THIS WEEK
FRONT
04 Staff Note
CITY LIFE
05 The To-Do Starship Troopers, Pan-Africanism in art, and more
FOOD & DRINK
06 Sula | Monday Night Foodball Two frontof-house smart-asses break out from Lakeview’s the Piggery at the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up.
07 Reader Bites Woolfy BBQ jackfruit sliders at Bonus Round Game Cafe
NEWS & POLITICS
08 Housing Zoning policy doesn’t have to be confusing.
10 Environment City and state officials are banking on data centers—but at what cost?
ARTS & CULTURE
12 Books A smattering of Illinois-centric nonfiction book recs
14 Caporale | Year in Review essay In celebration of Gak green
15 Exhibitions of Note The Newberry presents five centuries of Native presence in Chicago, and Ackerman Clarke features Caleb Schroder’s so sculptures.
THEATER
16 Reid | Year in Review Looking back at the year in theater
17 Plays of Note A Bright Room Called Day is depressingly timely; Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer returns for campy holiday fun with Hell in a Handbag.
FILM
18 Year in Review Despite the surge of anti-queer and anti-sex rhetoric, 2024 was a landmark year for LGBTQ+ cinema.
20 Moviegoer Now streaming
20 Movies of Note The Girl With the Needle tells a chair-gripping, toe-curling story; The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is too focused on franchise callbacks to do anything of substance; and more.
MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE
22 The Secret History of Chicago Music JD, Foster & Eastman made sublime country rock but didn’t leave a trace.
24 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including Mariachi Herencia de México, Aight Bet, and Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang
26 Gossip Wolf Owen Ashworth of Advance Base sets his new record in a horror-movie town, the Ramova Lo hosts the Bridgeport Sessions dance night, and more.
This work is included in “Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica” at the Art Institute of Chicago, on view through March 30, 2025.
COURTESY ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
(Bottom le ) Stacked tots by Loud Mouth
COURTESY LOUD MOUTH
(Bottom right) Refracted’s Coronation JOE MAZZA/BRAVE LUX
ON THE COVER
This work is included in the exhibition “The Living End: Paintings and Other Technologies, 1970–Present” at MCA, on view through April 13, 2025.
Cover pull quote written by Kerry Reid in “Dark days, bright stages,” p. 16.
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De noche by artist Gina Beavers (2015). Original is acrylic on wood panel with painted wooden frame, 31 1/4” × 31 1/16.” Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky, New York. © Gina Beavers
(Top) Revival Meeting by Benny Andrews (1994). High Museum of Art, purchase with funds from Alfred Austell Thornton in memory of Leila Austell Thornton and Albert Edward Thornton Sr., and Sarah Miller Venable and William Hoyt Venable.
IMAGINE THIS
A NOTE FROM OUR EDITOR IN CHIEF
Imagine a teenager in a study carrel at a Chicago Public Library branch. It’s the late end of the 1980s, and a stack of newspapers is on a table nearby. Standing up to stretch after an hour of pretending to cram for a test, our teen’s eyes fall on the first paper on the stack: the Chicago Reader
The paper’s classifieds section is visible and they spot Life in Hell in the corner of a page, a one-panel comic starring a rabbit-like creature with one big ear. (The comic was created by a pre-Simpsons Matt Groening.) The teen grabs the paper to study that weird cartoon instead. A library clerk looks up and says, “Hey, you can take that with you if you like. The Reader is free.”
The biggest privilege in my life has been being born in Chicago at exactly the right time. I’m only slightly younger than the Reader, so I remember stacks of newspapers cluttering my kitchen table growing up. My family believed in conversation, in educating ourselves and being aware, and in having fun and seeking out new experiences, like going to concerts and museums. If you didn’t have anything to say around the table, my grandparents would ask us, how could you possibly have anything to o er away from the table?
Another privilege in my life has been working for the Chicago Reader. We’re a community newspaper for a big city. We o er a weekly look at the things that
—Salem Collo-Julin, editor in chief m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com
matter to Chicagoans and give them a chance to learn about something new. Every week I’m reminded that there’s a younger person out there who, like myself (yes, that was me in the library), is discovering our pages or website for the first time. And every week there’s something great, new, challenging, or maybe even joyful that I’d like them to know about.
The Reader is in a strange and wonderful place. We’re a media outlet that can count itself as a legacy organization but at the same time, we’re a very new nonprofit organization. We have many loyal and longtime readers and at the same time, we seek to grow and diversify our reach. And we, like all news organizations, await the future with the trepidation of not knowing what challenges might come our way as democracy continues to be challenged and independent news organizations continue to be underrepresented and underfunded.
That’s why we need your support now more than ever. We cover Chicago and the world from a Chicago lens. Please join us: donate your dollars and help us spread the word about the Reader so we can continue to foster our legacy of innovative storytelling and be a source of something new for all Chicagoans.
If we don’t have independent newspapers in Chicago, how can we possibly have anything to o er the world?
STAFF NOTE
Just in time for Christmas: a tiny tale with a happy ending . . .
So my wife and I were dashing up Madison to get to the United Center. It was 90 minutes before tip-o .
It was Hat Night, meaning the Bulls were giving away free hats to the first few thousand or so fans who showed up.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Ben, you already have, like, 20 Bulls hats. Isn’t that enough?”
Yes, it’s true, I am to Bulls hats what Imelda Marcos was to shoes. But the BMO Artist Hat Series giveaways are not just any old Bulls merch. They are supercool baseball caps designed by Chicago artists and, as such, are as close to a fashion statement as I will ever make.
And I’m not alone. There’s a subterranean universe of Bulls fans who love these caps. On Hat Night, you have to get there early if you want one before they run out.
Plus, that evening’s hats were especially supercool, in robin’s-egg blue. My wife and I saw them on the Internet and exclaimed, “We gotta get one!”
And that explains why we were racing up Madison 90 minutes before tip-o .
Anyway, we got to the front door and hustled through the metal detectors. I offered my phone to the usher so he could zap us in, leading to the following exchange . . .
Me: Where are the hats?
Usher: What hats?
Turned out those supercool, robin’s-egg blue hats were not being given away at the Chicago Bulls game. No, they were being given away at the Windy City Bulls game. (That’s the Bulls’ minor-league team that plays in Hoffman Estates.)
Apparently, in our eagerness to get those hats, my wife and I had not carefully read the Internet blurb promoting the giveaway. Oops.
But wait, don’t despair. There’s a happy ending on the horizon.
As we wandered around killing time, my wife was approached by Todd, with a cameraman in tow.
If you’ve been to a Chicago Bulls game, you know Todd. He’s the peppy master of ceremonies you see on the big screen.
Todd told my wife if she correctly answered a Bulls trivia question, he’d give her a free hat and put her on the big screen.
And she said OK.
So as the cameraman zoomed in on my wife, Todd pressed his mike in her face and asked, “Who was the Bulls’ number-one draft choice in 2008?”
Alas, my wife may love those supercool Bulls hats, but there are limits to her knowledge of Bulls trivia. She said the first name that popped in her mind . . .
“Michael Jordan?”
“Sorry,” said Todd.
Don’t hate—it’s a reasonable answer. As that’s the name 99 out of 100 people would offer to any question about a Bulls player. Given it’s likely the only name in Bulls history everyone knows.
No worries. Todd gave my wife a hat just for being a good sport and playing the game.
And so she walked away with a supercool, cherry-red Bulls hat. Plus, the Bulls won. How about that for a happy ending!
By the way, the number-one draft choice in 2008? Derrick Rose. Oh, don’t act like you knew that.
Merry Christmas, everybody. v
—Ben Joravsky, senior writer m bjoravsky@chicagoreader.com
The Michael Jordan statue PRAYITNO
CITY LIFE
calendar
The To-Do
Upcoming events and activities you should know about
By SALEM COLLO-JULIN
We all deserve a little fun and relaxation this time of year. Here are some ideas, and be sure to check out our City Life, Music, Theater, and Film sections as well as our community created events calendars at chicagoreader.com for more.
Thu 12/19
Feel like showing o your cinematic knowledge? Falling in love with camp? Get some pals and head to Fullerton Avenue for a round of Facets Film Trivia , an “infotainment quiz show” that o ers special prizes to winning trivia teams including film memorabilia. It’s followed by a screening of Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 soap opera-esque action thriller Starship Troopers, preceded by Shane Chung’s short film Check Please (2024). 7 PM (movies start at 9 PM), $10-$12, 1517 W. Fullerton, facets.org
SAT 12/21
In a giving mood? You can throw a candy cane in any direction this time of year and hit a holiday vendor, but tonight’s Heathen Holiday Market promises wares that might appeal to your inner headbanger: the organizers promise “alternative, metal, punk, goth, pagan, witchy, and all things o beat!” Festive slushy alcoholic drinks will be available for purchase and DJ CarrieMonster will play darkly festive tunes. 6–11 PM, free entry, Live Wire Lounge, 3394 N. Milwaukee, 21+ only, livewireloungechicago.com
Filmmaker, artist, and past Reader contributor Heather McAdams has collaborated with her partner, musician and artist Chris Ligon, for years on a variety of projects, including a series of very popular self-published calendars devoted to the furthest reaches of obscure music trivia. Tonight’s Country Calendar Show is the debut for 2025’s version, and the event planned is more akin to a
debutante ball than a simple preview party. A slate of Americana, rock, country, and alt-pop Chicago heavy hitters will perform covers of several of the bands and musicians featured in the calendar, including crooner Andrew Sa covering Slim Whitman and the Hushdrops with their take on Tommy James & the Shondells’ oeuvre. McAdams and Ligon will also screen 16 mm films and be on hand to sell records, books, Ligon’s new CD release, and McAdams’s original art. 8 PM, $40 (show is sold out as of press time), FitzGerald’s, 6615 Roosevelt, Berwyn, 21+, fitzgeraldsnightclub.com
MON 12/23
This time around, the annual celebration of Kwanzaa happens from Thursday, December 26, 2024 until Wednesday, January 1, 2025, but you can get a head start on immersing yourself in Pan-Africanism by viewing the exhibition “Project a Black Planet: the Art and Culture of Panafrica,” open through March 20, 2025 at the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s a wideranging survey of art and artists who have integrated the principles of Pan-Africanism into their work, and the 350 objects gathered come from artists who work on four continents: Africa, North America, South America, and Europe. Illinois is wellrepresented by work by Chicagoan Kerry James Marshall as well as New York artist David Hammons, who was born in Springfield. Open today 11 AM–5 PM, hours vary but the museum is closed on Wednesday, December 25 and Wednesday, January 1, 2025. Free for members, children 14 and younger, Chicago teens under 18 years old, Link and WIC cardholders, and Illinois educators; $21–$32 (discounts available for Illinois and Chicago residents, see website for details). 111 S. Michigan, artic.edu v
m scollojulin@chicagoreader.com
Top: Samuel Fosso. The Chief: He Who Sold Africa to the Colonists , from the series Tati, 2008. The Art Institute of Chicago, promised gi of Isabel Wilcox. Courtesy Jean-Marc Patras Gallery, Paris. © Samuel Fosso. ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO Middle le : Heather McAdams. Portrait , 2002.
COURTESY THE ARTIST
Middle right: Starship Troopers COURTESY THE ARTIST
Bottom: Tavares Strachan. Kojo, 2021. Courtesy the artist and Perrotin. © Tavares Strachan.
ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
FOOD & DRINK
Find more one-of-a-kind Chicago food and drink content at
Loud Mouth mouths off at the next Monday Night Foodball
Two front-of-house smart-asses break out from Lakeview’s the Piggery at the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary’s Tavern.
By MIKE SULA
Most days, you can find Cindy Mendoza and Matt Pospiech in the dining room at the Piggery slinging nachos, wings, burgers, and sass.
“I’m always talking crap,” says Mendoza, “because I’m an asshole sometimes.”
“Cindy’s got no filter,” agrees Pospiech. “And that’s why I love her. She takes no bullshit.”
A compatible appetite for mouthiness sustained their friendship over the last decade after they both started working at Pospiech’s father’s Lakeview sports bar.
Pospiech had just graduated from the University of Kansas, where he ran a pop-up taqueria selling tacos to drunk frat boys. He started out working prep in the kitchen, but in 2016,
he moved up to general manager. “That was right before the Cubs made their run,” he says.
“Things got real crazy for a little bit there.”
Mendoza is the Piggery’s bar manager and a prodigious home cook, and though they both found common ground in the front of the house, they began cooking together during the pandemic and posting to social media with a scratch inventiveness a few steps beyond the bar food they served at the Piggery—dishes like Nigerian beef suya with peanut spice rub or wild fennel shrimp cakes, with ’nduja yogurt, powdered capers, and preserved lemons.
“Part of the reason we started doing this is because I’ve always felt the menu at the Piggery is pretty basic,” says Pospiech. “I’m not
hating on it. It’s been in business for 14 years and it does what it does well. We wanted our own thing.”
There were other motivations. “‘Maybe we need to actually find a way to make money doing this,” recalls Mendoza. In June 2023, they threw their first pop-up down the street at the Long Room under the name Loud Mouth.
“It’s just kind of a play on ‘You’re a loudmouth.’ ‘No, you’re a loudmouth,’” says Pospiech.
“We wanted a name that had nothing to do with food,” says Mendoza. “Because we don’t have a theme.”
“Kind of,” says Pospiech. “She always needs
to have a Mexican thing every time.”
A theme of sorts did begin to emerge as more pop-ups followed.
“A lot of our menus have really labor-intensive stuff,” he says. “We’re making our own pasta from scratch. We’re making our own hot dogs from scratch. We’re doing these tater tots with 30-40 layers of paper-thin sliced potatoes that we stack on top of each other.” Pospiech generates ideas, while Mendoza reins him in. “She will absolutely tell me if the food sucks,” he says. “She’ll be like, ‘No, we’re not doing that.’ And I’m like, ‘But it’s so interesting!’ One time we made a Greek hot dog that we were grinding, encasing, and smoking ourselves. It was a little too chewy, and she
Cindy Mendoza and Matt Pospiech, an al pastor skewer dish, and miso mushroom pasta
POETRY CORNER
RLOUD MOUTH AT MONDAY NIGHT FOODBALL
Mon 12/30, 6 PM until sellout
Frank and Mary’s Tavern, 2905 N. Elston instagram.com/loudmouthchi
Ihave two big loves in life: tabletop games and really good food. Luckily, Bonus Round Game Cafe in Lakeview has both. I stumbled upon the cozy cafe and bar when I was getting shortchanged on shifts at a retail place and needed a second job to keep afloat. While working at Bonus Round didn’t pan out (my brand of ADHD is not suitable for being a waiter), owners Courtney Hartley and Drew Lovell remained friends of mine, and I’ve been a regular ever since.
FOOD & DRINK
things that, when cooked right, has the texture of meat—will appreciate this delicious rendition of veganism’s hottest ingredient. It’s not trying to taste exactly like meat per se, but it’s not crunchy or gushy like some failed attempts at jackfruit can be.
Dressed in tangy, slightly spicy Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce, it melts in the mouth like pulled pork, but it’s not trying to usurp its inspiration either. It’s not a sandwich one goes into with scrutiny about whether it replicates meat perfectly. It’s just a damn good sandwich!
I’m not a vegan. I very much eat meat and its by-products, and I enjoy doing so. But the trio of “Woolfy” BBQ jackfruit sliders at Bonus Round? They transcend lines between veggie and meat-eater palates. I’m picky about my toasted sandwiches because I hate the way rough bread scrapes against the roof of my mouth, but the sliders manage to have the perfect balance of crispy panini-pressed buns with a soft, slightly sweet gluten.
Fans of jackfruit—a tropical fruit of all
just said, ‘Absolutely not. We’re not selling this. We’re redoing this.’”
Pospiech’s father and his partners eventually invited Loud Mouth to stage their pop-ups at the Piggery itself, playing to an enthusiastic core of regulars. “The thing we love about the Piggery is that they are really open to all of our ideas,” Pospiech says. “We can use that kitchen as our own little lab to experiment.”
Though the goal is to open their own spot one day, they’re happy to make use of the Piggery’s resources to further that goal. Meanwhile, Pospiech has completely upgraded the Piggery’s menu, which debuts on January 2.
But Loud Mouth’s repertoire is all its own.
Bonus Round has a large menu of drinks that complement the Woolfy well, but I’d argue it’s best paired with game recommendations from the cafe’s staff of tabletop connoisseurs. As Chicago’s first board game cafe, they boast hundreds of games to choose from, and with staff who have a knack for explaining the rules quickly and easily, you can get right to a fun (and delicious) night out with your friends. —CHARLI RENKEN BONUS ROUND GAME CAFE 3230 N. Clark, $10, 773-857-1037, bonusroundcafe.com v
Reader Bites celebrates dishes, drinks, and atmospheres from the Chicagoland food scene. Have you had a recent food or drink experience that you can’t stop thinking about? Share it with us at fooddrink@ chicagoreader.com.
Those tater tots have become a signature. After they’re layered, they’re baked with heavy cream, pressed overnight, portioned, deep fried, and served with Spanish-style salsa brava, dehydrated chives, and a tangy chile-garlic powder. So has the pasta: handrolled pici, with miso garlic butter, and sherry vinegar–sauteed mushrooms. Both are on the menu, with a few other dishes (including a Mexican thing—duck confit flautas with mole), on December 30, when Loud Mouth comes to Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at Frank and Mary’s Tavern. v
m msula@chicagoreader.com
I want to Fall in Love In Chicago
Somewhere between Waveland and Cottage Grove
Lies a treasure I’ve searched my whole life to find. She’ll be sweeter than Margie’s Candies, Brighter than a sunset along LSD.
By Demetrius Amparan
I’ll take you on a drive to all the places I’ve ever lived, Telling you I’ve been everywhere—but never too far from you. We’ll trace our lineage through every neighborhood, From West Pullman to Rogers Park, Mapping out the moments we could have met sooner.
We’ll see each other for the first time at All Together Now, Through a friend of a friend. We’ll talk for hours, hoping the day never ends.
You’ll tell me your favorite mall was Evergreen Plaza, And I’ll ask if you were there The day Bow Wow got his chain snatched. Your cousin will have been my seventh-grade classmate— At least until they transferred closer to their daddy’s house.
You’ll ask my intentions, and I’ll tell you this: I want to fall in love with you in Chicago. Where the toughest streets are named after Ivy Leagues, Never meeting their siblings—Laramie, Loren, or Lawrence.
I want to ride with you
To places we’ve never seen, And grow old with you in a bungalow Like my grandmother’s on Wood.
I want our kids to take the Vincennes bus
To their best friend’s house, Roaming color-coded streets The way we used to.
I want to fall in love with you in Chicago— With the bucket boys drumming in the distance— As I get down on one knee to tell you:
I’ve loved you since before I knew your name, Before I learned how to ride the train.
And I’ll tell you, I know this city wasn’t built for just us two, But when I hold you in my arms, There’s no way it couldn’t be true.
Demetrius Amparan is a music artist and poet from the south side of Chicago. He is a nonprofit leader and father to daughters Ella and Addison. His latest work, Hold Me Down, released August 2024.
Fall Hours
Wednesday, Friday, Saturday: 11:00 AM–5:00 PM Thursday: 11:00 AM–6:00 PM
More Light! Exhibition Chicago design duo Luftwerk’s immersive interpretation of Aram Saroyan’s poem “lighght” transforms the Poetry Foundation gallery into a dynamic lightbox.
Open through February 15, 2025
Woolfy BBQ jackfruit sliders at Bonus Round Game Cafe
A weekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.
NEWS & POLITICS
HOUSING
In the zone
Zoning policy is complex and convoluted. It doesn’t have to be.
By JOE ENGLEMAN
It’s 6 PM on the Monday before Thanksgiving and Nick Zettel is standing at his desk. He sports blue glasses and a fading denim jacket with four Chicago star pins as he welcomes the residents tuning into the monthly, virtual zoning meeting. The chief of staff to Alderperson Daniel La Spata spends the first few minutes of the call describing the First Ward’s zoning process for new attendees. Zettel has overseen the ward’s zoning process since La Spata was first elected in May 2019. He’s an urban planner, a past Chicago United for Equity fellow, and a Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance member who teaches zoning at DePaul University.
I first met Zettel when I was an urban planning graduate student at the University of Illinois Chicago. Zettel, an alumnus, came to speak to my class. I got to know him more as a constituent and First Ward resident, and when I went to work as a zoning administrator in the 33rd Ward running a similar, albeit slightly di erent, community zoning process, he was on a very short list of people to call for questions and advice.
Zoning is a key tool that urban planners have at their disposal to administer how land is used. Di erent categories govern the kind of use (residential, business, commercial, manufacturing) and intensity of the use. “Density” is a measure of that intensity, signifying the number of units in a building. A single-family home is less dense than a three-flat or a West Loop skyscraper with a few hundred apartments. Together, use and density determine what can be built and what kinds of businesses can operate on a given piece of land. Land is treated as a commodity, meaning that how it’s used, what can be built on it, and what surrounds it impact its price. While the urban planning background that La Spata, Zettel, and a number of First Ward sta ers possess is helpful, they would argue that it’s not a particular skill set but, rather, a set of values like a commitment to small-d democracy that is important to ward-level zoning processes. They try to advance policy via zoning decisions, educate constituents about what is and is not in their ability to control, incorporate
feedback from residents about how to reach more people, and reflect annually (and over the course of an entire term) about the cases they encountered.
Alders enjoy a great deal of power over land use and development in their wards, often called aldermanic privilege or prerogative. You won’t find it in the city’s zoning code or mentioned on a zoning-change application. The Committee on Zoning, Landmarks, and Building Standards decides whether to advance zoning proposals to the full City Council, which has final approval, but generally an alderperson’s opinion has sway over a proposal’s fate (will it be deferred into parliamentary limbo or emerge from the committee with a “pass” or “do not pass” recommendation?). When longtime Alderperson Walter Burnett, recently installed as the committee’s chair and representing the 27th Ward—which often leads in zoning-change requests citywide— was asked about his leadership approach, he responded, “I want the people to have a voice. I don’t know every nook and cranny of every neighborhood. And when I say the people, I mean the alderman.”
One of the first big storms of Burnett’s tenure has been a test case for recent reforms aimed at eroding prerogative and moving long-deferred developments containing affordable housing units to the full City Council or even administrative approval. Somewhat ironically, the “inclusionary application” in question is a two-building Sterling Bay project near the infamous Lincoln Yards site that includes up to 124 a ordable units. Thanks to Burnett’s maneuvering at a December 11 City Council meeting, which followed a Ka aesque December 9 committee meeting, the project remains alive (and may even advance) in spite of local Alderperson Scott Waguespack’s opposition.
Moving west from Lincoln Yards, La Spata’s First Ward includes parts of Logan Square and West Town. Over the past quarter century, swaths of these community areas have seen residential and commercial tenants displaced by rising rents and new developments, historic preservation efforts, demolitions and
deconversions, and efforts to deter those displacement-inducing practices. There are also community members (and neighborhood groups), renters, condo associations, and homeowners who felt both listened to and ignored. What’s undeniable is that parts of Logan Square and West Town have been gentrified, many of its previous inhabitants have been displaced, the cost of land is through
morning in early October, and the alderperson, Zettel, and I are seated at a long table in the center of their office. “There is always some kind of a zoning process that existed before you got there, so there needs to be a respect for what was there, even as you build around it,” La Spata says. In the first days of his term, developers inundated the office with zoning change requests. Zettel recalls somewhere between 30 and 50 cases on his desk (more than many wards see in a year). A sta er in another ward o ce told Zettel the development community was “testing” them—burying them in paper and bad proposals.
Among First Ward residents, there was a
the roof, and there’s a dearth of affordable housing.
La Spata defeated incumbent alderperson Proco “Joe” Moreno in February 2019 and was inaugurated that May. “No one comes into office in a vacuum,” La Spata tells me. It’s a Friday
genuine desire to rebuild trust given what Zettel describes as an “everything goes” approach to zoning under Moreno. Some neighborhood groups requested La Spata reconsider several zoning changes Moreno had given a green light to, while another group of residents approached La Spata and demanded the o ce declare a six-month moratorium on zoning changes altogether. La Spata opted against a moratorium given the volume of cases they saw. Instead, Zettel interviewed zoning sta in several o ces including the Second, 32nd, and 35th Wards about “tips of the trade” like identifying “demolition upzones,” a type of speculative zoning proposal where an existing
multiunit building is replaced with one that has the same or fewer units leased at higher rents or sold as condominiums.
GOES AT
Zettel realized the ward couldn’t “push the goals of building more a ordable housing with a one-size-fits-all community process.” Instead, he began to advocate internally for a process that was more responsive than rigid. The ward adopted step-by-step procedures that most new zoning-change inquiries follow, such as a required intake form, but La Spata reserves the right to handle proposals di erently. For example, the o ce will always recommend proposals
for 100 percent income-limited housing. Before he was an alderperson, La Spata says he often felt that unless someone belonged to an established community group’s development committee “your opinion didn’t matter” or “you only got a peek behind the curtain at the tail end of the zoning process.” That alienating feeling informed the ward’s “First Look” zoning meetings. He wanted First Ward residents to weigh in early on rough drafts of proposals. “We’re bringing you in so your perspective can inform this. It doesn’t matter whether you live next door, a mile away, or if you’re part of a particular zoning group, your opinion
on this matters,” La Spata says. He’s fond of meetings where “the developer puts together an A-B test of a zoning change, not just ‘should it be nothing or should it be this?’”
Ahead of meetings, First Ward sta distribute flyers to the 100 closest buildings to the proposed site. At meetings, applicants present their proposals while Zettel moderates and asks questions of the development team that residents have sent to the ward o ce ahead of time or that virtual attendees put in the chat. Zettel might explain an obscure zoning term an applicant’s attorney used, clarify that ward o ces don’t issue demolition or building permits (the Department of Buildings does), or remind
NEWS & POLITICS
attendees that the o ce can’t express a preference between rental versus condominium units. Zettel also shares a feedback form with two broad questions: “What do you like about this proposal?” and “What would you change about this proposal?” If feedback responses are low, they’ll distribute flyers again.
ENVIRONMENT
continued from p. 9 a ward o ce can do to promote a ordability in this environment. The proposal first came to the ward as a single-family home, but through community conversations and a new ordinance to reduce parking and increase density near transit, it evolved into a new spin on the vernacular West Town six-flat, which earlier zoning code overhauls had made illegal. It’s not technically income-limited, he says, but it will be relatively a ordable. “Do I think those units will be more a ordable than a three-flat condo or a single-family home over time? You better believe it.”
Several weeks after the First Look meetings, Zettel forwards the collected comments to one of 13 community groups for evaluation. Zettel then compiles everything and discusses each case with La Spata, who decides whether to hold additional meetings or make a recommendation.
The process has had room to evolve over time, and the pair credit ward residents for innovations like suggesting the distribution of flyers to the impacted area before meetings, keeping zoning meetings virtual, and simulcasting and archiving meetings via Facebook Live. These changes, La Spata says, aim to make the process more democratic and less exclusionary. A Boston University research study of 97 Massachusetts cities and towns found in-person zoning meetings were dominated by older men opposed to new housing. The First Ward meeting I attended in September had roughly ten people on the call, and the video of that meeting has been viewed more than 700 times. The recording of a November 25 meeting had almost 500 views.
“There’s a certain privilege in being able to be thoughtful and considerate about how zoning is happening, “ La Spata says. “I firmly recognize there are communities across Chicago that would love to have the level of development interest that the First Ward does. I try to keep that in the back of my mind while also recognizing that development and capital are like water, in a way. You can just let it run completely over a community— eroding it entirely—or you can channel it and guide it in productive ways.”
One of the ways they try to guide it is through policy goals, like encouraging the construction of granny flats and coach houses and expanding areas in the ward where they’re permitted, preserving a ordable housing, reducing parking, and encouraging development near transit. Zettel also produces an annual State of the Ward report that shares data, case studies, and zoning trends in the ward and citywide. You can build a majority of alderpeople with an interest in “community” input on zoning matters. The First Ward’s approach to zoning is just one of a handful used by alders. The level of accessibility, engagement, and community
involvement in the process varies from ward to ward. Almost a decade ago, Alderperson Carlos Ramirez-Rosa’s 35th Ward developed the Community-Driven Zoning and Development (CDZD) process, which has received attention from organizations like Local Progress and Democracy Beyond Elections. It’s also in use in Alderperson Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez’s 33rd Ward (where I worked for a year and a half) and has recently been adopted by Alderperson Julia Ramirez’s 12th Ward. In addition to community input, the CDZD approach gives community organizations a substantial role in the process and o ers specific guidelines to which both zoning-change applicants and community zoning meetings must adhere—like placing large, detailed zoning notice signs at the property in multiple languages and providing translations at meetings.
Alderperson Matt Martin’s 47th Ward, which sees some of the highest rates of development and zoning requests in the city, provides applications to neighborhood groups and chambers of commerce for review and requires applicants to contact occupants of adjacent buildings (not just property owners). Applicants must also meet with the 25-person Zoning Advisory Council, composed of ward renters and homeowners who provide nonbinding feedback.
Some, like Fourth Ward alderperson Lamont Robinson and 21st Ward alderperson Ronnie Mosley, direct an applicant to schedule a meeting with the alder and bring relevant materials required by the city’s zoning-change application form. Far-northwest-side alderperson Jim Gardiner and west-side alderperson Christopher Taliaferro use their websites’ “development” pages to highlight completed developments, not their process for prospective ones. Others, both those with ward websites and those whose web presence consists mostly of social media and newsletters, provide little direction or instruction, making it difficult to discern how potential zoning changes are handled. (If you want to learn more about your alder’s zoning process, your ward o ce might be the best place to start.)
The barriers to building more housing—particularly a ordable housing—in the First Ward, Zettel says, are tied to real estate and finance. Even before construction costs and interest rates skyrocketed over the past few years, the city’s inclusive zoning ordinance and existing federal affordable housing programs weren’t meeting Chicago’s affordable housing needs. Zettel points to a recently approved zoning change at 1342 W. Ohio as an example of what
That won’t happen in every case though. Developers frequently decline to add additional units to or remove parking spaces from their projects, Zettel says. In areas where land costs are high, it can be quite lucrative for a developer (and their financers) to build fewer units or even single-family homes by seeking exceptions to the zoning code or using a lot’s existing zoning. Putting “circuit breakers” in the zoning code, Zettel says—like banning single-family homes near transit—could deter that outcome. While a growing number of progressive aldermanic o ces are building and refining participatory zoning processes, Chicago remains 50 frankensteined limbs with conflicting approaches. These conflicts can be complex, messy, surreal, and personal. They play out on our blocks, lead to fights on Next Door, and concern the fate of shuttered institutions where we learned, laughed, loved, lived, and prayed. It can be difficult to accept that speculative market forces control the future of the places we have been shaped by, feel we own, or once did own. If we can’t control the future of these places, or the market that does, we expect that someone—our leaders and our city—must.
During his early days in the ward office, Zettel says he’d lose sleep over what a ward office could do in the face of frustrating structural forces like speculation and global capitalism. Over time, he accepted that it’s just not possible to make an impact at that scale. “Regardless of whether you like it, that’s what we’re working with. That’s the regime,” he says. He found peace thinking about where an impact can be made. “We can do the things that ward o ces are best set up to do: inform and educate our residents, shape what we can, make sure there’s a seat at the table for everyone, try and figure out who are we missing, and bring this forward in the best possible way.” v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Banking on data centers
City and state officials are pitching data centers as the economic driver of the future—but at what cost?
By S. NICOLE LANE
Right now, somewhere out there, a data center is working just for you.
Anything that flows through your laptop, tablet, or smartphone is driven in part by one of these massive computing and storage facilities. Data centers—on average 100,000 square feet in size—house, process, and distribute digital information 24 hours a day.
Chicagoland’s ample land, water, and money make the area a mecca for the booming data center industry. According to a June report from real estate and investment firm CBRE, Chicago ranks third among cities for data center inventory. It has four state-backed data centers, in addition to nine in the northwestern suburb of Elk Grove Village. On October 2, Governor JB Pritzker unveiled plans for a new facility in Aurora—that city’s second.
But data centers aren’t risk-free. They require a substantial amount of electricity to operate around the clock, every day of the year. “To meet the demand on existing power grids, states will have to grapple with adding more capacity while also attempting to meet state renewable energy targets,” says Helena Volzer, senior agriculture policy manager at the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
An October analysis from the U.S. Energy Information Administration found that data centers are increasingly turning to nuclear power. For example, Microsoft plans to reactivate one of the reactors at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, home to the country’s worst nuclear incident, to power its data centers in the mid-Atlantic. Three Mile Island closed in 1979 following a partial meltdown of one of its reactors, but the deal with Microsoft will reopen the plant in 2028.
The Palisades nuclear power plant in
Michigan is likewise slated to reopen in October 2025. It was once called one of the worst-performing nuclear reactors in the country by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and, in 2013, leaked 80 gallons of radioactive waste into Lake Michigan. The plant opened in 1971 and closed in 2022 after a control rod failure. Power plants typically have a lifespan of 30 years, although some operate longer; Palisades was open for 51. Kevin Kamps, a radioactive waste watchdog at the advocacy group Beyond Nuclear, worries that data centers are an excuse to throw caution to the wind. He says it’s “unwise, shameful, and unacceptable” to restart closed nuclear power plants, generate more nuclear waste, and gut environmental protection laws.
Turning to nuclear, Kamps says, leaves o cials to play “radioactive Russian roulette in terms of extremely high risks to safety, security, health, and the environment—as well as agriculture.” The use of both Palisades and Three Mile Island represents “direct threats to agriculture and fresh water for drinking and irrigation.”
Pronuclear advocates suggest that while such power plants are expensive to build, they generate power at low costs. Nuclear power is advertised as cleaner than coal and fossil fuels because it doesn’t directly emit carbon dioxide. It also uses less land and is less reliant on weather than wind and solar, making it appealing for environmentalists and populations that find wind farms an eyesore. Data centers also require the same amount of energy at all times, and since nuclear operates similarly, it isn’t di cult to remain consistent.
Data centers do more than just increase increase the demand on power grids.
They also put pressure on the water supply. “Data centers do require large amounts of electricity, and generating that electricity via coal, natural gas, or nuclear-fired power plants also requires water for cooling,” Volzer says. As it stands, almost three-quarters of water drawn from the Great Lakes is used for electrical power generation, according to a 2023 fact sheet from the Great Lakes Commission. The region is home to the world’s largest supply of fresh water—but it’s not an infinite resource, Volzer adds.
Luckily, protections for our water exist under the Great Lakes–Saint Lawrence River Basin Compact. The agreement prohibits the diversion of Great Lakes water (with limited exceptions), requires the states to manage water use, sets water conservation and efficiency
goals, and establishes common water use reporting protocols.
“The compact’s prohibition on diversions is designed to generally ensure that Great Lakes water and groundwater stays in the Great Lakes Basin,” says Volzer. “This means that proposals to pipe Great Lakes water for any use, including data centers, to a location outside the Great Lakes region are legally and logistically not in the cards—the compact’s existence and operation prohibits it.”
Andrew Chien, the William Eckhardt distinguished service professor of computer science at the University of Chicago, says it’s possible for data centers to run on less water. “While all data centers will recirculate water internally for cooling, and a small amount of water is consumed by that, by far the largest part of data-center water consumption is for evaporative cooling.” Evaporative cooling uses water evaporation to lower the temperature of the air. Data centers that use this cooling method consume about 25.5 million liters of water per day, Chien says. “We already know how to eliminate this by using other cooling techniques.”
So, will one data center put a strain on the Great Lakes? Volzer says, “In a vacuum, the simple answer is probably not—but nothing happens in a vacuum. In the real world, the important and complicated questions to be answered regarding any large use of water are whether and how the compact will apply, how that singular use stacks up cumulatively in the landscape of other water use and climate change, and how states are utilizing their conservation programs to sustainably and responsibly manage all large uses of water.”
In addition to sucking up thousands of gallons of water and overloading the grid, there are a host of other environmental concerns that come with building more data centers. According to recent research, data centers have roughly the same carbon footprint as the aviation industry, another significant source of global pollution. The Guardian in September found that Google, Microsoft, and Apple’s greenhouse gas emissions were seven times higher than what the companies reported. Other environmental concerns include the batteries used in data centers, which require mining metals, and noise pollution from cooling systems and servers, which is comparable to heavy tra c.
CyrusOne, which owns the Aurora facility, will receive a tax incentive package as part of the state Data Center Investment
NEWS & POLITICS
Program. According to the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity’s 2023 annual report, tax breaks for all data centers in Illinois have totaled $6.5 billion in investments and 469 total jobs since 2019.
As the city faces a $1 billion shortfall heading into the 2025 fiscal year, data centers may be the ticket to balancing the budget without increasing city taxes. In September, Alderperson Gilbert Villegas from the 36th Ward successfully pushed an ordinance that will bring more data centers to Chicago. Villegas, who chairs the City Council’s Economic, Capital and Technology Development Committee, wrote the ordinance because he wants more city data stored in the city instead of paying millions for others to store it elsewhere.
Neighborhoods on Chicago’s south side are most at risk of being the future home to data centers, as they have large vacant areas of industrial land. In July, Pritzker announced that the first quantum computing campus in the country would be built on the former U.S. Steel site on the southeast side of the city. The plot of land, abandoned since 1992, has been renamed the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park and will be anchored by PsiQuantum, a California-based startup. The campus would also include a defense lab by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Quantum campuses and data centers are di erent. Data centers house and store data, while quantum centers house quantum computers. Nevertheless, both require immense water cooling and have environmental implications. Residents and community groups requested government officials slow down campus construction due to concerns over
environmental and health safety. The neighborhood has long been ignored and used as a dumping ground for toxic waste. In September, the Alliance of the Southeast and 80 local residents wrote a letter to companies and lawmakers that demanded “a public transparent environmental impact study and environmental impact plan that includes topics such as effects on water, noise, emissions, chemical use, and a clear transparent assessment of site contamination as well as remediation plans and risk mitigations.”
The letter continues, “Too often, neighbors in this area and other parts of Chicago are not invited and are left in the dark in the planning stages of planned developments impacting our communities, or a sham of public engagement is made after all the decisions have been made behind closed doors.”
On November 21, the Chicago Plan Commission granted preliminary approval to zoning changes needed for construction. The park will be located right on Lake Michigan, which could heat water used for cooling systems, impacting an already stressed body of water. While local alderpeople and politicians see data centers as a means for economic growth and jobs, staying alert about the environmental impacts is crucial for a changing digital landscape, especially since data centers in Chicago aren’t going away anytime soon.
Volzer says the Great Lakes region will probably be home to many more data centers in the future. “Policymakers will need to address increasing demand for water and ask tough questions about who will benefit from that water use and how.” v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Steelworkers Park, previously part of the U.S. Steel complex known as South Works LAYLA BROWN-CLARK
ARTS & CULTURE
Required reading
Six nonfiction recommendations written by or about Illinoisans
By EMILY MCCLANATHAN
’Tis the season when my TBR list is as out of control as ever, but the number of books I can feasibly finish before the end of December is finite. So, I decided to prioritize a small stack of nonfiction books written by or about Illinoisans and published in 2024. For local history bu s and nonfiction fans of many stripes, I o er up a smorgasbord of end-of-year reads: two accounts of Chicago activists, a medical true-crime story, a pharmaceutical hoax, a breast cancer memoir, and the biography of a fierce woman journalist.
When Friends Come From Afar: The Remarkable Story of Bernie Wong and Chicago’s Chinese American Service League by Susan Blumberg-Kason (University of Illinois Press)
If your New Year’s resolutions include giving back to your community, I suggest looking for inspiration in the story of Bernie Wong and the Chinese American Service League, a nonprofit organization she founded with nine friends in the late 1970s. This group of young social workers and graduate students, most of whom immigrated from Hong Kong and met at the University of Chicago, observed specific needs among the immigrants living in Chicago’s Chinatown and pitched in to help. Their grassroots efforts have since blossomed into the midwest’s largest social service agency serving Asian Americans, with programs for children, youth, and seniors; culinary training; affordable housing; mental health care; legal services, and more. Susan Blumberg-Kason’s book is not only a touching tribute to Wong, who died in 2021, but also a testament to the positive impacts of community service.
The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine by Matthew C. Ehrlich (University of Illinois Press)
tor’s criminally unscrupulous methods (this number is likely an undercount). The result is not only an intriguing true-crime story but also a moving look at a community that has su ered greatly during the opioid epidemic.
The Dragon From Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany by
Pamela D. Toler (Beacon Press)
In light of the medical misinformation and public health conflicts that have marked the first half of this decade, it’s illuminating to look back at a period in the 1950s and ’60s when a purported miracle treatment for cancer sparked a swirl of conspiracy theories, public protests, government hearings, and legal cases. Much of the furor centered on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where revered physiologist and university vice president Andrew Ivy championed the cause of Krebiozen, a drug peddled by Yugoslavian doctor Stevan Durovic and embraced by a range of cancer patients, politicians, and journalists. Matthew C. Ehrlich, professor emeritus of journalism at U. of I., deftly traces the dramatic twists and turns of what he calls a “quintessential example of quackery.”
Prescription for Pain: How a OncePromising Doctor Became the “Pill Mill Killer” by Philip Eil (Steerforth)
This book came onto my radar at the 2024 American Writers Festival, where author Philip Eil participated in a true-crime panel. It tells the story of Paul Volkman, a physician who trained at the University of Chicago and lived in the city throughout his adult life, until he received four consecutive life sentences in federal prison for his “pill mill” operation in southern Ohio. Much of the deeply researched book follows Volkman’s career, but Eil also devotes significant attention to the 13 people whose overdose deaths were linked to the doc-
It’s hard to think of a higher compliment for a journalist in Nazi Germany than to be nicknamed “that dragon from Chicago” by Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring. This badass moniker refers to the subject of a new biography: Sigrid Schultz, the trailblazing woman who led the Chicago Tribune’s Berlin bureau during the Nazis’ rise to power and the early years of World War II. Spending her early childhood on Chicago’s north side and an itinerant adolescence in Europe, Schultz was seemingly born for this role, with her talent for languages, keen interest in politics and history, dogged work ethic, and savvy networking skills. Historian Pamela D. Toler frames her remarkable career within the broader history of American journalism, tracing the field’s gender dynamics, the expansion of international news coverage, the birth of radio newscasts, and the risks of reporting from countries with strict censorship laws.
No Games Chicago: How a Small Group of Citizens Derailed the City’s 2016 Olympic Bid by Tom Tresser (Routledge)
You don’t hear much these days about Chicago’s failed bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. As a lifelong Illinoisan, I was only vaguely aware of this consequential chapter in our recent history until I read a firsthand account by
Tom Tresser, one of the leaders of No Games Chicago, a grassroots group that successfully opposed the bid in 2009. Among the activists’ many concerns were the Olympics’ history of ballooning costs, privatization of public land, and restrictions of civil liberties. Many of their warnings turned out to be justified: the 2016 host city, Rio de Janeiro, ultimately spent an estimated $23.6 billion on the Games, overrunning its budget by 352 percent. “I was a major participant in this story, and I have waited for years for someone to tell it. No one has stepped forward, so I decided to give an account,” writes Tresser, a civic educator and public defender.
The Adventures of Cancer Bitch by S.L. Wisenberg (Tortoise Books)
Local author, editor, and writing coach S.L. Wisenberg survived breast cancer 17 years ago and wrote a memoir about the experience in her trademark style—a blend of self-deprecating, wry humor and sharp social commentary. Along with frank observations about the painful process and physical indignities of a mastectomy and chemotherapy, she analyzes the U.S. health-care system’s shortcomings, the cancer research fundraising complex, and the gendered dynamics of breast reconstruction surgery. She also recounts the farewell party she threw for her left breast and the “U.S. out of Iraq” henna tattoo she sported on her bald head. For the 15th anniversary edition released this year, Wisenberg has revised and expanded her book with a new postscript and endnotes. v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
ARTS & CULTURE
YEAR IN REVIEW ESSAY
It’s slime time
No color is more now than Gak green.
By MICCO CAPORALE
Pantone is drunk on dumb bitch juice if it thinks some color called “Mocha Mousse” is the vibe entering 2025. No color is more now than that Gak green. You know the one: it’s like if Slimer squeaked out a nice, oozy shart or the Toxic Avenger had visible body odor. The color percolated in the zeitgeist all year, like when the nail polish brand Essie dropped Main Character Moment as part of its spring 2024 collection. Then in May, Charli XCX had a wall painted the shade in Brooklyn to tease her forthcoming album brat , and within a month that rancid fart color was everywhere. Pitchfork Music Festival even used it as part of this year’s tripped-out, uncanny valley branding before announcing its time in Chicago was over. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: it was the year of radioactive green.
Since 1999, the Pantone Color Institute has picked a color of the year, supposedly less as a trend forecast and more as a response to what the world “needs.” Earlier this month, it announced 2025’s color is a blushy brown. (For 2024, it picked something called “Peach Fuzz,” which is a soft orange like a bellini mixed with rosé and might be the o cial gang color of wine moms.) On its website, Pantone describes Mocha Mousse as embodying “relaxed elegance.” The company’s executive director, Leatrice Eiseman, told TIME it’s “genderless” and “authentic”—a color that addresses a need for “harmony.”
But there’s nothing neutral about so-called “neutrals” like Pantone’s creamy mahogany; they’re defined by what the dominant social order considers least o ensive. Mocha Mousse is basically a sadd color—one of the limited drab (aka “serious”) tones permitted by 17th-century Puritans—that’s been rebranded with luxury language. By emphasizing all the things the color sidesteps—things such as gender and artifice—Pantone reveals its desire to soothe the anxieties of people who fit neatly into a techno-fascist system of authentication that leaves everyone else vulnerable. Radioactive green is everything Mocha Mousse is not.
There’s nothing timeless or elegant about this green. It’s a symptom of chaotic 90s revivalism—a color embedded deep in the childhood nostalgia of anyone born between the late 1970s and early 2000s. One of Nickelodeon’s flagship shows was the sketch comedy/ game show You Can’t Do That on Television, which it acquired in 1981 and regularly featured “sliming”—unleashing a deluge of green goo on someone as an act of humiliation and celebration in equal measure. Dripping neon ooze became synonymous with the brand and leaked into other Nickelodeon shows, like Double Dare. Using countercultural aesthetics like gross-out humor and rock ’n’ roll, the network reached its cultural zenith in the 90s. The antiauthoritian stamp of the underground is in the visuals, soundtracks, and plotlines of shows such as The Adventures of Pete & Pete, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and Rocko’s Modern Life. Even if you weren’t a kid who had cable at that time, there was a sense of disgusting deliciousness and freespirited abandon that you associated with that green. The color was for unlikely heroes. It made you stronger, braver, cooler, and street smarter, like the ooze that made the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it was used to market the decade’s greatest sugar waters. In 1987, Coca-Cola’s Hi-C rebranded its Citrus Cooler as Ecto Cooler to capitalize on the success of the Ghostbusters franchise. The drink had a tangy, unplaceable flavor and something to do with the character Slimer; as a child, I quietly thought of it as his urine because that seemed a more plausible (and funnier) explanation for the taste than anything resembling fruit. In 1997, Coca-Cola tried to compete with Pepsi’s Mountain Dew by launching another citrus-inspired hit of glucose: Surge. To give it extra zing, the soda used maltodextrin—then popular amongst bodybuilders—and it was marketed as loud and energetic. In one commercial, teen boys clamor like a frenzied pack of zombies across an obstacle course in the middle of an urban street made of abandoned couches to, as the voice-over says, “Feed the
rush.” In another, they slip and collide their way down a hallway slicked with soap and water in a competition for the blessed beverage. The same year Surge launched, Gregg Araki released Nowhere, the final and arguably best-known installment of his Teenage Apocalypse trilogy—three 90s movies that focused on teen alienation and underground culture. Nowhere ’s poster was the same radioactive green.
Charli XCX is no stranger to Araki (she’s appearing in his next film), and Billboard cites the title cards of his 2007 film Smiley Face as part of the inspiration for brat’s cover. She told Vogue Singapore: “I wanted to go with an offensive, o -trend shade of green to trigger the idea of something being wrong. I’d like for us to question our expectations of pop culture—why are some things considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad?”
There’s nothing neutral about so-called “neutrals” like Pantone’s creamy mahogany; they’re defined by what the dominant social order considers least offensive.
is what Pantone emphasized when it picked a similar, albeit more subdued green for its Color of the Year in 2017. But it’s that extra hint of neon—that bonus squirt of mellow yellow—that makes the green we’ve been seeing everywhere feel plastic or alien, and that’s precisely why people like it.
That other cultural behemoths, like Essie and Pitchfork Music Festival, were already o to the races with neon green shows Charli didn’t set the trend; she was on trend . But Charli did give the trend language that amplified its reach: It’s for brats. Chaos agents. People whose existences call attention to something others find uncomfortable. Like Mocha Mousse, neon green is not gendered. In fact, green has emerged as the color of choice among parents who are foregoing gender reveals. It’s also abundant in nature, which
Having a fake or foreign quality speaks to anyone trying to celebrate a cyborg or outsider existence—whether that’s one conferred by choice, force, or some combination of the two. For example, the U.S. should be mortified to be a country where it’s easier to kill an insurance company CEO than it is to access care for a debilitating spinal condition. And yet it’s us, the people who have to fight regularly with the architects of this system or forgo health coverage altogether—which is to say, most Americans—who are regularly embarrassed. We know a hero when we see one: he’s a guy named Luigi, and he wears a radioactive green hat and shirt when he goes adventuring with his brother Mario. Why can an insurance company delay, deny, or depose lifesaving care to policyholders, but when a policyholder says “delay, deny, depose” to an insurance company it results in jail time? Why are some things considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad? This country slimes too many of us in humiliating ways every single day, so the slime color has gotten popular in a celebratory way. It is the best of times, it is the worst of times: it is slime time. v
m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com
Slime green is for brats and chaos agents. MICCO CAPORALE
ARTS & CULTURE
OPENING
R‘Chicago
has always been a Native place’
An exhibition at the Newberry offers a learning opportunity for non-Native Chicagoans.
“Indigenous Chicago,” created through a collaboration between the Newberry Library and several Native community members, leads with the maxim that “Chicago has always been a Native place”—a lesson for Chicago’s non-Native population.
The exhibition presents five centuries of ongoing Native presence in Chicago. Many of the exhibited materials were created by colonists, but “Indigenous Chicago” reframes these documents to make it clear that the Europeans who arrived in North America were entering an established Native world that was destabilized by colonial violence. Further in, stories of Native people who returned or relocated to Chicago starting in the mid-20th century call attention to the community of mutual aid that continues to affirm Native culture and identity despite centuries of violent displacement.
These are familiar histories to Indigenous Chicagoans, who have yet to be offered reparations and whose land has yet to be returned. Instead, “Indigenous Chicago” offers an opportunity for acknowledgment by non-Native Chicagoans, raising awareness through an exhibition created with the care of many Native community members.
The exhibition has raised concern with the ChiNations Youth Council (CNYC), who have issued a statement critiquing what they call the misrepresentation of their work, the Newberry’s institutional network, and the exhibition’s monolithic narrative of Native peoples. A label has been rewritten to address some of these concerns, but as the CNYC points out, the Indigenous community of Chicago is larger than any organization that attempts to gatekeep and rewrite its narratives.
The exhibition and the statement are both a reminder that much remains to be done in combating the white supremacist heteropatriarchy that underpins Chicago, and that those who best understand how to upli and represent the legacy of Native Chicago communities are those communities themselves. —NATALIE JENKINS
“INDIGENOUS CHICAGO” Through 1/4/25: Tue-Thu 10 AM-7 PM, Fri-Sat 10 AM-5 PM, check website for holiday hours, The Newberry, 60 W. Walton, newberry.org/calendar/indigenous-chicago, free
RFabric becomes the body
Caleb Schroder’s so sculptures illustrate how garments reflect or deflect identity.
Phantoms emerge when crossing the threshold of Ackerman Clarke; sinewy, strung up bodies extend to the ceiling. In this solo exhibition, Caleb Schroder uses upcycled flannel to stitch and contort space through site-responsive works that contrast the autonomous with the holistic. The forms appear flat at first, yet subtly expand and drape as the viewer moves, revealing sculpted negative spaces that offer glimpses of other works. One sculpture clings to the side wall; one dominates the center like a spider; one anchors the back corner; and two shyly drape along adjacent walls. The work oscillates between intimacy and expansiveness—tiny stitched and beaded details draw viewers in, while the broader composition demands a step back.
The exhibition explores edges, seams, and the boundaries garments impose on gender-nonconforming bodies—flannel, in this case. Schroder’s artist statement offers insight, noting, “flannel is synonymous with the rugged outdoorsman.” While the forms appear genderless, they decisively traverse binary representation. Wrestling with these edges transforms fiber-cra into an interrogation of gender identity politics. The works feel tender yet grotesquely tense, with moments of cohesion and disarray. They provoke questions: What connective tissues link bodies to environments, and how do garments reflect or deflect identity?
Together, the sculptures form a family of silhouettes and ghosts, but individual pieces sharpen Schroder’s point. In What happens when extremes intermingle?, two flannel collars reach for each other, separated by a small gap. Here, fabric becomes the body—absent, frayed, yet reconstructed through sewing. —SAMUEL SCHWINDT “CALEB SCHRODER” Through 1/11: Wed–Sat noon–5 PM or by appointment, Ackerman Clarke, 2544 W. Fullerton, ackermanclarke.com/CALEB-SCHRODER v
Installation view, “Caleb Schroder,” 2024 COURTESY ACKERMAN CLARKE
THEATER
YEAR IN REVIEW
Dark days, bright stages
In 2024, Chicago theater companies offered prescience, defiance, hope, and joy.
By KERRY REID
I’m terrible at top-ten lists. For one thing, even though I saw about 125 shows this year, that’s not nearly enough of a sample to weigh in confidently. For another, it always feels a little reductive and mechanical to try to sum up an entire year of performances in one tidy numbered list. And let’s face it—there’s probably also some fear of commitment. What if I decide later that this show should have been on the list in place of that one? I have enough trouble sleeping already since the election. Who needs the extra guilt and stress? But even the process of deciding what shows to talk about here in a (probably vain) attempt to give some context to what happened on- and o stage in 2024 suggests that there are shows that stood out to me. And of course that’s the point: nobody goes to the trouble of creating a production thinking, “Well, I sure hope they’ll forget this one!” As a former acting teacher of mine once put it: “We only speak to change the world.”
I don’t know if anything that happened in Chicago theaters this past year will change the world (though god knows it could use some positive changes). But I do know that even as the world grows darker and the future looks grim for now, I’m grateful for the people who believe down to their bones that the simple act of telling stories gives us a place to begin understanding ourselves and each other a little bit better. Since it’s coming up again in a few weeks, it feels appropriate to start this journey through the calendar by mentioning the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival—the largest celebration of puppet arts in North America. The festival, headed by Blair Thomas, started out as a biannual event in 2015. Its growth over the past decade (they offer workshops year-round in addition to the now annual festival and have also launched a digital archive) has been exhilarating to witness. Puppetry is also a way for all kinds of performers and visual artists to explore their identities, as the Reader ’s Micco Caporale found in reporting on the Puppetqueers collective in March. As founder Lindsey Ball told Caporale, “There’s such an inherent joy in puppetry, no matter
the content, and I think people are drawn to that.” (A couple of weeks ago, I came across the beloved Puppet Bike in Andersonville and it indeed filled me with simple joy.)
Another ongoing source of civic pride happens every fall with Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival, presented by the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance. In addition to international and national artists, the festival provides a showcase for several local Latine companies, which this year included work from Colectivo El Pozo, Teatro Tariakuri, Subtext Studio Theatre, Repertorio Latino Theater Company, Visión Latino Theatre Company, and Aguijón Theater Company. The presence of so many local companies highlights that Chicago is also one of the most important incubators of Latine theater and performance in the nation. Though they weren’t a part of Destinos this year, Humboldt Park’s UrbanTheater Company produced the absorbing world premiere of Chicago Lore(s), Sammy A. Publes’s portrait of José “Cha Cha” Jiménez and the Young Lords. (The death of Juan Ramirez, the longtime artistic director of the influential Latino Chicago Theater Company, right before this year’s Destinos kicked o added a reminder of how deep the roots for Latine theater go in Chicago soil.)
Inevitably, given the direction we’re moving, stories of resistance and defiance hit extra hard for me. I’m not blaming Refracted Theatre Company for the election results (over 77 million people have a LOT to answer for on that count), but their decision to stage Laura Winters’s Coronation, about a dystopic U.S. where women can’t catch a break against the viciousness of patriarchy and environmental collapse, felt pretty eerily prescient in retrospect. On the other hand, seeing Nothing Without a Company’s raw, funny, and straightto-the-solar-plexus pop-punk musical by Kevin Sparrow, Sofa King Queer, days after the election felt like just the “fuck you, we’re not going anywhere” message we all need.
Harmony France, cofounder of the feminist musical theater company Firebrand, decided to resurrect the company after the election.
Black Ensemble Theater (BET) announced they were moving forward with plans to create a “cultural village” across the street from their Uptown home that will include a cafe, recording studio, and a ordable housing for artists. (I talked to Jackie Taylor, BET’s founder and CEO, when they first moved into their current theater in 2011, and she was talking then about acquiring the space across the street that was occupied at the time by the Japanese American Service Committee. Never bet against Jackie Taylor.)
Haven Chicago closed out their 11-year run with Hedwig and the Angry Inch —also the first show they ever produced. TimeLine Theatre, which hopes to finally open its own long-awaited space in Uptown in 2026, finished their storied tenure in their longtime Wellington Avenue home with Dolores Díaz’s Black Sunday—a play about forced deportations in the 1930s that also feels like it might be depressingly prescient. Northlight Theatre announced that they will soon begin breaking ground on their new space that will finally bring them back to Evanston. Collaboraction, which has bounced around a lot in its history, is landing in Humboldt Park’s Kimball Arts Center. Free Street, the oldest continuously operating o -Loop company and one with an unwavering commitment to social justice and inclusivity, found a new Back of the Yards home, while improv and sketch company the Revival moved up
from Hyde Park to the South Loop. Of course theater is more than real estate. The latter may give us the illusion of permanence, but as we’ve learned in the past month or so, the ground can shift under our feet pretty damn quickly. If being a theater writer has taught me anything, it’s to embrace ephemerality as the only constant in life and to realize that collaboration is at the heart of every endeavor.
Among the great collaborators and storytellers we lost this year in addition to Juan Ramirez: actor Mike Nussbaum, Kuumba Theatre Workshop founder Val Gray Ward, former Muntu Dance Theatre executive director Joan Gray, Greg Kandel (founder of Evanston Theatre, forerunner of Northlight), actor Molly LeCaptain, costume designer John Nasca, actor Cristin McAlister, performer-designer-filmmaker Larry Nance, actor and teacher Erin Philyaw, playwright David Rush, director and longtime Loyola theater professor Jonathan Wilson, and theater journalist, critic, and editor Kris Vire.
I’m frightened as hell for the future right now. But I feel confident that a lot of Chicago artists are ready to stand together and tell the stories we need to hear in the years to come, and remind us that the bastards don’t get to steal our joy. v
m kreid@chicagoreader.com
Rachel Hartmann (L) and Abby Palen of Puppetqueers (puppet by Palen)
THEATER
OPENING
RToo late for a cautionary tale?
A Bright Room Called Day shows us how we got here.
It’s not a comforting show for closing out the year, but Blank Theatre Company’s revival of Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day is an important one as we head into the bleak times ahead. Kushner’s look at the fall of the Weimar Republic through a group of bohemian and le ist friends in Berlin (and the play makes it clear these aren’t synonymous terms), from the first day of January 1932 to mid-November 1933, feels both prescient and immediate in Danny Kapinos’s spare but well-acted production in the Greenhouse Theater studio.
Kushner wrote this occasionally didactic early play in 1984 and ’85, during the lead-up to the second Reagan administration, and the parallels he obviously intended between the rise of the Third Reich and the sharp rightward shi of the 1980s are embodied in Zillah (Lilah Weisman), a young Jewish grad student. In the original version of Kushner’s play (itself inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s 1938 drama Fear and Misery of the Third Reich), Zillah writes letters to Reagan that she knows no one will read. During the first Trump administration, Kushner revised the play to send Zillah to 1980s Berlin, where she engages in an affair with a young German man, despite their language barrier.
Kushner noted in a 2019 interview with Alisa Solomon of the Nation that there was a wave of renewed interest in the play a er Trump’s first election, while also reflecting on the reviews of the early productions, which tended to pooh-pooh the Reagan/Reich parallels. “The Reagan counterrevolution’s mantra was that government is the problem. And hatred of government leads to hatred of democracy, and if it goes on long enough and isn’t checked by people who believe in democracy and believe in government, it’s going to lead to an attempt to replace it with something else—whether you can call it fascism in the mid-20th-century sense or some other antidemocratic, oligarchic kleptocracy,” Kushner told Solomon.
For those unfamiliar with the history of the collapse of the Weimar era, Kushner’s play (which includes Brechtian timeline projections of events as they unfold with depressing swi ness) is a good primer. It’s perhaps too late to call it a “cautionary tale,” but in Agnes Eggling (Katherine Schwartz), an actor with a middling career and vague desires to be part of the German Communist party, we perhaps see ourselves: a woman desirous of doing good and helping her friends, but fearful to the point of paralysis of the consequences of running afoul of those who can deny us our comforts, if not our very existence.
The internecine battles between Agnes’s Trotsky-loving cinematographer partner, Husz (Raúl Alonso), and Stalinist artist Annabella (Shannon Bachelder) feel depressingly on point as a reminder of the inability of various factions of the le and center-le to unite against fascism. The ghostly presence of Ann James’s mysterious and increasingly malevolent Die Alte (the Old Woman), who shows up in Agnes’s flat from time to time, and Ben Veatch’s sterling one-scene appearance as Gottfried Swetts (but you can call him Old Scratch, if you like) are among the many highlights in this intellectually rich, sometimes confounding, and
ultimately wrenching reminder of how easy it is to tear people apart and away from each other—and their values—when we fail to recognize the evil within and around us. —KERRY REID A BRIGHT ROOM CALLED DAY Through 1/5: Thu–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Mon 12/30 7:30 PM; Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-404-7336, blanktheatrecompany.org and greenhousetheater.org, $35 ($20 students/industry)
RHell in a Handbag dons the gay apparel
Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer returns a er several years in hibernation.
The great thing about holiday perennials is that they sometimes take a break, and then return so that those of us who never saw them in the first place can get a chance to enjoy them. (Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s not actually how perennials work. I’m a theater geek, not a botanist, so cut me some slack.) At any rate, having never seen Hell in a Handbag’s Rudolph the RedHosed Reindeer , which was their go-to holiday show for years until their parody Golden Girls franchise and other camp explorations of the season took over, I’m delighted they’ve brought it back for its 25th anniversary. (That year, like my understanding of plants, is also fungible, according to playwright and artistic director David Cerda.)
Now playing at Center on Halsted under Anthony Whitaker’s direction, Cerda’s spoof of the story of misfit Rudolph (Peter Ruger) recasts the Donners’ son as a cross-dresser who doesn’t understand why he can’t be his own fabulous self in Christmas Town. He’s joined by Kelly Bolton’s Herbie, who isn’t fabulous enough to fit in with the other elves. (The rules are different for reindeer and the out-and-proud toymakers—as Michael Hampton’s marketing-obsessed Santa says, “Nelly reindeer don’t fit our target demographic!”)
Highlights include Caitlin Jackson’s gloriously dipsomaniacal Mrs. Claus (local treasure Jackson also kills it as Dolly, the depressed rag doll), Cerda and Terry McCarthy as catty cast members of The Real Housewives of the North Pole, Matt Sergot’s pissed-off Sam the Snowman, and Lori Lee’s addled-but-good-hearted Yukon Cornelia. It’s a recipe for a sweet, sardonic, filthy-minded show that, like Handbag’s Golden Girls outings, knows how to blend what makes the original so popular with clever asides and a just-earnest-enough plea for acceptance at the holidays and year-round.
One thing that hasn’t changed, as Cerda noted opening night, is Scott Lamberty’s sprightly original arrangements of the songs (the cast sings live to recorded instrumental tracks). “Christmas Makes Me Bitter,” the first act’s blistering finale, should be everyone’s antidote to Mariah Carey. —KERRY REID RUDOLPH
THE RED-HOSED REINDEER Through 1/5: Thu–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Wed 12/18 7:30 PM and Mon 12/30 7:30 PM (industry night); Fri 12/20 and Sat 12/21 7 PM; Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, handbagproductions.org, $45 general admission, $50 door, $52 advanced VIP/reserved seating with no drink ticket, $60 advanced VIP/reserved seating with drink ticket; 12/20-12/22 is a benefit weekend with preshow parties beginning Fri–Sat 6 PM and Sun 2 PM, $60 general admission (includes sweet treats), $125 VIP/reserved (includes reserved seating, sweet treats, drink ticket, and gift bag) v
FILM
RETROSPECTIVE
An unexpected rainbow renaissance
Despite the surge of anti-queer and anti-sex rhetoric, 2024 was a landmark year for LGBTQ+ cinema.
By NOAH BERLATSKY
We’re living in a time of brutal backlash against LGBTQ+ rights. Florida and numerous other states have passed laws censoring discussions of queer issues in schools; trans people are facing brutal restrictions on their health care. At the same time, film critics and filmmakers have argued that, as Richard Linklater commented dolefully this summer, “there’s no sex in movies anymore.”
Given these two data points— cultural backlash against LGBTQ+ people and a movie industry that increasingly avoids depictions of adult sexuality—you would think that it would be a dismal time for queer film. And yet, the opposite is the case; 2024 has been an amazing year for queer cinema. There are still certainly limits, as big-budget Hollywood films continue to avoid LGBTQ+ characters and themes. But outside of blockbusters, 2024 has been characterized by the consolidation of decades of gains for LGBTQ+ filmmakers and performers and by a wonderful range of queer movies. Historically, LGBTQ+ films with any marketing profile at all have been confined to small-budget indie cinema, especially romantic comedies, and family or romantic dramas— movies like Go Fish (1994), But I’m a Cheerleader (1999), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and Moonlight (2016). This year saw a number of examples of these kinds of films. Dominic Savage’s intimate, improvisatory Close To
and mostly regressive phenomenon at this point—and one that a lot of recent films refuted or directly challenged. The best example is Jordan Weiss’s unexpectedly wonderful romcom Sweethearts, in which that gay best friend (Caleb Hearon) strolls o the sidelines to have his narrative just about muscle out the supposedly central romance. In Dev Patel’s action-martial arts extravaganza Monkey Man, the climax features the heroic entrance of a fleet of trans women warrior priests. And Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers is a tennis love triangle that is heterosexual—except for a scene in which the two male protagonists and rivals (Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor) share a very steamy kiss.
You (2023), starring a quietly incandescent Elliot Page as a trans man reconnecting with his family and former girlfriend, got its release this year. So did Erica Tremblay’s Fancy Dance (2023), a wrenching story about prejudice and violence starring Lily Gladstone as a lesbian Cayuga woman raising her niece and looking for her missing sister. This year’s My Old Ass is a quirky time-travel coming-of-age movie in which the lesbian main character (played by Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza) discovers her bisexuality. And then there’s Queer, Emilia Pérez, and more. Where 2024 felt like a real advance was in the success and prominence of queer genre films. Queer genre films aren’t new—in the last few years, for example, we’ve seen Julia Ducournau’s queer body horror film Titane (2021) and John Logan’s queer slasher They/ Them (2022) as just two examples. This year,
though, queer genre films were everywhere. D.W. Waterson’s small-budget indie Backspot (2023) is a sports film featuring Devery Jacobs as a queer, Indigenous cheerleader determined to make it big. There were also not one, but two big lesbian heist films this year with major-name stars. Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s wonderful (and critically underrated) Drive-Away Dolls, featuring Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Pedro Pascal, and Matt Damon, is a retro 90s road-trip farce in which the MacGuffin is a literal dildo. And Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, from A24 with Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian, is a brooding magical realist noir about bodybuilding and bad fathers.
A range of films in 2024 which were not necessarily directly about LGBTQ+ people included secondary queer characters or themes. The gay best friend trope is a tired
All of these films are small- to mid-budget, and many had primarily streaming or hybrid releases. In fact, the flourishing of LGBTQ+ films seems at least in part due to the muchbemoaned audience fragmentation characteristic of the streaming era, in which every film doesn’t necessarily have to be for everybody, and formerly niche films can find a national audience in places without arthouse cinemas. Blockbuster big-budget releases, on the other hand, remain notably and embarrassingly leery of centering LGBTQ+ characters or themes. Denis Villeneuve ramped down the homophobia of the source material in Dune: Part Two by removing suggestions that the villainous Baron Harkonnen was queer—but he didn’t include any positive representations of queer people. The Deadpool franchise has included queer characters in the past, and Deadpool himself is pansexual in the comics. Deadpool & Wolverine largely backs away from those possibilities, though, leaving subtext very much sub, and using Deadpool’s canonical bisexuality as an excuse for a series of borderline homophobic punch lines. Most egregiously, executives at Pixar reportedly demanded changes to Inside Out 2 to make the main character “less gay” and play down any tinge of romance between female friends. Given the flourishing of LGBTQ+ cinema everywhere except the blockbuster, it’s perhaps not surprising that the two most innovative queer films of the year—Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow and Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker (the latter released in 2022 but
(Clockwise from top L) Stills from Love Lies Bleeding , Close to You , Monkey Man , and I Saw the TV Glow A24; GREENWICH ENTERTAINMENT; UNIVERSAL STUDIOS; A24
only now available for streaming)—are about the relationship between queer people and mainstream media.
The two films are very di erent; I Saw the TV Glow is a sleek, Lynchian neon nightmare about queer people (over)identifying with a Buffy the Vampire Slayer -esque serial fantasy adventure, while The People’s Joker is a deliberately clunky low-budget pomo bricolage daringly infringing on Warner Brothers’ Batman copyrights. Both, though, are about how queer people find themselves in mainstream media that isn’t necessarily meant for them— and about how mainstream media relies on queer dynamics, buried queer themes, and queer viewers, all of which it denies and represses. Schoen-
brun and Drew’s films aren’t really asking “What if Batman and Bu y were queer?” Instead, they’re insisting that we recognize the way in which queer experience is at the heart of the sadness, joy, disempowerment, and empowerment that defines film, mainstream and otherwise.
The ongoing, quiet explosion of queer cinema is a reminder that we can imagine better things, better selves, and better movies.
Play!
“What if I was someone else?” asks Owen (Justice Smith), the main character in I Saw the TV Glow. “Someone beautiful and powerful? Buried alive and su ocating to death on the other side of a television screen?” That’s a lovely encapsulation of the way that film (or television) o ers us the chance to imagine new selves and new possibilities, whether ecstatic or stifling. And not coincidentally, it’s also an expression of queer despair and hope, of the dream and fear of finding yourself.
The U.S., in many ways, seems bent on becoming more mean-spirited, more repressive, and more homophobic. The ongoing, quiet explosion of queer cinema is a reminder that we can imagine better things, better selves, and better movies. v
m letters@chicagoreader.com
Get showtimes and see reviews of everything playing this week at chicagoreader.com/movies
It’s a cinephile’s quandary. Streaming has made it easier than ever to view great art and quality entertainment in the comfort of one’s own home, where it once may have been inaccessible. Long before this, as a child, I remember falling in love with cinema watching Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) during a middle school social studies class. My town only had two small, mom-and-pop video stores generally lacking in the wide range of directors, countries, and genres I’m now used to dabbling in. Thus, Old Hollywood subsequently became my still-goodbut-admittedly-rather-conventional entryway into realizing that there was more to the movies than what I could see at the multiplex, the wider range of possibilities then far beyond my limited purview.
This landscape has, of course, changed drastically in recent years, sometimes in a confounding way. Case in point: Jaume Collet-Serra’s latest action thriller, Carry-On (2024), was released straight to Netflix recently—straight-tostreaming being the indiscriminate graveyard of great and terrible “content” alike—with not even a weeklong theatrical run. Many years ago, it likely would have been prime late winter or early summer theater viewing (dare I say, with bigger stars, maybe even a blockbuster). I was very sick most of the week, so, in the absence of going out to see anything else, my husband and I watched this at home over the weekend, and it’s a blast.
The Spanish filmmaker is something of a vulgar auteurist cause célèbre. Carry-On is the third of his films since 2014 to have a similar construct. All taking place in a constrained setting—Non-Stop (2014) on a plane, The Commuter (2018) on a train, and now Carry-On in an airport—each is about a flawed protagonist who’s targeted by the baddies and must then save the day. In Carry-On it’s a TSA agent with aspirations of being a police o cer (nobody’s perfect) who must prevent a biological weapon from being detonated on a plane after he’s made to help get it through security. I jokingly referred to Collet-Serra as the Ernst Lubitsch of action thrillers, but there’s truth to it: he excels at nimbly cre-
NOW PLAYING
RThe Girl With the Needle
A still from Carry-On (2024)
ating a sense of rapport among the characters— even the bad guys—that makes the stakes feel higher and more intense. There’s also humor where it might otherwise seem out of place in the hands of a less sophisticated director.
My husband and I also watched Mati Diop’s Dahomey (2024), which wasn’t direct-to-streaming—it had a somewhat limited arthouse release, but catching it when it played at the Gene Siskel Film Center didn’t work with my schedule. In this experimental documentary, Diop traces the repatriation of 26 Beninese artifacts (the country having once been called Dahomey), at times anthropomorphizing one of the objects so as to tell the story of its plundering from the sacred artifact’s viewpoint. This is an example of the type of film whose proliferation—in the absence of a sea change in which these types of films would begin to receive widespread release in the first place—is benefited by the streaming environment.
Then there are those which have the fullest impact seen and discussed with other people.
Last Monday, I went to see Bill Morrison’s Incident (2023) at the Film Center, about the 2018 police killing of Harith “Snoop” Augustus, after which there was an almost hour-and-a-halflong discussion with Morrison, investigative journalist Jamie Kalven, and moderator Yohance Lacour from the Invisible Institute, who started o by declaring, “That was some bullshit” (referring, of course, to the racist events contained therein). Watching the film online was powerful; watching it with a roomful of people and hearing the involuntary verbal responses to what we were witnessing was explosive, a bomb amidst complacency. The juxtaposition of solitary streaming experiences and such communal moments underscores the filmgoer’s quandary: even as streaming widens access to art, it can’t replicate the irreplaceable power of shared, in-person engagement. —KAT SACHS v
The Moviegoer is the diary of a local film bu , collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to o er.
I was originally unsure what I would think of the black-and-white film The Girl With the Needle. Although it was a selection from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and Denmark’s Best International Feature Film entry to the 97th Academy Awards, I still had my doubts that the story would be chilling, eerie, and dark enough to scratch my murder-mystery itch.
Before the film started, I heard someone in the audience say, “Is this about a seamstress?” The screen turned black, and we stumbled into the dark story of what’s at stake for women living in a nightmare.
Sure, the film is about the tenderness of new love and the thrill of marriage for young Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne). However, the story crumbles when a knitting needle is used in a public bathhouse for an abortion. From there, we are at the mercy of Karoline’s hardened character and her newfound older friend, Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), who is a baby-killer cloaked as a saint.
With a haunting score by Frederikke Hoffmeier and dramatic cinematography that takes us into the dark basement rooms and alleyways of Copenhagen, this film is a dreadful force in which we confront the bleakness of the world.
Swedish director Magnus von Horn took inspiration from the true story of Dagmar Overbye, a Danish serial killer who murdered approximately 25 children post–World War I. It’s a chair-gripping, toe-curling story. While it’s not a horror film, it shows us horrible things. And while I wouldn’t consider it a crime film either, we watch the crime unfold. We even like the criminal at times, just like Karoline, who has innocently fallen into her clutches.
So yes, the film is about a seamstress. But the needle is much more than what we believe it to be. —S. NICOLE LANE 123 min. Gene Siskel Film Center
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
The IP-ification of the Lord of the Rings may have reached its apex with The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Sure, the Lord of the Rings is a beloved series that’s had its fair share of adaptations over the last half-century, but it’s only in the last decade that Hollywood has begun to mine the appendices of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels to churn out “content.”
In theory, The War of the Rohirrim’s novelty as an anime film set in the world of Middle Earth should help. But the film is so bound to Peter Jackson’s extremely successful adaptations of the novels from the early 2000s that it o en seems like it may have been reverse-engineered from a checklist of callbacks.
While the use of Howard Shore’s score and voiceover from Miranda Otto as the character of Éowyn nicely tie The War of the Rohirrim to Jackson’s trilogy,
several plot points and dialogues too clearly echo that trilogy. Some lines of speech are awkwardly mangled to fit in keywords that will bring to mind lines from the original trilogy, and others are set so firmly in repeated plotlines that they haven’t changed at all.
Adding to the narrative problems, the animation itself isn’t beautiful enough to make this undeniably unique project enjoyable as a work of pure visual art either. Nothing is distinct about the art style, and several moments include poorly integrated 3D elements. It doesn’t look bad, exactly, but it’s fair to expect more from a $30 million entry into one of the most lucrative franchises of all time.
It’s unclear whether the film will play better with superfans who will recognize every callback or those for whom that relentless referencing won’t register, but it’s unlikely to play very well for anyone. —KYLE LOGAN PG-13, 134 min. Wide release in theaters
R Nickel Boys
Tell seasoned cinephiles that a newly emerged director has dared to shoot his first big studio movie from the first-person perspective, and you’ll catch deep skepticism. Like the second-person perspective in written fiction, it typically isn’t attempted, and for good reason; most efforts fail, written off rightly as loud novelty. But it’s possible to do it well—a scene here and there in RoboCop (1987) and Being John Malkovich (1999), and in the case of Russian Ark (2002), the whole damn thing works through the eyes of the main character, who happens to walk beautifully through a single 90-minute tracking shot.
Nickel Boys is something else entirely, a cinematic revolution. Adapted from the award-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, RaMell Ross has pushed the text into startling new territory by making it the substance of an original screen language. Such brazen methods were hinted at in Ross’s brilliant 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, which forged a fresh kind of real-life folklore, but the stature and size of a film as comfortably avant-garde as Nickel Boys is sure to be more riling to the broader cultural world.
A tragic yet hopeful tale about two young Black men stuck unjustly at a brutal reform camp in the 1960s, it is a transformational sequence of compositions. The character’s eye paintings are full of clever reflections and stunningly informative details, punctuated by gorgeously innovative montages, jarring collages, and aggressively emotional sound design à la The Zone of Interest (2023). Ross, in introducing the movie at autumn film festivals, urged audiences to let go, which many viewers will struggle to do. Nickel Boys will give them none of their standard movie bearings, and plenty a set of cinematic sea legs could give way. My advice: no matter how wobbly you may feel, stand your way through this marvel. —JOHN WILMES PG-13, 140 min. Limited release in theaters v
MUSIC
THE SECRET HISTORY OF CHICAGO MUSIC
JD, Foster & Eastman made sublime country rock but didn’t leave a trace
This early-70s Chicago band never got further than recording a few demos, and now you can finally hear how great their albums would’ve been.
By STEVE KRAKOW
Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
One of my favorite ways to find subjects for the Secret History of Chicago Music is to track down and interview an artist whose story isn’t published anywhere. Obviously this restricts me to living people, but the excitement of learning something that almost nobody else knows makes up for that. Even popular live bands can fall into the memory hole if they don’t release a recording, but sometimes they get as far as cutting demos. And when a music-history nerd like me can get his hands on those demos, it’s always a treat— especially when the tunes are as good as what I’ve heard from early-70s country-rock outfit JD, Foster & Eastman.
Drummer Steve Jones, whose last name occasionally got tacked onto that already unwieldy moniker, alerted me to the band’s existence. Born in 1950 and raised in Brooklyn, Jones later played in another 70s Chicago group that did well on the local concert circuit but never got a record out: Fawn, a Secret History subject in 2011. Jones helped me secure interviews with guitarists Larry Foster and George Eastman. I didn’t correspond directly with bassist JD Smith, but he met up with Eastman and Jones for lunch to help sort out the group’s story. Foster has perhaps the most impressive musical CV of the group. He was born in Chicago on December 17, 1944, and in 1961 he joined his first band, the Coachmen. Their lineup included George Edwards (later of psychedelic outfit H.P. Lovecraft) and Skip Haynes (who record-
ed “Lake Shore Drive” in 1971 as part of Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah).
In college at Purdue University in the early 60s, Foster met Mickey Clark, and with Edwards they formed a trio in Chicago called the Village Singers. “We traveled the folk circuit, Chicago down to Fort Lauderdale, for spring break in 1964,” Foster says. “When we returned to Chicago, George went to California, but Mickey and I kept touring.”
The duo met singer- songwriter Marita Crites (who became Marita Foster when she and Larry married in ’66) and formed the New Village Singers, who played the midwest and east coast. They made a lucky connection at a gig in New York in 1965. “We were seen at an open mike at the Bitter End and signed by Barbra Streisand’s management company in 1965,” Foster says.
Renamed the Three of Us, the group also released a few singles on Kapp Records. They played on a wide range of impressive bills, sharing stages with folkies (Judy Collins, Gordon Lightfoot), soulful groups (the Four Tops, the Coasters), and garagey New York bands (the Blues Magoos, the Magicians).
The trio’s promising career was derailed when Foster was drafted in 1966. “Even Streisand’s lawyers can’t keep me out, so I go in and serve my time,” Foster says. “End up in Korea for 13 months, doing codes and crypto on remote radio rigs.” After he was discharged in ’68, the budding singer-songwriter used G.I. Bill benefits to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he met George Eastman and Steve Jones.
Eastman was born on Christmas Day in the late 40s (he prefers to keep the year “squishy”) and grew up in New York City. He came to Chicago in 1967 to study photography at IIT’s
Institute of Design. “The band was born out of a regular Thursday-night get-together to play, write, and record music at a Columbia College studio,” Eastman recalls. “I joined those sessions in late 1972 or early 1973.” Unfortunately, the tapes from those gatherings have been lost.
JD Smith had been in a band called Franny and Zooey, named after the 1961 J.D. Salinger book. “That’s when he got the nickname ‘JD,’” Jones says. “He was approached by George to join him and Larry in 1973. I was added in the summer of ’73.”
“Steve joined after we had started at some smaller venues and decided to create a bigger sound and play some larger and louder venues,” Eastman says. “Music of the day demanded a more rock ’n’ roll–infused sound (also my leaning), not entirely different from the
Eagles’ journey at around the same time. . . . That said, our trip turned out a bit di erently.” JD, Foster & Eastman originally had a folkrock sound a la Crosby, Stills & Nash, but their only formal recording session documents a sublimely twangy country-rock outfit. They cut the demos I’ve mentioned at Streeterville Studios on Grand Avenue, working with Gary Loizzo (front man of the American Breed and longtime producer for Styx). The results are easily on par with Poco, Pure Prairie League, and the Flying Burrito Brothers.
When I first heard the arrestingly hooky “Breaking With Honor,” I was almost taken aback by the gorgeousness of the breezy vocal harmonies, delicately rootsy piano, and chiming guitars. “Black Sheep,” with molten leads from Eastman, is a top-shelf bar-band boogie
STEVE KRAKOW FOR CHICAGO READER
that sounds like a roadhouse brawl between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Jerry Je Walker. You can find audio for both tracks in the online version of this story at chicagoreader.com.
“Our primary regular monthly gigs rotated between the Bulls and Ratso’s (both in Lincoln Park), and we played many other clubs and gigs around town, not many of which I remember,” Eastman says. In rock ’n’ roll, folks like to say that if you can remember it, you weren’t there, but the passage of 50 years can have a similar e ect.
“Steve, JD, and myself had lunch last week, and I heard some stories of which I have absolutely no memory,” Eastman laments. “Not even a vague recollection. Steve and JD say that we opened for Willie Dixon once—boy, I would like to remember that. JD recalled seeing me doing a hotel gig where Chaka Khan was the singer. Ditto to that.”
JD, Foster & Eastman replaced Jones on drums in early 1974, and Foster moved out of Chicago that same year. “After adding a conga player (for no real reason) and switching drummers (worst move we ever made), the
band was not going anywhere I was interested in going,” Foster recalls. “I left for California soon after the Aragon gig.”
A recording survives of that show at the Aragon, which happened in 1974, and you can indeed hear an inappropriately busy hand percussionist. Jones tells a slightly di erent story of the band’s demise. “From my perspective, we got a manager, and according to JD that
All four members are still alive, and they’ve got some great songs that almost nobody younger than 70 has heard. So I’m not going too far out on a limb to hope they reunite.
was the beginning of the end,” he says. “I was let go around February or March of 1974, and the band went on with a new drummer for a few months, max. JD says that he couldn’t continue with the way things were going, so he quit—the end.”
In the years that followed, Jones went into film. He’s directed commercials for the likes
of Quaker Oats and Cap’n Crunch and music videos for bands as big as Styx. He’s been involved in lots of feature films, perhaps most notably the infamous locally shot 1986 indie Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer—he’s credited as a producer and as a composer of its score. Until last year, Jones taught and served as a producer in residence at DePaul University. His other coproductions include Mad Dog and Glory (1993) with Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman, and Bill Murray; Wild Things (1998) with Neve Campbell and Denise Richards; Speaking of Sex (2001) with James Spader, Lara Flynn Boyle, and Catherine O’Hara; and Drunkboat (2010) with John Malkovich, John Goodman, and Dana Delany.
Foster’s sons, Evan and Erik, own a recording studio called No-Count in Seattle. They also play rock ’n’ roll in touring and recording bands: they’re both in Dirty Sidewalks, and Evan is a guitarist in the Boss Martians and
tours with legendary garage rockers the Sonics. “They also have a record label, which is releasing a four-song EP of my songs that we recorded in LA and Seattle,” Foster says. On that EP, Pete Thomas (from Elvis Costello & the Attractions) plays drums, and Evan, Erik, and Larry sing and play everything else.
Foster still thinks highly of his old bandmates. “I’ve used top studio players, but George Eastman was the most melodic guitar soloist I ever played with, and Steve Jones was the best singing drummer I ever had.”
All four members are still alive, and they’ve got some great songs that almost nobody younger than 70 has heard. So I’m not going too far out on a limb to hope they reunite and treat us to more JD, Foster & Eastman (plus Jones). And maybe leave the congas at home this time, guys! v
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.
Mariachi Herencia de México add fresh, contemporary vibes to a beloved tradition
MARIACHI HERENCIA DE MÉXICO
Fri 12/20, 7 PM, Sat 12/21, 2, 5, and 8 PM, Gary and Laura Maurer Concert Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, $40, $38 members. b
CHICAGO KNOWS THE POWER of mariachi. The city has nurtured several acclaimed mariachi ensembles, including Mariachi Herencia de México, who’ve become a national success story. Assembled by the Mariachi Heritage Foundation in 2016, the group have released fi ve albums and received two Latin Grammy nominations. Mariachi Herencia de México hew faithfully to many mariachi traditions, but they’re not merely cultural preservationists. Their current Nueva Generación tour clearly displays their ability to push the envelope: they infuse their classic mariachi vibes with salsa, Latin soul, and jazz influences, and they embrace songs from adjacent Latine cultures (in October, for instance, they released their take on beloved Puerto Rican
ballad “Preciosa”). These musical explorations also give a fresh sheen to their original compositions and pop-forward interpretations of mariachi classics.
Mariachi Herencia de México’s 14 members (who range in age from 18 to 32) honor the traditional mariachi confi guration of brass, vihuela, and guitarrón, and many members also sing, conveying strong emotion with their soaring vocals. Their virtuosic playing and charming, fl amboyant showmanship have helped make Mariachi Herencia de México’s annual Christmas shows a nascent Chicago tradition, and their powerful performances o er a fabulous way to celebrate and share the joy of the season. —CATALINA MARIA JOHNSON
FRIDAY20
Advance Base Karima Walker opens. 8 PM, Color Club, 4146 N. Elston, $18.54. 18+
Owen Ashworth, who makes music as Advance Base, has long been a standard-bearer for Christmas music in indie pop. He started writing the occasional Christmas-themed song with his former project Casiotone for the Painfully Alone in the 2000s. With Advance Base, which he launched in the early 2010s, he’s blossomed his love of Christmas music into a Chicagoland concert tradition that’s lasted nearly a decade—during the first part of the COVID pandemic, he switched to YouTube broadcasts. Ashworth’s original Christmas songs o en emphasize the loneliness of the holiday season and the pain of disconnection. On “Christmas in Nightmare City,” a newly sober narrator struggles through a dry holiday; on Casiotone’s “Cold White Christmas,” a young adult navigates the complexities of family estrangement.
This Color Club concert stands out from Ashworth’s typical holiday fare because it’s also the record-release show for the first Advance Base studio album in six years, Horrible Occurrences (Run for Cover). Ashworth has an unerring ability to capture life’s fleeting but defining moments, and on Horrible Occurrences he’s in rare form as he explores the interconnected lives of the people of a fictional city called Richmond. It’s a town that’s faced plenty of tribulations—a serial killer, paralyzing skateboard accidents, strange disappearances—and darkness haunts even the album’s brief glimpses of beauty and connection, which include safe returns home from the local liquor store and in-jokes about shopli ing tampons.
Ashworth’s vivid storytelling is underscored by his trademark synths, which move between horrormovie ominous and subtly angelic. Even his newest Christmas song is caught in this tension. In “The One About the Rabbit in the Snow,” a bartender walks home during a snowstorm, guided by a memory of Christmas lights—but it’s not quite clear if they ever arrive. As the dread creeps in, the narrator keeps singing to themself, which feels like a beautiful encapsulation of Advance Base’s MO. This world can be a tragic place, but as long as we have music, we have something to hold the darkness at bay a little while longer. —ED BLAIR
COURTESY THE ARTIST
Owen Ashworth of Advance Base COURTESY THE ARTIST
Mariachi Herencia de México See Pick of the Week on page 24. See also Sat 12/21. 7 PM, Gary and Laura Maurer Concert Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, $40, $38 members. b
SATURDAY21
Mariachi Herencia de México See Pick of the Week on page 24. See also Fri 12/20. 2, 5, and 8 PM, Gary and Laura Maurer Concert Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, $40, $38 members. b
Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang winter solstice sunrise concert See also Sun 12/22 and Mon 12/23. 6 AM, Links Hall, 3111 N. Western, $38. b
Hamid Drake & William Parker, Michael Zerang & Bill Mackay See also Sun 12/22. 8 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $30. 18+
For 34 years, master percussionists Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake have carved out a space of temporal grace in an ever-changing world with their winter solstice concerts. Even the fiercest lovers of winter can struggle with Chicago’s months of increasing darkness and welcome the return of the sun, and these performances, which celebrate and upli the growing length of our days, are works of nondenominational spirituality that offer a breath of fresh air from the commercialism of the holiday season. That such a tradition has continued uninterrupted for nearly three and a half decades (they livestreamed the 2020 edition) and has even grown is itself a small miracle.
This year there are five events: three sunrise duos held at Links Hall (for which Zerang was once a curator and producer) and two larger evening bills at Constellation. On Saturday night, Chicago-based avant-garde indie-folk guitarist Bill MacKay (of Black Duck and BCMC) will join Zerang for the first evening concert; Drake will play in a duo with internationally renowned New York bassist and composer William Parker. The second evening will feature the world premiere of a new piece by Parker called
Chicago Shout . Parker is a master improviser and jazz historian who’s played with luminaries such as Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, and Peter Brötzmann, and he frequently contributes to the Chicago scene. For this occasion, he’s pulled together a large ensemble of local musicians, including Drake, Zerang, saxophonists Ari Brown and Isaiah Collier, vocalist Zahra Glenda Baker, trumpeter Ben LaMar Gay, pianist Jim Baker, and bassist Joshua Abrams.
This year the winter solstice proper—the moment when the planet’s tilted axis points most directly away from the sun—falls on Saturday, December 21, at 3:21 AM Central Standard Time. Our ancestors observed the longest night of the year and celebrated the promise of brighter days ahead in varying ways. Our descendants may very well carry on the tradition—it’s a reminder that dark times come, but they also pass. In the spirit of jazz and improvisational music, these performances call on artists and audience members alike to be fully mindful in the present moment, come what may, and to find inspiration and resilience in collaboration. —MONICA KENDRICK
Fruit Looops EQ Why headline; Fruit LoOops and Tasha’s Hideous Laughter open. 8:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $12, $10 in advance. 21+
You know Fruit LoOops are fun because of the three O s in their name. Imagine yourself on the back half of the greatest sugar high the cereal aisle can provide as you’re excitedly swirling around a toilet bowl shouting “Fruit LoOops!”—that’s how the Cincinnati five-piece’s music hits. Front person Jackie Switzer sings in a manic, stunted style similar to Melt-Banana’s Yasuko Onuki, and they pair it to varying effect with drums, keyboards, synths, and samplers, interrupted by saxophone skronks and less identifiable noises that might sound like a piano getting crushed like a soda can. Fruit LoOops have put out two releases with Bucktown record store and label Torn Light (which came to Chicago by way of the Queen City this spring), most recently last year’s You’re Somebody’s World, and they share with Torn Light an imaginative, knowledgeable free spirit.
Fruit LoOops have spent years gigging with Chicago’s art-rock elite (notably Weasel Walter’s long-running outfit the Flying Luttenbachers) and some of the most exciting genre-shattering weirdos emerging on the national scene, including Philadelphia extreme electronics artist Morgan Garrett and experimental Texas noise punks Sexual Jeremy. To say Fruit LoOops are rock would be reductive: they’re taking rock ’n’ roll into stranger, more turbulent territory, which is exactly where it needs to go to stay relevant. The band’s live shows can switch between the raw, stripped-down aesthetic of punk and the rehearsed technique of performance art, but they’re never pretentious. They’re Find
just fun. At this Hideout gig, Fruit LoOops will share the bill with Tasha’s Hideous Laughter (a newly formed duo of digicore mainstays Mukqs and Cocojoey) and footwork aficionado EQ Why. It’s exactly the brain-busting send-off you’ll need before subjecting yourself to holiday time with family. —MICCO CAPORALE
SUNDAY22
Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang winter solstice sunrise concert
See Sat 12/21. 6 AM, Links Hall, 3111 N. Western, $38. b
Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang with William Parker and Ensemble See Sat 12/21. This group performs Parker’s composition Chicago Shout with a lineup that also includes vocalist Zahra Glenda Baker, trumpeter Ben LaMar Gay, pianist Jim Baker, saxophonists Isaiah Collier and Ari Brown, and others. 8 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $30. 18+
Aight Bet Enoch 7th Prophet, Jatan Satan, and Koziwithak open. 8 PM, Reggies Music Joint, 2105 S. State, $10. 21+
Aight Bet call themselves a “Chicago Hood Core Original,” and they blend hardcore and hip-hop with the sort of charisma only southside Chicagoans can provide. The collective’s stompyou-out beats, slap-you-up lyrics, and seamless juxtaposition of booming rap and hardcore vocals have loads of artistic potential.
The group’s current roster includes Alex Uridel, Alex Haas, Les Foy, Mike Robz, and rapper Moe Cyrus, all seasoned musicians who’ve clocked time as solo artists or members of other local bands (among them extreme-metal outfit Lost in the Current and surprisingly good Korn tribute act Freak on a Leash). Chicago’s hardcore scene can sometimes be very cliquey, and I personally love that Aight Bet’s members have come together from different neighborhoods across the south side and all the way to Gary.
Aight Bet’s music is deliciously heavy, with blistering rhythms and messages to spare. On “The Bag,” they share some choice words for folks who don’t honor their own mental health,
delivered with crispy riffs and the sort of uberlocal wordplay that makes it more exciting to follow along: “They’ll be fumblin’ / Jesse White tumblin’ the bag,” Cyrus yelps. “Don’t Be Lyin, Be Lion” and its video hit just as hard, like a shot of espresso mainlined through an enema. If the growing response to Aight Bet is any indication, they’ll blast off into orbit very soon.
Aight Bet are taking over Reggies Music Joint for a pre-Christmas extravaganza that also features veteran hip-hop vocalist and DMV-area DIY champion Enoch 7th Prophet, horrorcore and electronic trap artist Jatan Satan, and local melodic spitter Koziwithak. Get ready for an eclectic, communityforward night of banging, thought-provoking music.
—CRISTALLE BOWEN
MONDAY23
Hamid Drake & Michael Zerang winter solstice sunrise concert See Sat 12/21. 6 AM, Links Hall, 3111 N. Western, $38. b v
Fruit LoOops PETER MEZENSKY
Aight Bet AIDEN DEWASME
Hamid Drake (L) and Michael Zerang HANS VAN DER LINDEN
GOSSIP WOLF
A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene
ADVANCE BASE main man Owen Ashworth creates tender character portraits of people in moments of struggle. Advance Base’s Color Club concert this week is also a release party for the project’s fourth studio album, Horrible Occurrences, released earlier this month on Run for Cover. As Reader contributor Ed Blair notes in their preview of the show, the new record is cloaked in the darkness that haunts the fictional town of Richmond. Ashworth landed on the concept while writing album opener “The Year I Lived in Richmond,” in which a woman fends off a home intruder with a knife.
“I didn’t want to put these stories in a specific place, ’cause it was meant to be a pretty dark record,” Ashworth says. “I had been thinking a little bit about The Simpsons and Springfield, and also Haddonfield, where the Halloween franchise takes place, and how that was a made-up Illinois town.” Ashworth named the woman in “The Year I Lived in Richmond” a er Debra Hill, cowriter of the 1978 Halloween , in homage to the place-setting inspiration for Horrible Occurrences —Hill grew up partly in the real town of Haddonfield, New Jersey. Ashworth also drew inspiration from Strange Behavior, a 1981 horror movie made in New Zealand but set in the real Illinois town of Galesburg
“I came to realize, while putting this record together, that I’m imagining all of my albums as horror-movie locations,” Ashworth says. “It’s just this small cast of characters in these traumatic situations, but I made it more literal on this record than usual.” He worked on the album over the past five years, and its cursed aura gave him some trouble. “I was having a really challenging time working through the stories and not sure if I wanted to commit to
making such a dark record,” he says. “I kept scrapping it and trying to write different kinds of songs, but some of these songs stuck with me. I thought I had to push through it and get it done, because I didn’t think I was able to commit to another project until I got this one out of my system.”
Ashworth kept the material on Horrible Occurrences close to his chest too. “I have a little paranoia about losing a lot of momentum if I talk about stuff too much while it’s in progress,” he says. He got feedback during the process from just a couple of friends: Nicholas Krgovich and Karima Walker, both musicians with releases on Ashworth’s label, Orindal Records . Walker also toured with Ashworth over the summer. “I was really stripping back a lot of the new songs to match the feel of her set,” he says. “She ended up really guiding the way the record sounded, from her music and her friendship.”
For the cover of Horrible Occurrences, Ashworth used a painting of a wooded path that he says has a touch of the Richmond darkness. He’s owned it for years, and it hangs in his dining room, where he can look at it all the time. It’s the work of George L. Berg, one of his maternal great-grandfathers.
“He was an itinerant painter who went around the country, painting landscapes and selling them or gi ing them along the way,” Ashworth says. “I’ve always felt the connection between his artistic pursuits and what I do for a living. I like the idea of honoring him with a record cover.”
When Ashworth headlines Color Club for his annual Christmas concert on Friday, December 20, he’ll mix material from Horrible Occurrences into his usual holiday fare. Karima Walker opens.
ON SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21 , Bridgeport Records and the Ramova Theatre present a night of dance music in the Ramova Lo . The two artists are Vick Lavender, who co-owns Bridgeport Records, and Chicago house veteran Rahaan, who recently released The Ones , an ambitious, heartfelt album stuffed with symphonic disco flourishes and modern-funk arrangements. The “Bridgeport Sessions” night starts at 9 PM.
ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20 , experimental Chicago rock band TV Buddha release the EP 10,000 Buddhas Eli Schmitt, a workhorse of the local all-ages scene, launched the band last year with Fallen Log talent buyer Cole “Johnson Rockstar” Hunt. They issued their debut full-length, 2023’s Simple Bodies, shortly before Hunt graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, and he’s since relocated here. “When Cole moved to Chicago, it changed the nature of the whole band,” Schmitt says. “Our first record was this momentary encounter, but with 10,000 Buddhas we really got to sit with the songs and live in them.”
Since the release of Simple Bodies, 15 other musicians have played in TV Buddha at one point or another, helping Schmitt and Hunt flesh out their material. TV Buddha’s June live recording, June 9 [Alive] , includes contributions from Amaya Peña, all three members of Lifeguard , and Eli Winter . Each of those 15 musicians has le fingerprints on 10,000 Buddhas , even though only four guests appear on the recordings.
“Since the musicians playing with us live are constantly in flux, we’ve had to teach the parts to so many different people while also absorbing each unique approach to those parts that each person brings,” Hunt says. “Some of the things that our friends came up with became inextricable elements of the songs and are captured here in the recordings, although those people may not be performing with us recently.”
Working with Lifeguard and Sharp Pins front man Kai Slater as their engineer, TV Buddha recorded 10,000 Buddhas in a couple days. The soaring, sprawling EP crescendos into its closing track, “Baby, Woah!” Hunt describes the song as “trying to figure out how Phil Spector or Brian Wilson would have produced a Spacemen 3 track if they had fallen in love with Mahayana Buddhism rather than American blues.” —LEOR GALIL
Owen Ashworth of Advance Base JENN HERBINSON
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The Technology Solutions department, at the Univ of IL Chicago, located in a large metro area, is seeking full-time IT Technical Associate (DevOps Engineer) to assist the department with the following responsibilities: Under direction and supervision, select and implement appropriate CI/CD tools for containerization, testing, and automation to improve the current infrastructure landscape. Define and establish development, test, release, update, and support processes for DevOps operations. Coordinate and collaborate with infrastructure and development teams. Help with containerization roadmapping, prototype new concepts to improve and innovate within the team, and keep the team up-to-date with the latest industry trends and technologies. Implement and improve logging/monitoring and alerting during the entire lifecycle of a platform and applications the team builds; update and create new processes for improvement and minimize wastage on systems; identify and deploy cybersecurity measures by continuously performing vulnerability assessment and risk management; and help identify root causes of application or platform failures. Develop technical documentation and guides for fallback revert plan; mentor and guide junior developers and students; and perform other duties as assigned. No travel required. This position minimally requires a Bachelor’s degree or its foreign equivalent in Computer Science or a related field, and 1 year of professional IT DevOps experience. For fullest consideration,
please submit CV, cvr ltr, & 3 prof references by 1/19/25 to Vicki Bennett, Univ of IL Chicago, Tech. Sol., 200 RRB, MC 010, 728 Roosevelt Rd, Chicago IL 60607 or via email at bennettv@ uic.edu. UIC is an EOE including Disability/ Vets. Visit https://www. hr.uillinois .edu/ cms/ one.aspx ?portalId=4292 & pageId=5705 for non-discrimination statement, required background checks, sexual harassment/ misconduct disclosures, and employment eligibility review through E-Verify. Request an accommodation at https://jobs.uic. edu/request-andaccomodation/ bennettv@uic.edu
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JOHN AKOMFRAH Four Nocturnes
John Akomfrah: Four Nocturnes is presented at Wrightwood 659 by Alphawood Exhibitions.
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