve always been someone who’s been able to maintain several income streams.

WCT: Something else I’ve told people is that if they truly knew what people did [behind the scenes] in Hollywood, they probably wouldn’t watch any films or TV series.

AR: Right. That’s the real deal. I’m a theater kid, and so I’ve always been about creativity, music, musical theater, choirs—all of this kind of stuff. Now, I understand the heartbreak that some artists feel when art meets commerce.

But you can always create—you just don’t have to be part of that machine.

So that’s what I chose to divest myself from—the Hollywood machine. I’m still executive-producing an animated series that has star power like Keith David, with me playing one of the main characters as well. I have a feature film that I’m working on that I’m executive-producing as well that’s outside of Hollywood’s permission. I don’t need their permission.

WCT: And something else you’re working on is music. You’ve released a single called “Grand Theft Lover.”

AR: Yes! I’m just feeling so great about my music these days. I’ve been going through a whole artist development and what’s been so great about that—especially as a trans person—is that I’ve been able to create space for myself. Many times, we’re not given space to be ourselves and to build on our dreams. So people have been watching my art develop from people who didn’t know how to use their voice, as a trans person, to someone who has extensive range. I’ve been writing my own lyrics and I’ve been producing my own music.

I wanted to [develop] my songwriting skills so I took an online course from H.E.R. As one of my assignments, I wrote the song “Grand Theft Lover.” I created these lyrics based on love be-

Dec. 14, 2023

ing a game—and I thought about PlayStation.

And then there were those “cheat codes” from those games in the ‘80s. So I wanted to give a nod to the nostalgia and the versatility in my songwriting pattern.

WCT: Going back to your activism for a minute and our talking politics, do you plan on running for political office down the road?

AR: I am literally getting ready to run for office right now. That’s why I moved back to Georgia. I had plans to build my production company—Miss Ross, Inc.—here back in 2020, but I ended up being booked and busy. I’ve done sizzle reels for shows I’ve produced, I’ve been talking to networks, I’ve been trying to sell shows. So the rat race of Hollywood had kept me from being in the driver’s seat.

What I love about being here in Georgia and just being who I am is that I want to let people know that they don’t have to be just one thing.

You may not end up on TV or on a Vegas stage, but I believe that I can be a part of the local theater or music scene in Georgia and create a legacy while I also work on policy issues. The policy issues include the abortion bans that are trying to creep into Georgia policy as well as the ban on trans rights. I’ll always do the work and I’m going to ask the people to vote me into a title so I have that authority behind me.

WCT: And as if all that isn’t enough, there’s TranTech.

AR: Yes. TransTech is my baby and we are going on 10 years next year. What’s so amazing is that our first board president was Precious Brady-Davis. When I launched TransTech in 2014, the first person I turned to in order to get us off the ground was our board president.

She was only there a short time because I saw that she had other things going on. I literally sacrificed my entire life, bank-account balance, credit score to start TransTech, but Precious was there for me in the early days.

WCT: For you, what is it like to be part of the LGBTQ+ community in today’s America?

AR: I think that, in today’s America, there’s so much purpose and potential for us to not only change the world. We’re in an environment that’s ruled by a lack of compassion. Being LGBTQ now [means] that when you’re in an environment and you witness that something is missing, it’s a time to create, be calm and be that thing that is needed.

So I think there’s a leadership that is needed from folks who are not lying to themselves— [because] folks who are lying to themselves will lie to you, too. We have so many politicians who lie to themselves. We don’t need to lie to ourselves about who we are.

Also, we need to find value in our intersections and our identities. It’s one of the most powerful calls to action that’s not just unique to LGBTQ people—but, because of this imminent call to action, we’re in a position where we have to act quicker or with more urgency than our cis het counterparts who still are almost complacent by their comfort and privileges that fitting in might get them.

I do believe that LGBTQ people will free the rest of the world.

WINDY CITY TIMES

THANK YOU!

Our corporate supporters help us work toward a day when people living with HIV or chronic conditions will thrive, and there will be no new HIV cases.

Many thanks to the following companies that made Corporate Partnership-level contributions to AIDS Foundation Chicago in the past year:

To learn more about AFC’s Corporate Partnership Program, contact Erwin Saenz, Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations, at ESaenz@aidschicago.org.

WINDY CITY TIMES

Dec. 14, 2023

7

Bob & Peter Longtime Chicago couple reflects on their 50-year love story

BY CARRIE MAXWELL

W

hen Chicagoans Bob Wolf and Peter Tortorello met each other for the second time in 1973, during the Friday night cocktail hours at the now-defunct gay-owned restaurant-bar The Trip in Streeterville, they knew right away that they were meant for each other.

Both Wolf and Tortorello were young professionals, and The Trip was the place to be seen for those who were just starting out in their careers and wanted to meet other gay men.

“We all had college degrees and great jobs, so we thought we were hot shit at that time,” said Tortorello. “On Friday, October 19, 1973, I was with friends doing cocktails. A handsome blonde man walked up the stairs and caught my eye. As we were leaving for dinner, we saw him at the corner of Ohio and State, and asked him where they were going, [which was] the Fireside on Wells Street in Old Town. We followed them to the restaurant.

“Taunted by my friends to approach the blonde at a nearby table, I did–only to be ignored. His date did respond with a lovely hello.

A week later the group was back at The Trip, cocktailing and looking. The blonde’s date arrived, said hello again and that is when Bob and I introduced ourselves and started talking.

I went to Bob’s apartment that night on Bissell, [which backed] up to the train tracks. The passing rumble of the El was not a distraction.”

Two days after that, Tortorello moved out of his parents’ home into an apartment on Barry Street with the help of long-time friends, his mother and Wolf. Although the two men lived in different apartments, Wolf spent the first night at the Barry apartment and fundamentally never left. They moved in together within

8

that year. They have been together, apart from two very temporary and painful breakups for a few months, ever since.

This year Tortorello and Wolf are celebrating their golden anniversary. This past October, the two Chicago natives hosted a bevy of friends and family at the InterContinental Hotel to mark their years together.

Knowing early on Both men grew up Catholic and knew they were gay at an early age. Tortorello had samesex encounters while in his teens, as well as one at a fraternity function he attributed to the “golly, was I drunk last night excuse.” Many of his friends—sons of his parents’ friends—came out as gay years later. Tortorello joked that he blames it on the water on the Northwest Side of Chicago and finishing school at St. Patrick.

Wolf grew up in the Back of the Yards and attended DePaul Catholic Minor Seminary. He recalled, “Late in my senior year, I admitted to the spiritual director that I thought I was a homosexual. He told me that I could not continue to study for the priesthood unless I got professional help to change my inclinations. I began seeing a psychologist for the next several months.

“Rather than change my sexuality, I finally decided to live my life as a gay man. My parents paid for the treatment, but I never told them why I needed it. They finally stopped asking.

It was not until I was diagnosed with HIV and decided to leave work on disability that I told them I was gay and HIV-positive. Just before my mother died, she made the comment that ‘...your Dad always knew.’”

Tortorello’s coming out process progressed

slowly. He dated several women in college and in graduate school. It was at Northern Illinois University that a classmate unexpectedly kissed him. He played “grab ass” with his roommate, Jon. Eventually he went to his first gay bar, The Locker, in Rockford.

After graduation he was on a double date with his fraternity pledge father, Rich, and their “girlfriends.” He dropped off his date and went to The Trip for the first time. There was Rich.

With that, they both ended their hetero relationships, starting their lives as out gay men.

Friday’s tradition was to go to the gym, meet up at The Trip for cocktail hour, have dinner, change into disco threads and go to The Bistro, Chicago’s version of Studio 54. At that time, customers would see both gays and straights dancing to Barry White’s “Love Theme.”

Health and work concerns After receiving his MBA from Northern Illinois University, Tortorello worked for UARCO and Xerox in Chicago and Houston, Texas, where he and Wolf lived for 10 years. Houston was a happening place in the early ‘80s, and this was not the best time in their relationship.

They separated for several months, but got back together when their family came to town to celebrate Thanksgiving. It was shortly after that when Wolf started running temperatures, an early indication that something was amiss with his health.

That same year, they lost 40 acquaintances to the AIDS epidemic. Frightened, they decided to move back to Chicago. Two years later, Wolf was diagnosed with HIV. With the support of Drs. Tom Klein and Keith MacDonnell, as well as others, and the loving relationship that he has

Dec. 14, 2023

shared with Tortorello, Wolf is now a long-term survivor and is undetectable.

Tortorello worked at a few software firms as well as at Oliver Wight, a premiere manufacturing consulting firm, and Oracle. Until recently, Tortorello was a real estate agent for two decades with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services.

Wolf became Director of Human Resources at Arthur Young, and Ernst and Young, following a merger. Six months after starting his Arthur Young position, Wolf’s boss took him to lunch and told him he “knew I was gay for about three months, and I had better keep it a secret from top management in the office and region.

This led to me going on long term disability.

I hired an attorney to inform the managing partner of my situation so that I would not be fired before my claim was approved. Today, this organization is one of the most highly-rated employers by HRC and Lambda Legal Defense, and I believe I played a part in them making the changes they did to get those ratings.”

Road to recovery Twelve-step programs started Wolf and Tortorello toward recovery and better mental health. Wolf found Alcoholics Anonymous, while Tortorello joined Al-Anon; these organizations were “a lifesaver” for them, and there they met new, supportive friends. The couple also went to therapy together and Tortorello continued with individual therapy to address his own traumas.

During the ‘90s, Tortorello lost childhood friends to AIDS, and when he told his parents that Wolf was HIV-positive, they were terrified for him.

“Peter and I beat the odds because he never

WINDY CITY TIMES

Left: Bob Wolf and Peter Tortorello’s first picture as a couple in 1973. Right: Peter Tortorello and Robert Wolf at their 50th anniversary party.

Courtesy of the couple

Dulce Quintero

IDHS head reflects on making history, being an advocate

BY ANDREW DAVIS

wavered in his support,” said Wolf. “He never treated me like a leper and was there through it all. I used to take one of the early AIDS medications in the morning as I was getting ready to go to work. Peter would drive me from Sheridan Road to Downtown Chicago, and he would have to pull off the road so I could vomit because the medication was so toxic.”

Celebrations To celebrate their 20th anniversary on October 26, 1993, the couple held a “Celebration of 20 years of Commitment” at the InterContinental Chicago (where their recent 50th anniversary celebration took place). That is what they consider to be their official coming out party.

In 2001, they—along with their best friends, Chris and Chuck—exchanged civil union vows in Vermont. Unfortunately, both of them woke up that morning with high temperatures and slept for two days. They went on to Ogunquit, Maine, for their honeymoon after stopping by Ben and Jerry’s.

Twelve years later, on Oct. 26, 2013, they returned to Manchester Center, Vermont (the place where the Green Mountain Boys planned the American Revolution) and were married at the Vermont Art Center, followed by a dinner with 20 family members. On June 1, 2014, their civil union certificate was converted into a 2001 marriage license in Hinsdale in DuPage County.

County staff applauded this as the first samesex marriage in DuPage County.

Keeping active The couple has always been politically active, having worked for the Clinton, Kerry, Obama and Biden campaigns. In 2008 they were in Grant Park, just 20 feet from the stage. Oprah stood behind them. Wolf was the Obama campaign data manager at the Hyde Park office in 2012, and met with the president on Election Day. Tortorello and Wolf were present in Washington for the second Obama inauguration and danced at the HRC Inauguration Ball.

As for their hobbies, Wolf is an avid reader, a Wordle fanatic and fine home chef. They host dinners throughout the year and especially in the holidays and for the past 30 years, they have hosted family and friends for Christmas dinner in their home. They have a second house in Sawyer, Michigan, where Tortorello enjoys gardening, bicycling and hiking. They have traveled to all seven continents, and cruised the entire length of the Amazon, as well as around South America, Antarctica, Alaska, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and the Galapagos Islands. They are patrons of the Joffrey Ballet, Lyric Opera and Broadway and local theaters as well.

WINDY CITY TIMES

D

ulce Quintero has always believed in helping people—and decades of doing so has resulted in an especially noteworthy achievement.

Recently, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker appointed Quintero, a member of the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame, as secretary of the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS), making them the first nonbinary individual to helm a state agency. On Nov. 30, the Association of Latinos/as/xs Motivating Action (ALMA) will present Quintero with the inaugural ALMA del Líder (Soul of A Leader) award to celebrate this development.

Windy City Times recently talked with Quintero about their gender-identity journey and their commitment to helping others, among other things.

Note: This conversation was edited for clarity and length.

Windy City Times: First of all, I’m not sure if a lot of people know what IDHS is or does. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Dulce Quintero: Absolutely. At the Illinois Department of Human Services, we have about 14,000 employees. People may know about our local offices where people apply for medical cards, SNAP benefits and things like that. We have more than 100 offices across the state.

We focus on marginalized communities and people who deal with poverty. We also have hospitals; there are seven medical hospitals under our care. We also have seven centers of developmental disabilities in the state as well as a few schools. We provide funding for prevention of and recovery from substance use.

And we’re also fighting homelessness and we’re working with [Chief Homelessness Officer] Christine Haley—and a lot of my background has involved unhoused populations.

I’ve worked with young people and with people who are chronically unhoused, such as veterans and people who are diagnosed with mental-health and substance-use issues. So all of that work is very dear to me. … I love what I do because I started in community work; it wasn’t government work. I’m now able to apply my experience in community work into my current seat as a public servant.

WCT: Regarding your achievement of becoming the first nonbinary individual to head a state agency, you’re receiving an award from ALMA [Association of Latinos/as/xs Motivating Action]. What does

that mean to you?

DQ: Oh… I [recently] delivered the keynote speech for the Hispanic Federation. I focused on what leadership means to me, and I think there’s a traditional view on what leadership looks like. I really lead from a place of breaking that mold. I think it’s really important that we think about people who have many years of lived experience, because sometimes people only look at credentials.

I have a multifaceted background and identity, as someone who came from Mexico at age 9, and had to learn how to live in this country and speak the language. My parents were farm workers and had to move around a lot; I grew up from a very humble beginning, and I know about poverty. I’ve had that trajectory in my life and I’ve experienced homelessness; with that in my background, there will be a whole level of advocacy at the table that will make me relentless; I’ll never be too tired to advocate.

I also grew up Mormon, so I was super-religious. I was going to go on a mission for the Latter-Day Saints. I actually went to three high schools—one in Chicago, one in Mexico City and one in Sacramento, California.

The one in Mexico City was a Mormon high school, and I wanted to go to Brigham Young University and then on my mission. But then I went to UC-Davis for college—and I came out.

When I came out and talked to my bishop, I was told I couldn’t be Mormon and gay, so I decided to be out and proud. People say, “Dulce, you’re so out and proud”—and that’s because I have to be. And with my gender identity and expression, I never felt like I should be in a box; there needs to be freedom because there’s a spectrum. And right now, I identify as they/them but it might look different later. ` So [I love] being able to be from a place of humility and being able to bring all of my experiences into this role to help bring about systemic change. Also, there’s the fact that we get to work for Gov. Pritzker—someone who has hired and promoted someone like me. That means a lot, but I also have a lot of responsibility. So I go out into the community and listen to the experts who do the work every day.

WCT: I think it’s interesting that you said you have no attachment regarding gender identity because looking at your [Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame] bio, the pronouns used are “she/her.” [Note: After

Dec. 14, 2023

Illinois Department of Human Services Secretary Dulce Quintero.

Courtesy of IDHS

induction, the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame does not update bios, per policy.] So your journey taking you beyond the binary happened after your induction.

DQ: Yes. And you know what, Andrew? I’ve been thinking a lot about [the journey]. Even [at IDHS], with the [email] signature, I didn’t put pronouns there for a long time. And my friend will sometimes say, “girl” and “ella,” and I’ll ask, “Could you try to use more ‘they’ and ‘them’ when you speak?” I also have friends and loved ones who say, “Dulce, I’m really trying”—and I can see that they’re trying. I also think that it’s important that we’re teaching people; sometimes, they just don’t know. People need to ask because some people only prefer their names.

WCT: You’ve talked a little bit about this, but what is it like for you to be part of the queer community in today’s America?

DQ: You know, you think you’ve brought change—and then you think, “Not so much.”

We have a lot more work to do. I think about our transgender brothers and sisters—especially Black and Brown ones—who are murdered. Hundreds are murdered, and that’s an epidemic. We just need to do more.

I’m very mindful of that, with my passion in advocacy about transgender and nonbinary people. When I moved from California to Chicago and I started organizing the Dyke March and moving it from Andersonville, I wanted to make sure that transgender people were part of that movement. I will always speak up for the trans community. We need to do more because we are losing people every day.

9

Col. Jennifer Pritzker on philanthropy, Republican ties

BY ANDREW DAVIS

C

ol. Jennifer Pritzker is someone who firmly believes in giving.

There’s the transgender activist who has been supportive of many LGBTQ+-related causes. And, of course, there’s the Jennifer Pritzker who spent almost three decades in the U.S. Army, Army Reserve and Illinois Army National Guard, and who is extremely supportive of the military to this day. In 2017, she created the Pritzker Military Foundation, which serves as the Pritzker Military Museum & Library’s grant-making arm.

Pritzker—a cousin of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker—also created the TAWANI Foundation (named after her children) in 1995. TAWANI is about philanthropy in the areas of education, gender and human sexuality, cultural institutions, environmental initiatives, and health and human services.

And she also believes in giving her opinions. In a recent interview, Pritzker offered her thoughts on everything from philanthropy to her Republican background—and why she severed ties with former Donald Trump’s administration after voting for him in 2016.

Note: This conversation was edited for clarity and length.

Windy City Times: I wanted to start with something recent: The Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame. What did the induction ceremony feel like for you, and what would you have said if you could give a speech?

Col. Jennifer Pritzker: I actually have a lot of different views about that.

On one hand, it’s always nice to be appreciated. I certainly couldn’t have wanted a better venue; the Chicago History Museum is one of my favorite places in Chicago. My father started taking me there back as long as I can remember.

I’ve seen a lot of changes; back then, it was the Chicago Historical Society.

Right now, in this country, anything having to do with LGBT+—I’m using four out of the 26 letters in the alphabet, no disrespect—is very controversial. It’s a double-edged sword—to some people, if you’re in the LGBT Hall of Fame, you’re a hero; to others, you’re an agent of Satan. So I’m already somewhat on the [borderline] because I come from a well-known family, I’ve got a few bucks and I have cousins who are prominent in politics—one who’s been in Obama’s Cabinet, Penny Pritzker; and, of course, the governor, JB. Some people think I’m his sister; some people think I’m his wife.

That’s why I have the Pritzker family exhibit in the historical museum; it lays out who’s who.

If I may get a little risque, in addition to being a public figure, I’m also something of a PUBIC

12

figure. It’s like I’m a novelty figure, a sideshow exhibit: “Is it a he?” “Is it a she?” “Does it stand to sit and pee?” Why should being LGBT be a bigger factor than having blue or green eyes, or if you’re 28 or 58? Certain things are what they are, and you can do good or not-so-good things with them—but that’s not all of what you are.

No matter what I do or say, some people’s notions of me will not change—and they’re as unchangeable as the Rocky Mountains. But, you see, mountains change. They have volcanic eruptions, and they’re influenced by wind and water. So the Earth doesn’t remain stable; it’s always in a state of change.

I am what I am. I’m a 73-year-old transgender woman who’s been endowed with prosperity.

I’m of European Caucasian descent. I’m Jewish.

I’m a veteran. I am a father and a grandfather even though I live as a woman. I spent 27 years in the Army—eight-and-a-half years on duty and the rest in the National Guard reserves.

I’ve had some kind of business of my own since 1987. Some days are good, some are not so good and some days I’ve avoided disaster by the skin of my teeth. So you have ups and downs; that has nothing to do with what gender I’m living in or what my physical state is.

I’ve been engaged in many different kinds of philanthropy. Now there are people, like [journalist] Jennifer Bilek, who think that my cousin and I, and other people like me, are on a conspiracy to screw up the world, to rob everyone of their identity—but it’s quite the contrary.

Most of the philanthropy I’ve done has been for scientific research and medical treatment. I’ve only become involved in advocacy because I’ve had to.

And while I’m not that wild about voting for Democrats, there’s no way that me or someone like me—or, for that matter, any rational person—can vote for Donald Trump. I made the grave mistake of voting for him in 2016. I should’ve followed the advice of my youngest son, William, who said, “If you don’t like Hillary Clinton, then vote libertarian,” which I did in 2004. I voted against Bush the younger for two reasons: I thought it was a mistake to invade Iraq and he wanted a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. But we have freedom OF religion and freedom FROM religion.

WCT: So would you vote for someone like Liz Cheney, who was not ruled out running in 2024?

JP: Probably—but I don’t know if she can do it as a Republican because the Republican Party has gotten so [mixed] up. To be a little vulgar, the Republican Party is like constipation; they can’t even pass gas. I hate saying that because I

Col. Jennifer Pritzker.

Courtesy of TAWANI Enterprises, Inc voted Republican for a long time. I started voting in 1972 and I didn’t vote Republican twice— in 2004, when I voted Libertarian; and in 2020, when I voted Democrat because I wanted to make sure Trump didn’t get back to the White House.

[Biden] wasn’t my favorite choice but he was a plausible one; he’s a lot more rational than Mr. Trump and he looks like he has his weight under control—and that’s no small feat. What really turned me against Trump was when he said there was no place for transgender people in the military. Naturally, I had a very negative reaction to that. Also, he’s said some extremely disparaging remarks about people like John McCain. The Department of Defense went through a hell of a lot of trouble to change that policy [regarding transgender inclusion in the military]; they didn’t do it on a Twitter whim.

Right now, the Republican Party is reactionary, spiteful and totally unproductive. You have state legislatures competing with each other to see who can pass the most repressive laws the quickest.

I’ve contributed a lot to LGBT+ causes but I’ve also contributed a lot more to things like military history and military affairs. If we’re going to have a democracy in which the military is controlled by the civilian population, how can they do it if they don’t know anything about the military? With a voluntary and non-governmental organization, I can do things that I could never do in uniform.

[At this point, TAWANI Marketing and Communications Director Theadora Gerber said, “I think one point you make really well is that [neither] side is contributing to finding solutions. If there’s a hysteria going on, they should look for solutions.]

I would agree that both [main political parties] have taken extreme views. We’ve seemed

Dec. 14, 2023

to have lost the ability to have true bipartisan, nonpartisan approaches to common problems.

Now no matter what your views, there is climate change. Now how much is attributable to humans, I don’t know but we have to deal with it. And what about the war in Ukraine? We can’t just sit by and do nothing—but what do we do?

The current war in Israel—what do we do about that? We’ve got some serious economic problems in this country. We have a serious problem about paying for healthcare.

WCT: With October [when this interview was conducted] being National Coming Out Month, who was the first person you came out to?

JP: I don’t know. It’s hard to say because, for years, I thought of myself mainly as a transvestite. That’s a term you don’t hear much anymore; that shows how old I am.

I didn’t really have the opportunity to explore who I was. In those days, a male could get arrested for appearing in public in women’s clothing. But after the age of 10 or 12, my parents sent me to a psychiatrist; I’d say things like, “I could see myself in dual current.” It was hard to find a way to “resolve” the issue for a long, long time. Going into the Army was not a great place to do it—although a lot of transgender people join the military to find resolution.

You can function with the suppression but, after a while, you just can’t do it anymore.

It’s hard to say who the very first person was. It took me a long time to realize that the clothing was just a tool. It’s so subjective about what’s considered men’s and women’s clothing.

I’m at the point where I’ve taken an interest in a lot of women’s issues; I identify as a woman so these issues are a lot more relevant to me.

Maybe another way of coming out is trying to find out who you are so you can be at peace with yourself—so that you can function.

WINDY CITY TIMES