THE PUBLIC NEWSROOM Once a week, City Bureau and the South Side Weekly turn our Woodlawn office into an open space where journalists and the public can gather to discuss local issues, share resources and knowledge, and learn to report and investigate stories. We bring in guest speakers and host hands-on workshops on things like how to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain government records, how to find and analyze public data, and how to tell your own audio/video stories. For working journalists, the public newsroom is a place to find and shape stories in direct conversation with readers. For the public, the newsroom is a front-row seat into how journalism gets made, and a chance to impact the way your community is covered in the media. The #PublicNewsroom is always free and always open to the public.
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UPCOMING WORKSHOPS Thursday, April 13 4pm–8pm Public Newsroom is open 6pm Discussion: Does the city engineer conflict? Led by Dr. David Stovall Thursday, April 20 4pm–8pm Public Newsroom is open 6pm Workshop: CPD in Chicago Public Schools Led by Yana Kunichoff, the Mikva Challenge, and VOYCE This workshop will be held at Roosevelt University, 425 S. Wabash Ave. Thursday, April 27 4pm–8pm Public Newsroom is open 6pm Event: 90 Days, 90 Voices—Telling Immigrants’ Stories Hosted by Sarah Conway, Alex Hernendez, and Nissa Rhee CITYBUREAU.ORG/PUBLICNEWSROOM THE EXPERIMENTAL STATION 6100 S. BLACKSTONE AVE
SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists. Volume 4, Issue 25 Editor-in-Chief Hafsa Razi Managing Editors Julia Aizuss, Andrew Koski Director of Staff Support Baci Weiler Deputy Editor Olivia Stovicek Senior Editor Emeline Posner Politics Editor Adia Robinson Music Editor Austin Brown Stage & Screen Editor Nicole Bond Visual Arts Editor Roderick Sawyer Editors-at-Large Maha Ahmed, Christian Belanger, Jake Bittle, Mari Cohen, Jonathan Hogeback, Ellie Mejía Contributing Editors Maddie Anderson, Carrie Smith, Margaret Tazioli, Yunhan Wen Video Editor Lucia Ahrensdorf Radio Producers Andrew Koski, Lewis Page Social Media Editors Emily Lipstein, Bridget Newsham, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Deputy Visuals Editor Jasmin Liang Layout Editor Baci Weiler Staff Writers: Sara Cohen, Christopher Good, Rachel Kim, Michal Kranz, Anne Li, Zoe Makoul, Michael Wasney, Kylie Zane Fact Checkers: Eleanore Catolico, Sam Joyce, Rachel Kim, Adam Przybyl, Hafsa Razi, Carrie Smith, Tiffany Wang, Baci Weiler Staff Photographers: Denise Naim, Jason Schumer, Luke Sironski-White Staff Illustrators: Zelda Galewsky, Natalie Gonzalez, Courtney Kendrick, Turtel Onli, Raziel Puma, Lizzie Smith Data Visualization: Jasmine Mithani Webmaster
Sofia Wyetzner
Publisher
Harry Backlund
The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring. Over the summer we publish every other week.
IN CHICAGO
A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors
Morgan Park Puts a Ring on It Those of our readers who are high school basketball fans will surely recall Morgan Park High School’s nail-biter of a fourth-quarter comeback win last month over Oak Park’s Fenwick High School, a victory that snagged them the Illinois High School Association’s Class 3A state basketball title. What they might not have heard was that Morgan Park High did not have the money to purchase their own state championship rings, and that Chicago Public Schools (CPS), naturally, was unable to help, according to the Sun-Times. Rather than fixate on this umpteenth CPS budget shortfall, we, like the Sun-Times, would prefer to shift gears and spotlight Morgan Park’s happy ending: after Morgan Park athletic director Michael Berger tweeted about his team’s plight, he drew the attention of a variety of well-wishers. The comedian Hannibal Buress, who last demonstrated his love for the South and West Sides of this city by writing a paean to mild sauce in Chicago magazine, was the first celebrity to send over a check; next came Green Bay Packers tight end and former Chicago Bear Martellus Bennett, whose foundation offered to pay for all the rings and who now plans to design the rings himself. Perhaps most impressive, though, was the sportsmanship of the defeated Fenwick High, whose athletic director and faculty had been planning a ring fundraiser for their rival. Maybe Rahm Needs a “Postgrad Plan” If you’re the mayor of a large city with a school district that’s been mired in a funding crisis and forced to make huge cuts across the board, what’s your next move? Do you suddenly announce a new graduation requirement without promising to provide the resources to make it feasible for students to meet that requirement? No? Well, then you must not be Rahm Emanuel. Last week, our fair city’s problem-solving mayor announced that, in order to graduate from high school, CPS students (starting with the class of 2020) will be required to show proof of a postgrad plan in order to receive a diploma. Students can fulfill the requirement with a college or trade school acceptance, a job or internship offer, or entrance into the military. While helping students plan for the future is critical, it’s unclear whether this new requirement can be classified as “helping,” especially since many schools have already been forced to lay off their college counselors as a result of CPS’s fiscal troubles. CPS didn’t respond to DNAinfo’s questions about whether additional counselors would be hired. Let’s hope that the district has some hidden master plan to make sure that students have the guidance they need, and that they won’t become vulnerable to for-profit college scams, get pressured to join the military if they don’t want to, or fail to graduate in large numbers. Otherwise, CPS students will be further punished for school policy that is out of their hands.
IN THIS ISSUE the full range of beauty
The story of this obscure conservationist figure is told with the conviction that the inextricable force of nature drove all of his endeavors. natasha mijares................................4 home sweet home
The expansion has not come without a few headaches. brandon payton-carrillo...............6 the popcorn alchemists of the south side
“How can I translate this to popcorn?” mira chauhan....................................6 beyond the groove
The Chosen Few DJs honor Sauer’s, the venue that shaped their sound and, through it, the history of Chicago house. sam clapp...........................................8 opinion: chicago's newest skyscraper deepens local divide over globalization
For nearly all Chicagoans, Wanda Vista will be nothing more than something to look at from a distance. jeff tangel.......................................10 redeveloping the state street corridor: an update
The CHA has released two documents that offer further information about its nearfuture redevelopment plans. jake bittle.......................................12
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APRIL 12, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3
LIT
The Full Range of Beauty
Pullmanite Arthur Melville Pearson on George Fell and Illinois conservation history BY NATASHA MIJARES
W
hen it comes to the telling of a life, there are things that our surroundings know more than we will ever do. Arthur Melville Pearson, a conservationist, pays clear attention to this in Force of Nature, his biography about George Fell, the founder of the natural areas movement. This post-World War II movement initiated enhanced communication and collaboration among people concerned with the protection and study of natural areas and natural diversity. Through Pearson’s attention to place, the story of this obscure conservationist figure is told with the conviction that the inextricable force of nature drove all of his endeavors. Pearson first learned of Fell when he was commissioned by the Natural Land Institute to write a short biography about him for inclusion in its fiftieth anniversary publication. Struck by the similarity of their interests, Pearson continued researching Fell, consulting archives and people in Fell’s life to put a longer biography together. The son of a botanist father, Fell was surrounded
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by the pleasure of caring for natural life his entire childhood. He went on to work in the Civilian Public Service during the war, then found his stride in conservation work at The Nature Conservancy, the largest conservation organization in the world. Pearson writes the book with a removed, academic approach. “In this way, form follows function because it provides this particular individual the degree of distance he maintained from everyone in his life,” Pearson told me. However, Pearson allows room for Fell’s personal philosophy and sentiment to seep into his history by framing several chapters with details of the landscape Fell worked to protect at each point in the timeline. He particularly spotlights Aldo Leopold, a founder of the science of wildlife management who became Fell’s main academic influence. Fell took up Leopold’s notion of “a land ethic, or some other force which assigns more obligation to the private landowner” from Leopold’s essay “The Land Ethic”. Fell’s steadfast commitment to that obligation made him
active and hardworking but put him at odds with several of his coworkers. He was challenged by a fellow board member who was as dedicated to conservation efforts as Fell, but had a more hands-off approach. The board member ultimately pushed Fell out of his position, driving Fell to leave Washington and return to Rockford, Illinois, where he started the Illinois chapter of The Nature Conservancy. It was this chapter that allowed him to advocate for the Illinois Natural Areas Preservation Act and the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, initiatives that sustained his need to serve until retirement. Pearson’s own conservationist efforts reside in nature preserves as well as his neighborhood, the historic section of Pullman. To him, the connection between preserving natural land and historical sites is a “recognition of the full range of beauty,” a recognition he sees in both George Fell and himself. Between Pullman, his background in the arts, and his work as the Chicago Program Director of the Donnelley
Foundation, where he oversees both arts and land conservation programs, he finds that “if there’s an invitation to go find your own way into beauty, then you can meet it on your own terms and define it in your own terms.” Fell’s determination and unwillingness to quit after several setbacks in his leadership vision proves to be unflinchingly relevant to the challenges of achieving stalwart preservation that conservation organizations are facing today. In terms of environmental conservation now, the National Parks, originally a foil to the natural areas movement, are of particular importance. The Parks are able to educate people about difference in landscape and how to apply that knowledge to navigating a local nature preserve. This can be challenging, Pearson noted, since in urban settings, people often establish a psychological and emotional distance from natural areas they may also be physically distant from. “It’s hard when things like this are fundamentally devalued and gutted,” Pearson said. “With the EPA and NEA being cut to
bone, I think it is a powerful disincentive for people to go outside themselves to appreciate the most mundane and pedestrian things as opposed to enriching our lives in an expensive way. I think we’re seeing the pushback in the artistic community as opposed to the conservationist community, the drive to push back up from the grassroots to say ‘this is why this is important’ and ‘we’re committing to this to make sure this remains vibrant and alive.’ The more people put something down, the more we’re gonna invest in it.” Pearson is no stranger to investment, as the writing process for this book took him about fifteen years. In his interviews with Barbara Fell, she painted George as a hero, which Pearson knew was not an accurate way of telling their story. With Barbara’s passing in 2015, Pearson could continue the more sobering story that was coming together. With the long-awaited publication of this book, he’s honoring its message by dedicating it to Barbara and visiting fifty Illinois nature preserves this year. He’s already hit fifteen. “In each place, there’s something that tells us about George’s story. Most people don’t know about these places, they don’t care. But one by one, the rich biological heritage that we have just goes away. Every time you go to a preserve, there’s some element of the story
that is referenced, so doing this accomplishes most of these things. It’s a way to keep the story alive. It’s also a living addendum to the book.” In terms of where this book stands in the field of conservation history, Pearson thinks “there’s a gap on that shelf.” “I think Force of Nature really slots in nicely ’cause there is an art to conservation history,” he said. “I think this was a smile with a missing tooth, if you will, and it’s nice to fill that smile in.” ¬ Arthur Melville Pearson, Force of Nature: George Fell, Founder of the Natural Areas Movement. University of Wisconsin Press. 216 pages. $26.95. Out April 18.
APRIL 12, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5
FOOD
Home Sweet Home
From Bronzeville success to new horizons in Beverly, Ain't She Sweet finds its way
The Popcorn Alchemists of the South Side JENNA JOHNSON
BY BRANDON PAYTON-CARRILLO
“I
t was just by chance,” said Ayisha Strotter, describing the decision she made with her mother, Margo, that transformed the two into restaurateurs. Ain’t She Sweet Café opened in Bronzeville in 2006. The mother-daughter team created a community out of the restaurant with its vibrant, down-home feel, and they met a demand for quality food with service in the neighborhood. Now, they’ve used their success to open a second location in Beverly; the new restaurant opened its doors on March 6. Walking into the original Ain’t She Sweet Café, one cannot help but notice the hustle and bustle of patrons gleefully ordering jerk chicken wraps, sitting down to a meeting, or leaving with their lunch in hand. The Beverly location, Ayisha said, has “the same type of concept.” “We want to be the same type of homey feel and very family-friendly,” she said. “Customers appreciate that, and Beverly is a family-oriented community. I grew up there. We just want to take that community feel and home feel over there.” When entering the new Ain’t She Sweet in Beverly, the deep plum-colored walls and fresh wood floor immediately stand out, followed by the comfortable flow 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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of the open seating plan. The café’s offerings, and the décor, are rounded out by the setup for making Sip & Savor coffees and Ain’t She Sweet’s much-loved smoothies and shakes. The only piece that feels out of place is a flat-screen TV on the back wall, which did not seem to draw much interest from the patrons. On my visit, I felt adventurous and ordered the jerk salmon wrap and a Jamaican soda. The wrap was delicious: the fish was perfectly charred, and there was a generous amount of aioli to bind all the flavors together. The serving size was large enough to satisfy, but not large enough to cause a food coma. The quality of Ain’t She Sweet’s food makes the success of this “retirement hobby” unsurprising, and the Strotters seem excited about future growth. “[Adding locations] wasn’t something we thought about [initially], but the demand has grown,” Ayisha said. “People ask us to bring it further south, bring it west. We are looking at the West Side, the West Loop, the South Loop, and the suburbs, so the sky’s the limit.” The process of opening the restaurant’s new location has been an exciting and stressful time for the Strotters. “It’s a different type of stress,” Ayisha
said. “It’s not the type of stress where you wake in the morning and dread going in. I have so many things going on, and I’m a very organized person, but that’s the stressful thing—that I have to react as things happen.” The expansion did not come without a few headaches. “The new space was [originally] a retail space—it was a U.S. Cellular, so it wasn’t really outfitted for a restaurant,” Ayisha explained. The renovation presented challenges that she and her mother were not used to, since the location of the first restaurant was more restaurant-friendly. The location’s difficulties pushed back the timeline for opening. “But we know next time what to look for in a space and what we can’t have in a space,” Ayisha said. Overall, the new Ain’t She Sweet Café has the same charm as the original, but with a few touches that make it slightly more glamorous. Judging by the looks on the patrons’ faces, this location will soon become a Beverly neighborhood staple. ¬ Ain’t She Sweet Café Beverly, 9920 S. Western Ave. Monday–Friday, 10am–6pm; Saturday, 11am–6pm. (773) 840-3309. aintshesweetcafe.com
The family behind Herby PoP BY MIRA CHAUHAN
M
ellini Monique was listening to a sermon when the minister said, “Hey, whatever you have, whatever is in your bag, God has given you to reach people.” At that point, Monique had to ask herself: what was in her bag? What did she have to offer? Popcorn. This sermon was the final push to motivate Monique and her family to open up Herby PoP in 2009 and offer their popcorn to people. Herby PoP is a familyrun, primarily online company based out of South Shore that sells popcorn seasoned with a variety of herbs from around the world. Before Herby PoP, Monique’s family worked as medical missionaries. They traveled to provide healthcare and teach workshops related to their practice. “It’s like being a nurse on steroids,” she said, laughing. “You attend to a person, you meet them right where you are.” Instead of recommending surgery, antibiotics, or a hospital visit, Monique and other medical missionaries use natural treatments such as diet changes. Around ten years ago, Monique was working with a client with diabetes who loved to snack on junk food. Monique decided to replace her client’s unhealthy snacks with her own popcorn creation, a gluten-free and whole-grain snack. “I just added some extra love to it with some
NEIGHBORS
herbs,” Monique said. “She loved it. Other people loved it.” By 2009, Monique’s popcorn was already a beloved commodity, and Monique and her husband, Brodie Cross Jr., decided to start Herby Pop. Their first flavor, the flavor that made Herby PoP popular before the business even started, was Original Onion and Dill. But Monique wanted to expand Herby PoP into a business with an international flair. “I dared to get more flavorful, if you will,” she said. Because of her work as a medical missionary, Monique and her family had traveled extensively and tried various cuisines. “What if I try to infuse the popcorn with different flavors from around the globe?” Monique recalls asking herself. “Use the popcorn as my blank canvas and just get creative with it.” So Herby PoP opened up with seven additional flavors like Sweet Vanilla Crunch and Masala Munch, a personal favorite inspired by the masala sticks Monique snacked on when she worked in Kenya. Monique and her family create all of the popcorn themselves, from the first steps of experimenting with flavors to packaging the final product. Most of the work is done in a licensed kitchen in South Shore, where Monique works in tandem with Tsadakeeya Emmanuel of Majani Catering. “I like to think myself as this popcorn alchemist or this popcorn artist while I’m in my popcorn studio,” Monique said. To come up with new flavors, Monique goes to restaurants to try different cuisines and actually taste the different spices being used. She asks herself, “How can I translate this to popcorn?” Herby PoP is by every definition of the term a family-run business. Brodie created the website and manages the business with Monique. Monique and Brodie have five children, and each one, from the sixteenyear-old to the toddler, not even two years old, contributes in one way or another toward Herby PoP. The family is part of what Monique refers to as her “qualitycontrol team,” providing the final judgment on a new flavor. The children also nearly always attend the pop-up events that Herby PoP hosts around Chicago. “Let me tell you something, even down to the sixteen-year-old, the eleven-yearold, really all of them except for the baby are so good live. Like you would think that they would cower back, and be like, ‘Mom, Dad, handle that,’” Monique said. “But they will make sales, explain the flavors, cash somebody out.”
JASON SCHUMER
Monique and Brodie’s children have spent most of their lives in Herby PoP’s entrepreneurial environment. Because the children are homeschooled, they have more flexibility to get involved with the business and travel with their parents, who continue to lead seminars and lectures as medical missionaries. Ezekiel, who is eleven years old, has taken what he has learned through working at Herby PoP one-step further by opening up his own company called Ecozeke, an online business that sells allnatural nontoxic household cleansers. “I’m with my children twentyfour hours, seven days a week typically,” Monique said. “So when you say work-life balance, I say what really does that mean? We’re always working, we’re always living together.” The idea of home being your office has its benefits and its drawbacks. Monique and Brodie both acknowledged that in some cases it can certainly be a test of patience to work with family members. Unlike coworkers, Monique explained, if a family member has a working style that does not complement hers, she does not have
the option to “throw them in the garbage can.” Rather, the whole family has to learn to work with each other and improve each other’s efficiency as a team. “If you can work with your family and have patience with your family, you can probably work with anyone,” Monique said. For the children, Herby PoP has been as much of a part of their education as any math or English class may have been. When asked about how Herby PoP affected them—I spoke to Ezekiel, Hadassah, Mahalyah, and Issachar on the phone— they were shy to answer. It’s a hard question to respond to. Most of the children have grown up with Herby PoP, and its business is simply part of their daily lives. While Herby PoP is currently small and family-run—a characteristic the family certainly plans on preserving—Herby PoP aspires to expand internationally. Currently, it operates for the most part online, with occasional private events, stands at festivals, and pop-up events at restaurants and stores around Chicago and especially on the South Side, such as Robust in Woodlawn and the
Whole Foods in Englewood. However, Monique and Brodie hope to expand Herby PoP by building their market outside of Chicago, eventually creating a flagship store on the South Side. “I’ve been born and raised on the South Side,” Monique said. “I’m so sick and tired of having to travel north to get something different.” Although Herby PoP is certainly changing, the family hopes to preserve its roots below Roosevelt. Having grown up with Herby PoP in some of the integral years of his life, sixteen-year-old Malachi, the oldest of the five kids, understands the core beliefs that drive Herby PoP and his family perhaps better than anyone. “It's created with lots of love,” he said. “My family has been developing the business as a whole for a while, so do me a favor and let’s make Herby PoP into a national sensation.” ¬
APRIL 12, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7
Beyond the Groove
The Chosen Few DJs honor the venue that shaped their sound BY SAM CLAPP
O
n Thanksgiving night and again in January, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, a Chicago tradition unfolded at Hyde Park restaurant-venue the Promontory. Revelers packed the floor until the early hours of the morning, dancing to the music of the Chosen Few DJs. The guys behind the turntables blasted a slowly evolving soundtrack of classic disco, pop, R&B, hip-hop, and punk over an omnipresent bass drum thump. Club-goers went home bleary and content. This sounds like a standard latenight club experience, but there’s a crucial 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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difference: these DJs helped invent house music, that synthesized mutant child of disco that has infused virtually every genre since its birth in the 1980s. In Chicago, the Chosen Few DJs are known for their summer music festival, which draws tens of thousands of fans to Jackson Park each July. To house-heads, they’re famed for their countless production credits and live appearances over the last four decades. But even for a group that’s played innumerable gigs, these events at the Promontory were special. The DJs threw these “Sauer’s Reunion” parties to revisit
the spirit of Sauer’s, a club essential to the development of both the Chosen Few and the genre of house music. Sauer’s—pronounced either “Sour’s” or “Sawyer’s,” depending on who you ask—was ,like the Promontory, a vast restaurant that moonlighted as a club. Located on 23rd Street, on a block since demolished to make way for a McCormick Place expansion, the club bustled at night in a neighborhood that fellow underground club pioneer Craig Loftis has called “the mecca for house music.” Conditions were ripe for innovation. Sauer’s was an after-hours crossroads of
the South Side’s Black DJ party scene and the city’s thriving gay club community, and nationally the early 1980s were a fruitful moment in the development of new music. “It was a big booster board to the scene,” said Chosen Few founder Wayne Williams on a call with fellow Chosen Few DJs Alan King and Terry Hunter, as well as publicist Lehia Franklin Acox. Disco had ruled the underground for nearly a decade, hip-hop was in its infancy in New York, punk and New Wave were spreading in popularity, and DJs like the Chosen Few couldn’t resist the thrill of
MUSIC
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE CHOSEN FEW DJS
mixing them all together in seamless, genrehopping sets. Behind the turntables at Sauer’s, the Chosen Few and other house DJs would blend their mainstay disco records with contemporary cuts by the B-52s, Adam Ant, and DEVO. “It was a really interesting phenomenon. I always associate Sauer’s with it,” said DJ Alan King. “For whatever reason in the early eighties, you had a whole bunch of Black people on the South Side of Chicago who were into not only punk-out, but the preppy scene.” The club hosted theme parties, where crowds wore Izod or Polo, but this scene
played with issues of identity as well as style. “We were inclusive of everyone,” said Williams. “We didn’t get hung up on color, or sex, or anything like that. Which was very different back in the seventies and eighties… especially then in segregated Chicago.” The DJs brought that same spirit of openness onstage by throwing surprises into their sets. Somebody would put on a track by Queen, or some other group tangential to their mainstay disco style, and the other DJs would have to think fast to keep the flow going. The musical adventurousness that
animated the Chosen Few and the larger underground club circuit caught the attention of Herb “The Cool Gent” Kent, a legendary Chicago broadcaster who, helped make famous such legends as The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, and Curtis Mayfield. Kent invited some of the young South Side DJs to play records on his radio show. As the genre mixing in clubs like Sauer’s and its eighties peers radiated out to the wider world, music created by DJs also began to spread. Though the Chosen Few had local fans in the early 1980s, the group’s international influence was in no way predestined. In 1977, the collective formed when Wayne Williams, then in early high school, got overwhelmed with invitations to play his disco albums at school dances and basement parties across the South Side. First Williams recruited his younger stepbrother Jesse Saunders, and as demand grew, he brought on Tony Hatchett a year later. Business was booming, but the collective was limited by a shortage of available vinyl—everyone DJed on records out of Williams’s crates, which made it hard to play sets at multiple venues on the same night. That changed in 1980, though, when Williams recruited Alan King, a young DJ already spinning out of his own voluminous collection. “All the sudden,” Williams said, “we could do even more parties!” With their growing income, the group invested in their record collections and professional equipment. The initial lineup was complete when Williams brought on Tony’s younger brother Andre Hatchett in 1981. By the early eighties, the Chosen Few were a successful teenage DJ crew, but their careers took a legendary turn when Jesse Saunders decided to make a track of his own. As Wayne Williams tells it, Saunders often borrowed one of Williams’s rare records. When the group was booked to play two parties at the same time, Williams wouldn’t let Saunders take the album, so Saunders made a version himself. Saunders bought a drum machine, laid down a thumping disco bass drum break and an approximation of the borrowed record’s instrumentation. The resulting record, “On and On,” released in 1984 on Saunders’s own label, Jes Say Records, is now generally regarded as one of the first commercially distributed house singles. Williams followed this up with his own composition, “Undercover,” under the alias Dr. Derelict, in 1984, and soon DJs all around the city were producing records.
“That [Saunders’s track] kind of started the scene,” Williams said. “Before [the songs] became vinyl, we would take drum machines to the club and actually play the track, and people would go crazy because it was different sound… It actually started the genre when we started doing this Of course, we didn’t realize it at the time… Disco has a softer drum sound because it’s live drums. But you put in drum machine, and all the sudden you hear that boom boom boom. People was going crazy when they heard that.” Pretty soon, this local scene was shipping records across the world. By the mid-eighties, after the first generation of Chosen Few DJs, the next crop of house heads was growing up with the first generation’s innovations. “We just really piggybacked off what Wayne and those guys were doing at that time,” said Terry Hunter, who started DJing house music in the late eighties in a younger cohort that included Mike Dunn. (Hunter joined the Chosen Few collective in 2006, followed by Dunn in 2012). Hunter and his friends played at Sauer’s and other clubs the Chosen Few frequented in the early 1980s, but they were also consumed by the electro sounds of Giorgio Moroder, Italo Disco, and Alexander Robotnick. Hunter was inspired by his father, who played records at his West Side bar. When Hunter was about eleven years old, his cousin took him to a North Side beachfront set by Frankie Knuckles, a friend of the Chosen Few and an influential DJ at the Warehouse, the Loop club for which house music is named. The set catalyzed Hunter’s interest in this new style. “He was playing these records that my father was playing at the house,” Hunter said, “but he was making them sound like they were one consistent record. It was in the month of August, I’ll never forget it.” Hunter went home and immediately asked his mother for a mixer, not knowing he would need turntables as well. Once Hunter started DJing seriously, he and his crew sought to distinguish themselves from the pack by dubbing modified tracks onto tapes. From there, Hunter got more and more interested in production, recording music in the late 1980s and eventually starting a production company that catapulted his career to an international level. “I would go overseas for like a month,” Hunter said. “Come back home, make records, get back on the road.” The magnitude of house music’s worldwide impact started to hit the Chosen APRIL 12, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9
MUSIC Few DJs in the late 1980s. When Williams and fellow Chicago house innovator Adonis toured Europe, they played to crowds more voluminous and enthusiastic than they could draw in the stateside underground party community. Records circulating in the clubs of Chicago, Detroit, and New York were mainstream pop hits overseas. Not that a sudden international appetite for Chicago-born dance music necessarily translated to fame or financial success for the Chosen Few and their associates. Artists from the American underground created the house sound, and many South Side DJs toured the world, but none of them became superstars. The sound they helped develop spread through club networks throughout the world, eventually infusing virtually every genre, from global pop, to experimental dance music, to today’s popular club style, EDM. “I have mixed emotions about it,” King said. “Just like every other genre of music, the creators and the people who were there at the beginning are not necessarily sharing in all of the spoils of the worldwide success that it’s become.” Recently, though, there has been an upsurge in interest in the music’s history. “It’s interesting, because you find that people want to find out where it started, where it came from, the actual beginning,” Williams said. “People are digging, just like they did for any other genre, be it blues, or R&B, or rock’n’roll. But monetarily, it’s easy to say, no one from the Chicago side really got their just dues.” As the years have gone by, the Chosen Few DJs have drifted geographically and professionally but remained linked by their love of music. The Hatchetts DJ regularly on the radio and at parties—Andre in Chicago, Tony in Houston. Saunders built on his early success with “On & On,” becoming the first house artist to ink a major label record contract, touring the globe and producing and remixing music by artists like De La Soul and Paula Abdul. Dunn created a thriving production business in hip-hop and R&B as well as house music. Hunter made his way around the world as a DJ and producer, and in 2015 the Recording Academy nominated a track he produced with Williams, “It’s Your World” by Jennifer Hudson and R. Kelly, for a Grammy. The nomination is the latest success in Williams’s long career as a record company A&R executive. He signed R. Kelly after hearing him at a backyard barbeque, and he has worked with Aretha Franklin, Aaliyah, Justin Timberlake, and a raft of other 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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pop and R&B artists. Making the biggest turn of all the Chosen Few DJs, King got a law degree and maintains a dual life as a regularly gigging house artist and a partner in employment litigation and counseling at Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP. In the 1990s, he reportedly befriended Barack Obama at a pickup basketball game. Now, the Chosen Few have turned an eye toward their legacy. In the early 1990s, the group and their collaborator Kim Parham started hosting an annual Fourth of July weekend picnic and reunion in Jackson Park. What was originally a casual get-together of people from the early house scene grew slowly into a massive festival that they finally had to start charging for admission a few years ago. Lehia Franklin Acox pointed out that the picnic retains its noncommercial nature even in an era of ticket sales. “It’s a love letter to the city and the South Side of the city in particular, without the typical sponsorships and accoutrements you see with really big festivals,” she said. The group hasn’t considered the economic impact of the event on the city or the surrounding neighborhood, but she emphasized the impact on the South Side and Chicago as a whole. “We’re starting to see the city embrace more and more of its house music legacy and culture,” said Acox. “I see the Sauer’s reunions as part and parcel of that. We’re celebrating the history of it but saying, ‘We’re still here. We’re still vibrant.’” In 2017, the Chosen Few show no signs of stopping. In the next year alone they’ve scheduled gigs in Daley Plaza, at the Chicago Cultural Center, and on a dance music cruise. They’ve also started a nonprofit, the Beyond the Groove Foundation, to encourage Chicago youth to get involved in DJing and music production, inspired by their experience DJing at Sauer’s and other clubs in the seventies and eighties. “We grew up in a great era when there were all these great safe spaces for young people to dance all night and party, and everybody was into DJing,” said Alan King. “We really want to find a way to reignite that concept among the young people in Chicago.” If one thing has kept the Chosen Few going all these years, it’s a passion for their friendship as well as their music. “The one thing about us, more than anything, is we love each other,” Wayne Williams said. “… We’re a brotherhood [and] sisterhood.” With everything the group has been a part of, both as innovators and as community-builders, it’s clear the city shares in that love. ¬
OPINIONS & EDITORIALS
Chicago’s Newest Skyscraper Deepens Local Divide Over Globalization BY JEFF TANGEL
Last August, construction started on the Jeanne Gang-designed, Chinese-funded downtown skyscraper Wanda Vista, which will be the thirdtallest building in Chicago when it is completed. The building has been heavily promoted by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, but for some, it has become a symbol for the divisive effects of globalization on local economies once reliant on now-outsourced manufacturing jobs.
S
am Wilson is seventy-three years old, tall and gregarious with an infectious elfin laugh. Whenever he shows up to volunteer at the Canaan M.B.C. Food Ministry in Englewood, where we work, he announces with a challenging grin, “The real man is here.” Everyone laughs. Sam came to Chicago as part of the second Great Migration, arriving in 1960, an eager young man of seventeen from Senatobia, Mississippi. Work was easy to find back then, and he quickly landed a job as a janitor for FS Tiger, a Jewish familyowned clothing manufacturer. FS Tiger was one of many similar Chicago companies that made high quality clothing for local and national markets. Everyone needed clothing, so the work was good. Young Sam was a good worker. “I see so much more you can do, Sam,” FS Tiger’s foreman Mr. Wagner told him— and so he was well-paid, mentored, and regularly promoted. The family came to rely on his skillful ability to cut mounds of expensive fabric with exacting detail, and often sought his guidance on how best to conduct important parts of their business. When the company was struggling, Sam saw a way to turn fabric waste into revenue
by selling scraps to a cap manufacturer across the street. And so a small ecosystem flourished. It wasn’t long before other clothing manufacturers in the Chicago area heard about Sam—the industry was, after all, a sort of family of families. Jack Goodman, the owner of Joyce Sportswear in Gary, Indiana, recruited Sam, offering him a down payment on a house and a moving van to help him relocate. Sam took the job but decided to stay in Chicago, driving to Gary every day for eight years. When Sam’s first child was born the company gave him a baby shower—“Me, a man!,” he says laughing with the memory. “It took me a week to bring all that stuff home.” Sam loves to tell stories of these early years in Chicago. He is proud of what he did, and deeply fond of the people who gave him the opportunity to make a life here, a long way from home. In fact, he says, one of his Jewish employers wanted to adopt him when he came to Chicago— they had no son. Sam went home to Senatobia and talked it over with his mother. “Well…I could live with it,” she said, “but tell your father and he’s gonna kill you.” So Sam turned down the heartfelt offer, and while there were no legal papers, the family nevertheless cared for him like a son. Sam was grateful and still is. With grinning pride Sam tells me he’s “half Black, half Native American, and half Jewish,” and then lets loose that elfin laugh. He’s telling me in so many words that math can’t provide a full account of the richness of life.
DEVELOPMENT When the clothing manufacturing business moved overseas most of the family-owned companies couldn’t compete and were forced to close their doors. Sam’s last employer, the Sudakoff family, closed Caron Inc. in 1999. It was a sad time. Sam tells me that when his autistic son was born, Phil Sudakoff had set up a special area at work furnished with a table and a chair, a bed, TV, and toys where Sam could bring his boy when necessary. Family was important, after all. When the outsourcing of globalization became the norm, the family spirit of Chicago’s local clothing manufacturers dissolved, and a small ecosystem, one that could have existed nowhere but in Chicago, ceased to exist.
M
oving jobs overseas fractures communities: it allows U.S. corporations to become increasingly profitable while the owners of overseas companies often become fabulously wealthy, largely by exploiting their employees and the local environment. The capacity to invest in and care for local communities—like those Sam encountered here—is gone. These overseas companies then simply turn around and reproduce the fractured ecosystem that U.S. companies exported. It is a calculus that increases profits for the few, globally—and it works. For them. Dalian Wanda Group, a Chinese property developer and multinational corporation, is not a clothing company, but is certainly the kind of global company that felled Chicago’s old small-business ecosystems. There is deep irony in Wanda’s evolved business model: founded as a residential real estate developer in China, they now develop luxury properties around the world. In keeping with that high-end market focus, Wanda recently bought the British yacht builder Sunseeker International. Now, Wanda Group is “investing” in Chicago in the form of a giant riverside tower. And people here seem excited. Grateful even. Construction has begun on what will soon be Chicago’s third tallest building, a “94-story, ultra-high-end hotel and condominium complex,” reports the Tribune. The project is said to be “a gauge of Chicago’s appetite for ultra luxury condominiums,” and the units are selling more quickly than many expected. “About a third of the residential units are under contract,” including the seventy-fifthfloor penthouse that “occupies a full floor and offers a panoramic 360-degree view.” Price tag: $8.6 million. Much of the
STEVEN VANCE
demand is coming from Chicago buyers, some of whom are buying second homes in the city, but experts expect demand to be augmented by foreign buyers of these luxury properties as well. “Luxury” and “ultra high-end” and other superlatives of the rich sound attractive and aspirational, but define relational boundaries. They are practical tautologies that say who’s in and who’s out. The truth is, most of us are out. This means that for nearly all Chicagoans Wanda Vista will be nothing more than something to look at from a distance. As wealth becomes ever more concentrated on a global scale, the wealthy increasingly trade among themselves. The rest of us watch from the sidelines of our towns and cities, struggling to make ends meet.
S
am became an ordained minister in 1968, first serving at St James Missionary Baptist in North Lawndale. He wanted to help others as he had been helped. “When I became pastor at the nearby Livestone Missionary in 1993,” he said,
“the Sudakoffs and the Tigers donated thousands of dollars worth of stuff.” Sam’s congregation was small and relatively poor, and the families who formerly employed him wanted to help in any way they could. Sam’s congregation is still poor. I asked him about the new Jeanne Gangdesigned luxury tower that Wanda Group is building. After I tell him that Gang is a famous Chicago architect—her recent local projects include the University of Chicago’s new residential dorm and City Hyde Park, a fifteen-story apartment tower—he says maybe some of his people can get desperately needed jobs there, as janitors, or maintenance workers, or in the hotel or shops. He said what I expect most people would say. How many of us now cater to the wants of the wealthy, often excited about the opportunity and grateful for the servitude? I asked Sam to zoom out in time, repeating his own life story back to him. “Remember when you made clothing for people?” His eyes widened, as if he began to see what has happened to this country and this city during his lifetime. “Yeah—we used to make all kinds of
things here. Jobs were everywhere. I made quality clothing. It was a good job, and I was good at it; and I worked for good people.” By all accounts, Wanda Vista is a mega-project, no doubt about it. Anticipating the project a year ago, a spokeswoman for the mayor gushed, “This is huge,” sounding excited and grateful. Now that the tower is rising on the bank of our river, we see it is even bigger than first imagined. Wanda Vista is a new mega-monument, one that could have been built in any city anywhere: a symbol of the fractured relationships put in place by the wealthy few who seed, feed, and benefit from growing local and global inequality, leaving the rest of us gazing up, wondering what has happened to our world. The Tribune story carried the headline, “Wanda Vista’s Hopeful View.” Hopeful for who, exactly? ¬ Jeff Tangel is an adjunct professor of political science at Saint Xavier University and an associate at DePaul University’s Institute for Nature and Culture. APRIL 12, 2017 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11
HOUSING
Redeveloping the State Street Corridor: An Update BY JAKE BITTLE
I
n January, the Weekly published an investigation into the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA)’s failure to redevelop public housing in Bronzeville after demolishing much of it in the early 2000s. The demolition of projects such as Ida B. Wells, Robert Taylor, and Stateway Gardens was part of the now-notorious Plan for Transformation, a federally funded initiative that promised to replace the demolished high-rises with new housing developments that would combine subsidized and marketrate housing units. The Plan also promised that the CHA would rebuild or rehabilitate a total of 25,000 units overall. The Weekly’s investigation found that the CHA is nearly a decade behind its proposed redevelopment timelines and that many of the high-rise sites have remained vacant, awaiting construction that has yet to be planned or announced. The CHA said in a statement to the Weekly in January that its “commitment to the communities along the State Street corridor remains the same today as it did in 2000,” and that redevelopment on the vacant parcels was in the works. In a variety of statements over the years, the agency has blamed the 2008 financial crisis and recession for the slowdown in reconstruction. Since the Weekly’s investigation was published, the CHA has released two documents that offer further information about its near-future redevelopment plans. One of these is its 2016 annual report to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where it gives a summary of the progress it has made on the Plan for Transformation the preceding year. These reports include a section detailing how many units of housing the CHA has built, rehabilitated, or acquired toward its 25,000-unit goal. In the 2016 report, this section shows that out of the 740 units of public housing the agency added to its stock in 2016, only 115 were mixed-income housing redevelopment. The other 600-odd were 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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DATA VISUALIZATION BY ELLEN HAO
delivered primarily through rehabilitation of existing CHA housing (218 units at Altgeld Gardens were rehabilitated) or through other housing subsidy programs. Sixty of these 115 mixedincome units were at Rosenwald Courts , a redevelopment project that involved the total renovation of a historic Bronzeville apartment complex; the restoration, which cost more than $130 million, was financed through a combination of public and private loans and grants. Fifteen more units were
delivered at Casa Querétaro in Pilsen, an affordable housing development built in collaboration with The Resurrection Project. But though the CHA will count these new affordable housing projects in Pilsen and Bronzeville toward its Plan for Transformation goals, these projects do not represent the actual redevelopment of the high-rise sites that were demolished as part of the Plan. On that front, the agency only delivered forty units in 2016. These were fifteen units at Parkside (the redevelopment
of Cabrini-Green) and twenty-five at “City Gardens” (a part of the Rockwell Gardens redevelopment project) on the West Side. The CHA delivered no new units at the redevelopments for Stateway Gardens, Ida B. Wells, Robert Taylor, or Harold Ickes. More broadly, though, the CHA’s strategy for fulfilling the goals of the Plan for Transformation has shifted dramatically away from the construction of new housing and the rehabilitation of existing housing. Most of the units the CHA has added to its
EVENTS
BULLETIN Building Trauma-Sensitive Practices
housing stock over the past five years have been delivered through the “project-based voucher” program, wherein the CHA offers subsidies to property owners to provide housing to people from the agency’s waitlist. These project-based vouchers, which did not count toward fulfilling the Plan for Transformation until the CHA amended its agreement with HUD in 2010, accounted for more than half of the units the agency delivered last year. In addition to its retrospective annual reports, the CHA also releases a forwardlooking annual plan at the beginning of each year detailing its scheduled redevelopment activities for that year. It follows up on these plans in its annual reports to HUD and evaluates whether it met its own benchmarks (it has not done so in at least five years). Its 2017 plan also does not project any construction on the State Street Corridor sites: of the 111 units the agency plans to build in 2017, sixty-six are at Sterling Park Apartments in Homan Square, which will turn a former Sears & Roebuck corporate headquarters into affordable housing, and nineteen are at St. Edmund’s Oasis, a new affordable housing development in Washington Park. Both developments were originally scheduled for completion in 2016. By the end of 2017, then, two years will have passed since there was new redevelopment construction on the State Street Corridor (in 2015 the CHA completed another phase of the Stateway Gardens redevelopment and a number of small off-site buildings near the Robert Taylor Homes). Curbed Chicago reported in February that construction work on the Harold Ickes redevelopment in the South Loop, which will contain around 200 units of public housing, was intended to start in the third quarter of this year, which means new public housing units could be delivered there as early as 2018. The CHA could not be reached for comment before this story went to print. ¬
UChicago School of Social Services Administration, 969 E. 60th St., room W1ab. Thursday, April 13, 5pm–8pm. RSVP at bit.ly/TRACimpact Join the Trauma, Resilience, Advocacy Collaborative and the Center for Childhood Resilience to learn about how trauma impacts youths, adults who interact with them, and communities as a whole. This workshop hopes to help participants recognize trauma and create supportive environments for youths. (Adia Robinson)
Self-Publishing for Activism Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, 929 E. 60th St., ste. 112. Thursday, April 13, 6pm. (773) 834-1936. graycenter.uchicago.edu Authors, artists, and activists gather to discuss self-publishing and its potential as a social justice tool. Hosted by the Gray Center, the panel will be peopled by members of the One of My Kind (OOMK) collective—responsible for a biannual, small-press zine—and an assortment of other artist-activists, from Chicago and beyond. (Michael Wasney)
Know Your Rights Open Mic Hamilton Park Fieldhouse, 513 W. 72nd St. Friday, April 14, 6pm–8pm. Free. (773) 3548581. bit.ly/kyropenmic Join the First Defense Legal Aid Street Law Corps for an evening of performances by youth leaders and artists in Englewood. There will be a short video screening highlighting the group’s recent civil and human rights trip to New Orleans, Louisiana. (Roderick Sawyer)
’Go Run, Washington Park
BURN353
Washington Park. Saturday, April 15, 9am. RSVP online. (312) 666-9836. cararuns.org
Elephant Room Gallery, 704 S. Wabash Ave. Saturdays, 11am–5pm, through April 29, or by appointment. (312) 361-0281. elephantroomgallery.com
If you’re looking for the impetus to pick up running again, here it is. This weekend and every weekend afterward ’til early June, Chicago Area Runners and the Chicago Park District partner to create the ’Go Run program, designed to encourage active lifestyles and greater engagement with the city’s parks. (Michael Wasney)
Save Our Streets Picnic
This solo exhibition by artist BURN353, a graffiti and mixed media artist from downstate Illinois, looks back on a childhood spent spray-painting freight trains and watching hip-hop films, and showcases pieces from his extensive painting and design work. ( Jake Bittle)
Hood Zine Workshops: Pilsen
Ashland/Eric Patterson Park, 149 Ashland Ave., Harvey, IL, 60426 Saturday, April 15, 12pm. Free. (708) 631-8105. sistahsistahhelpin.wixsite.com/mysite
La Catrina Café, 1011 W. 18th St. Wednesday, April 12, 8:30pm. culturainpilsen.com
For those passionate about addressing violence in the city, join Sistah’Sistah Helping Hands and Blissful Eats Catering for a “day full of fun, learning, and togetherness.” This event provides networking opportunities for adults and fun activities for children. (Adia Robinson)
If you missed her first workshop last week, Chicago artist Gabriela Ibarra will be leading another workshop on how communities can use zines “to reframe the narrative” around their neighborhoods. Ibarra will provide “Pilsen Zine templates” and will distribute copies of the finished zines made by the group. (Adia Robinson)
VISUAL ARTS Lesley Jackson: Walking with Rilke 4th Ward Project Space, 5338 S. Kimbark Ave. Saturdays, 1pm–5pm, through Saturday, May 6, or by appointment. Free. (773) 2032991. 4wps.org Multimedia artist Lesley Jackson uses objects like gathered leaves, a rubber band, and tree bark to evoke the “romantic struggle with mortality” of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke at this monthlong exhibition in Hyde Park. ( Jake Bittle)
Closing Reception: Aspects of the Whole Studio Oh!, 1837 S. Halsted St. Closing reception Friday, April 14, 6pm–10pm. Through April 27. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, 1pm–6pm, or by appointment. Free. (773) 474-1070. art-studio-oh.com “Aspects of the Whole,” curated by Studio Oh!’s Lisa Stefaniak, uses grid patterns to cut through and segment the work of four photographers and artists (Adam Lofbomm, Otto Rascon, Robert Tolchin, and Stefaniak herself ), breaking down images and putting them back together in strange and captivating ways. (Hafsa Razi)
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EVENTS
Intercessions: Art as Intervention and Prayer Rootwork Gallery, 645 W. 18th St. Opening reception Friday, April 14, 6:30pm–9:30pm. Through May 21; see website for performance schedule. (917) 821-3050. facebook.com/rootworkgallery “Intercessions” brings together visual and performance art to contemplate “the body and the spirit; the sacred and the profane.” The opening reception features the work of painter, sculptor, and performance artist Maya Amina, as well as percussion and mixed media artist Xristian Espinoza. (Hafsa Razi)
MUSIC San Fermin Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Wednesday, April 12, 8:30pm, 7:30pm doors. $18-$25. (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com San Fermin comes to Pilsen to perform from its third album, which marks an inward turn for the band: bandleader and songwriter Ellis Ludwig-Leone has dropped his usual fictional frameworks for more personal lyrics that chart his life in terms of his anxiety. Low Roar will open for the group. ( Julia Aizuss)
Song Selectors: Sean Alvarez Punch House, 1227 W. 18th Street. Friday, April 15, 10pm. Free. punchhousechicago.com Nestled in the belly of Thalia Hall, Punch House is hosting Afrofuturist DJ Sean Alvarez as their selector this Friday. Sip your favorite punch as Alvarez transports the room to afro-bliss with his mix of jazzy, soulful, global deep house grooves, in celebration of the creativity birthed from the African diaspora. (Nicole Bond)
Third Tuesday Jazz: Pat Mallinger Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Tuesday, April 18, 7:30pm. Free. (773) 7022787. arts.uchicago.edu The Hyde Park Jazz Society’s series highlighting local musicians continues this month with saxophonist Pat Mallinger, whose career has ranged from performing with luminaries like Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin to mentoring CPS students since 1994. He is also, in his own right, “one of Chicago’s most popular multi-reedists,” according to the Hyde Park Jazz Festival; Logan Café is lucky to have him. ( Julia Aizuss)
STAGE & SCREEN
Good Times with Party Noire
Never the Milk & Honey
The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Friday, April 14, 7pm. $7 pre-sale, $10 at door. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com
The Greenhouse Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Friday, April 14–Sunday, May 28. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 8pm; Sunday, 3pm. $21$37. (773) 609-4714. mpaact.org
Party Noire and Bklyn Boihood are throwing a good time with an early lineup of emerging Chicago artists, including TASHA, Jade the Ivy, Christian JaLon, and Kopano. Nappy Nina alson joins them to spit her own East Coast fire. (Adia Robinson)
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It is written that there is a land of milk and honey, promised as respite for the faithful when the world ends. Explore what happens as covenants and faith are broken when the world doesn’t end as expected, in Joseph Jefferson Award winner Shepsu
Aakhu’s newest play, directed by South Shore native Carla Stillwell. (Nicole Bond)
Selena: The Movie – 20 Year Anniversary La Catrina Café, 1011 W. 18th Street. Friday, April 21, 7pm–9pm. Free, RSVP required. RSVPs for this event have sold out, but a limited number of entries will be permitted on the day of the event on a firstcome first-served basis. Join the waitlist at bit.ly/SelenaMovie20 and follow the event on facebook.com/culturainpilsen for updates. Fans of acclaimed singer-songwriter Selena, gather at this informal sister event to Selena Vive! 2017, Cultura in Pilsen’s fundraiser, to reminisce over the two decades that have passed since the film made by and about Latinx people, and starring Jennifer Lopez, debuted. This is an all-ages event. (Nicole Bond)
Love & Heroes Harold Washington Cultural Center, 4701 S. King Drive. Friday, April 21, 7pm; Sunday, April 23, 5pm. $20-$60. broadwayinbronzeville.com Superpowers, superheroes, comic books, R&B, and love—all find a place on the stage in Bemaji Tillman’s musical romantic comedy. See it onstage for one weekend only. (Nicole Bond)
An Evening with Dick Gregory The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. Sunday, April 23, 6:30pm, doors; 7:30pm, show. $20–$60. (312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com Dick Gregory is such a legend that little needs to be said. Over his half-century career, he’s been a bestselling author, a television star, a civil rights activist, an official enemy of Nixon, and one of Comedy Central’s Top 100 Stand-Up Comedians of All Time. Dedry Jones of
the Music Experience hosts Gregory, who’s been one of the most outspoken critics of discrimination since he ascended to the national stage in the 1960s. ( Joseph S. Pete)
A Poet, A Novelist, and An Essayist Walk into a Bar Lagunitas Brewing Company, 2607 W. 17th Street. Monday, April 24, 6pm–8:30pm. Limited student tickets $15, otherwise $45. 21+. guildcomplex.org Poet Nate Marshall, novelist Christine Sneed, and essayist Barrie Jean Borich read original works all including the word “beer,” in keeping with the brewery theme, at the Guild Literary Complex Annual Benefit. Food, a cash bar, a photo booth, and a literary trivia station are among the offerings. (Nicole Bond)
NAJWA Dance Corps: Masks DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl. Saturday, April 29, 7pm–9:30pm. $15-$25. (773) 727-1773. najwadancecorps.org African dance and ceremonial masks combine in Najwa’s annual spring concert showcasing the dynamics of masks and maskmaking through the ages, whether as cultural ritual or as a retreat from personal truths. (Nicole Bond)
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