May 2, 2018

WELCOME

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

THE FOOD ISSUE

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 5, Issue 26

W

Editor-in-Chief Baci Weiler Managing Editors Bridget Newsham, Sam Stecklow Deputy Editor Adam Przybyl

elcome to the Weekly’s third annual Food Issue, our brightest and spiciest yet.

Over the next twenty-four pages, you’ll encounter a veritable feast prepared by the Weekly’s intrepid and insatiable reporters. As in years past, reviews and profiles—of a family’s habanero hot sauce line, pizza in Bronzeville, michelada and smoothies, newly opened and closed coffee shops, and bars along Archer Avenue—abound.

But for the whole story of the meal on your plate, look out for pieces that report on the broader context of food production, like the new wave of agricultural cooperatives cropping up across the South Side; the anti-slaughter organizing that activists brought down to the old Stockyards; and the 2011 urban agriculture zoning amendment that legalized for-profit urban farms—while also raising the barriers to starting and finding an appropriate business license for an urban farm. To top it off, a new contributor makes a compelling argument about how our conversation about a just food system fails to hit the mark—and that we should be talking about racism, segregation, and the minimum wage when we talk about food access on the South Side. As always, we wish we could feature even more of the nuanced flavors of the South and West Sides than we can fit in one issue. But we’re confident that what awaits you is a carefully crafted and satisfying nine-course meal—so tuck in!

Senior Editors Julia Aizuss, Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen, Andrew Koski, Hafsa Razi, Olivia Stovicek

Politics Editor Adia Robinson Education Editor Rachel Kim Stage & Screen Editor Nicole Bond Visual Arts Editor Rod Sawyer Food & Land Editor Emeline Posner Music Editor Christopher Good Contributing Editors Elaine Chen, Mira Chauhan, Amy Qin, Rachel Schastok, Michael Wasney, Yunhan Wen Data Editor Jasmine Mithani Radio Exec. Producer Erisa Apantaku Radio Editor Sam Larsen Radio Hosts Andrew Koski, Olivia Obineme Social Media Editors Bridget Newsham, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Deputy Visuals Editors Kahari Black, Ellie Mejía, Lizzie Smith Photography Editor Jason Schumer Layout Editor Baci Weiler Staff Writers: Maddie Anderson, Leah von Essen, Ashvini Kartik-Narayan, Kiran Misra, Anne Li Staff Radio Producer: Bridget Vaughn Fact Checkers: Abigail Bazin, Sam Joyce, Bridget Newsham, Adam Przybyl, Hafsa Razi, Sam Stecklow, Tammy Xu Staff Photographers: milo bosh, Kiran Misra, Jason Schumer Staff Illustrators: Siena Fite, Natalie Gonzalez, Katherine Hill, Courtney Kendrick, Kamari Robertson Webmaster Operations Manager

Pat Sier Jason Schumer

The Weekly is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute the paper each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring.

Over the summer we publish every other week.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com

Cover illustration by Renee Rolewicz

stewards for the land

“It is a lot more sustainable for a program, business, or organization to be inclusive.” victoria karlin...4 witnesses to slaughter

“Her whole life was a complete waste.” jade yan...6 opinion: the solution to

“food

deserts” isn’t just food

It’s a conceptually backwards approach to the issue of food inaccessibility to reach out to corporations that created the issue in the first place. dejah powell...7 runnin’ hot

The sauce sits for an entire year until it’s ready to be packaged and distributed. maple joy...9

Restaurant reviews a neighborhood pizzeria for bronzeville

“It’s the crust and the sauce that makes or breaks a pizza.” nur banu simsek...10 a cuban food haven

Cafeteria Yesenia feels like your grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon. kristen simmons...10 mango and maki on 26th street

“Sora Temakeria isn’t your run-of-the-mill sashimi establishment; its menu is Japanese in inspiration, but with a Brazilian bent.” michael wasney...11

Drink reviews Comings and goings

what’s on tap

z&h is dead, long live z&h

Z&H was what you needed it to be, all the time. emeline posner...16

bottoms up: micheladas

evelyn’s food love

stefania gomez...14

maple joy...17

beer-and-shot pairings

daley’s

christopher good...17 culver’s

erisa apantaku...18 fresh brews

“Definitely quite a bit of cucumber in the nose.” staff...12

emeline posner...14 mangonada

stefania gomez...15 smoothies

emily jacobi...15

Half a dozen new and notable South Side coffee shops emeline posner & sam stecklow...18

license to grow

“Urban farms should have the lowest possible barrier to entry.” christian belanger...19

MAY 2, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

Stewards for the Land

Some of the farmers behind the city’s newer generation of cooperative farms

BY VERONICA KARLIN

I

nstead of being rural and vast, these farms are couple-acre lots enclosed by major streets and railway lines. Instead of shipping produce long distances, these farms serve their local, South Side communities.

Instead of owning the land, these farmers tend to it with their community in mind.

Instead of using a top-down structure of organization, these farms are cooperative, owned equally by the farmers themselves and the City of Chicago. These are cooperative farms, the new crop of urban agriculture on the South Side.

One of the major players in the movement for agricultural cooperatives is Grow Greater Englewood (GGE), an organization founded in 2013 that promotes community wealth-building through sustainable agriculture. Cooperative farming is a central aspect of GGE’s community organizing.

L. Anton Seals Jr., the Lead Steward and programming director of GGE, says, “our programing is focused on bringing more people into learning about ecology and the food system.” While the organization is educational, Seals explained that it’s focused on community wealthbuilding. “The thrust will be to try to help those who are graduating from the different urban agriculture programs. How do we get them onto the land, how do we support them in their business endeavors, and how do we work together as a collective?” The cooperative structure, he adds, “allows for people to have their own autonomy and then bridge out from there.”

As for the decision to adopt this structure, Seals says GGE is focusing on finding right model to support the emerging businesses. “We think that [as far as] engaging and getting more members, we have to raise the quality of what’s in it for the membership.” So far, the cooperative model has proven to be the best option.

Along with the wealth-building

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 2, 2018

SIENA FITE

educational programming, the main GGE project is the Englewood Community Farm.

Located along the former 59th Street El tracks in Englewood, the program’s vision is to “create and support community-based urban farms in Englewood managed as business enterprises by local farmers.” The city owns the lot, but NeighborSpace, a nonprofit trust that supports and protects gardens, will both hold the lot and help GGE create their own trust, the Englewood Community Land Trust Cooperative.

The land at 58th and Halsted will be turned into a plaza and community

garden. Various businesses will make up the Englewood Community Farms project, operating together as a cooperative, including Black Oaks, a nonprofit organization that runs educational program and the Healthy Food Hub, an agricultural cooperative that brings in produce grown by Black farmers in Pembroke for purchase in Oak Forest and Englewood; Your Bountiful Harvest, an organization run by Safia Rashid that provides education and consultations in sustainable agriculture; Urban Growers Collective, a nonprofit initiative helping communities develop local food systems;

and DuSable City Ancestral Winery, a new vineyard focused on using local herbs and fruits.

According to the business plan, the community garden will have four to eight plots that can be used by either for-profit or cooperative organizations. Farmers will each manage their own operations, but share tools, soil amendments, refrigeration, hoop houses, fencing, and other resources.

The retired El line will eventually become a linear park and tree tunnel stretching from Halsted to Damen.

GGE’s business plan also includes

AGRICULTURE

hosting performances and events on the plaza and finding the right investors. According to Seals, the main focus is “keeping our values centered, around how we’re growing, what we’re growing…and later how the farmers after us are brought onto the land.”

The uptick in urban, cooperative agriculture, Seals says, can be attributed to the fact that many communities are trying to establish food security and localize their economies. “We think that there is an untapped market that could really drive this issue around community wealth-building, particularly Black wealth-building. We are being very intentional around that. That’s why a lot of the farmers we are trying to attract here are African-American farmers.”

In order to accomplish wealth-building in Englewood, GGE is focused on making sure their work does not displace residents.

To that end, the group created its own 3P model: a Public-Public Partnership, rather than the usual Public-Private one, to ensure that the public institutions work with local residents as the other partner. Seals hopes that by involving residents, they will be less likely to become displaced. For GGE, it is especially important to reach out to the residents who live right next to the lots in question in order to help the economy but not cause displacement. Seals makes sure residents are involved by asking questions like: “What does it mean to them? What are the different points of opportunities for them to connect to this work?”

A

cooperative management structure is becoming increasingly attractive to many urban farmers, as well as other food workers in Chicago. In 2016, State Representative Will Guzzardi passed a bill that updated the language of the Illinois Cooperative Act of 1918 to define co-ops as any organization operated by its shareholders, making it easier for co-ops to form and obtain licensing. Before, only particular types of manufacturers could be considered as co-ops. While this change was seen as a step forward for co-op interests, many organizations still choose to only operate cooperatively rather than become legally recognized under the IL Cooperative Statute because the law still considers workers to be employees rather than owners.

While many urban agriculture coops are still in the planning phase, like the Englewood Community Farm, some are

currently operating. One of the newest members of the co-op community is Bronzeville’s Nodding Onion Farm, located on the Windy City Harvest (WCH) Legends Farm at 44th and Federal. Formed in January 2018, the farm is equally owned by five recent alums of the Windy City Harvest apprenticeship (Angela Klipp, Giulianna Ciocca, Maggie Dohr, Dylan Hayworth-Weste, and Lauren Ocon) and driven by a vision of sustainable food and equitable ownership practices.

Klipp saw the cooperative system as a way to make a sustainable food business “that is mission-driven, that makes money, that is honest about what their goals are, and that is actually living the message that people assume is the case for most farms, but is actually not.”

Hayworth-Weste was drawn to Nodding Onion for different reasons. “My experience [with more traditional farm models] was less than positive in terms of working for companies where equity is not something that’s shared in any capacity,” he said. In his experience, the discussion around traditional top-down agricultural structures “is not happening as much as the discussion around the importance of local and organic production. Those things are very important, but actually talking about empowering workers and forming collective structures so it doesn’t actually resemble farming in a rural context can actually influence [rural farm structures] as well.”

Already in its first few months of operation, Nodding Onion has found the cooperative structure to be beneficial. For Dohr, “it is a lot more sustainable for a program, business, or organization to not be driven by one individual, to be rather inclusive.” Klipp adds that the diversification of strength is brought out in a cooperative system. “We are all stronger as a group, and equal ownership gives us an ability to express those strengths and feel empowered to take on our own leadership roles.”

In their cooperative structure, they use a consensus model in which they make all their decisions together. The cooperative makes sure not only that all owners are satisfied with a decision, but that their crop plan is developed according to the needs of the community.

The Nodding Onion team attributes the increase in cooperative agriculture as a response to traditional work environments.

“Everybody wants to feel valued where they work, they want to feel it’s more than just getting a paycheck, and they want to feel invested in what they are doing,” Dohr said.

“Traditional agriculture has some pretty horrific labor practices, so instead of trying to adopt those models and downsize them to urban areas, I think people are starting to realize that it is important to change the structure a little bit.”

Nodding Onion currently participates in farmer’s markets and offers a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription as well as a Restaurant Supported Agriculture service. Their weekly subscription delivers fresh flowers and produce within a five-mile radius and runs from mid-May to midNovember. A CSA subscription costs $600 for that seven-month period––about twenty people have signed up so far. While the Nodding Onion team understands that this price may be a potential deterrent, they find the weekly cost ($24) is close to many highend Chicago grocers. The farmers deliver the produce themselves––often by bike–– within days of harvest. Their cooperative structure, with five farmers with different backgrounds, allowed them reach out to many different networks, helping them get started with CSA. In terms of working with the community, they partner with different community organizations across the Southwest Side at their pick-up locations, and are planning to find channels to donate as much produce as they can. Ciocca adds that they also plan on launching educational initiatives, to help other local farmers adopt the cooperative structure.

The Windy City Harvest incubator lot supports farmers with tools and land to help minimize startup costs for up to two years. While Nodding Onion has no concrete plans for the future, Klipp says “the difficulty with being a landless farmer is that it requires a lot of investment, but there is no security in that land.”

U

nderstanding the difficulty of farming in Chicago, the idea of collaboration and stewardship is central to both the Nodding Onion and Grow Greater Englewood cooperative projects.

Hayworth-Weste envisions creating a broader network of other landless farmers in the community. “We are all trying to start

without any sort of control over the land that we are growing on, and unfortunately, that is more or less the case with most farms in Chicago,” he said, adding that he would like to see that these types of networks “can move to a point where this is shared land ownership of farmers and there’s not just these sort of rental or lease agreements.”

The idea of not owning the land, but tending it, is an important part of the GGE project as well. This is why Seals’s job title is a “steward.” “Stewardship is built around this notion that you don’t own the Earth.

You take care of the Earth and you take care of the food,” he said. “You make sure that it’s part of a legacy. In particular for Black people, that have been so traumatized by their connection to the Earth because of the slave trade.”

To Seals, part of GGE’s goal is “working to connect the legacy of Black people and the land. This notion of ecology and food system is a big part of the legacy of Africans in this country. In the slave trade, what is often left out is that the people who were brought were highly skilled people who tended to the land.” A broad goal of GGE, Seals explained, is “how do we take the most unappreciative parts of our culture, American culture, and make that valuable?”

Both Grow Greater Englewood and Nodding Onion enter the Chicago urban, cooperative agriculture movement with the goal of connecting their communities with sustainable food and management practices.

By understanding the failings of traditional agriculture, whether in terms of its history or labor practices, both organizations are trying to change the way we think of community organization and equity around food. Ciocca explained that the nodding onion, their farm’s namesake, is a native Chicago herb considered invasive in some areas, but endangered in others.

“The nodding onion is a beautiful flower, and can be considered a weed,” Ciocca said.

“But it is all about how you look at things.

It is a beautiful image of something that can be overlooked.” Veronica Karlin is a contributor to the Weekly.

She’s an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, originally from Los Angeles. She last wrote for the Weekly about Odyssey Project docents at the Smart Museum in March.

MAY 2, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

Witnesses to Slaughter

A group of activists fights animal cruelty one vigil at a time

BY JADE YAN

A

t 11:30pm last Wednesday, a group of fifteen people was standing on a street in the East Village, watching for the arrival of a truck. They were members of Chicago Animal Save, an animal anticruelty group, and they were holding a monthly vigil to protest the animal cruelty that goes ignored in slaughterhouses. Each member was ready to stand until the truck came, which might not happen until four in the morning. The truck would be bringing chickens for slaughter.

“Many people don’t even know this is a slaughterhouse,” said one activist. “The sign says Pollos Vivos—live chickens.”

Chicago Animal Save is a branch of the Save Movement, an international animal justice network that promotes grassroots activism and veganism through peaceful vigils at slaughterhouses. Since its founding in 2010, the movement has come to include more than 330 chapters from around the world, which aim to raise awareness about the plight of farmed animals by bearing witness to “pigs, cows, chickens, and other farmed animals en route to slaughter.”

Chicago Animal Save uses vigils to “bear witness,” but it also wants to close all Chicago slaughterhouses, which numbered eleven in 2015. The group was formed two years ago, when North Sider Kelsey Atkinson was contacted by a woman from Back of the Yards about staging a protest against a nearby slaughterhouse. Atkinson organized the first vigil—signaling the group’s formation—at the Halsted Packing House, a few blocks north of the Fulton Market District. Five people came both to protest animal slaughter and deduce the schedule of delivery trucks for future vigils.

At 4am, the truck arrived.

Atkinson recalled the animals were unexpectedly young. “Some pigs and lambs were small enough for me to scoop into my arms,” she said.

“If you don’t think this is an urgent situation, you haven’t seen what goes on behind those walls,” said one group member 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 2, 2018

KIRAN MISRA

about the slaughterhouse. “Or in that truck.”

During their vigils, Chicago Animal Save activists approach the trucks, provide food and water for the animals, and document any abuses. Atkinson relayed the time she saw “a pig with both her ears cut off.” She also described seeing lambs rushed off a truck, leaving one behind. The activists begged the workers to let them take her, as she was not fit to be slaughtered—but were told it wasn’t allowed. “We’ve never been allowed to take animals. She was just taken back to the farm and killed there,” said Atkinson. “Her whole life was a complete waste.”

Conditions inside delivery trucks are generally filthy. “We usually see excrement and vomit smeared across the walls or

dripping through the sides of the truck,” Atkinson explained. “Many animals lie in the waste and seem too weak to move.”

Outside one slaughterhouse, animals were forced to wait in subzero temperatures before they were brought inside to be killed.

One of the animals froze to death.

“We have never seen the workers give the animals food or water,” said Atkinson.

Atkinson had previously undertaken more immediate action, such as disruptive protests inside grocery stores and food festivals, with animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere. But she found that people with first-hand experience of animal abuse gave speeches with far greater impact.

“I started to plan these vigils so that more people could gain that experience

and pass it on to others,” Atkinson said.

“We are building a strong foundation of activists who have witnessed the atrocities of slaughterhouses firsthand, and we are attracting more by the day.”

The group also reached out to aldermen in neighborhoods containing slaughterhouses, but Atkinson said aldermen didn’t want to engage with their work. Alderman Walter Burnett of the 27th Ward met with the group, but hadn’t seemed interested in helping them, Atkinson said.

According to Atkinson, Proco Joe Moreno of the 1st Ward didn’t even respond.

“I feel like if the slaughterhouses were seen as a detriment to more desirable businesses in the neighborhood, then the aldermen would start to care more,” said

POLITICS

Atkinson.

Still, Atkinson noted that Chicago Animal Save aims to engage more with communities near slaughterhouses in order to gain support and momentum.

In addition to vigils, the group organizes community activities such as sanctuary visits, documentary screenings, and vegan potlucks. It also focuses on community outreach through partnerships with local organizations like Hip Hop Is Green, which aims to make a vegan lifestyle accessible to Chicagoans and the young.

Chicago Animal Save also exposes animal cruelty through its YouTube channel, where the group has posted several videos on slaughterhouses. One video, a look inside a Chicago slaughterhouse, contains footage of panting chickens with infected, featherless patches of skin in small cages full of feces.

The video documents their slaughter: they’re rotated through a vat of boiling water, and then tossed, often half alive, into a metal grinder.

“And this is the type of slaughterhouse that they say is very cruelty-free,” said one activist. “You know, old Amish farms, the healthiest chickens.”

During vigils, activists try to engage with slaughterhouse workers, who appear desensitized to animal death in the group’s videos. Though Chicago Animal Save stresses that people should be held accountable for slaughter, Atkinson said that the group makes its nonviolent ethos clear to volunteers and activists before each vigil.

“We’re here to attack the system, we’re not here to attack individuals,” said Atkinson.

While most workers ignore the activists or get angry, some speak to them, particularly when the activists chant in Spanish. They are often told by workers that “this is just my job, I need to feed my family.” Atkinson noted that truck drivers and slaughterhouse workers often deny any responsibility over the matter and reiterate that they are just doing their jobs.

“They just wanted us to leave them alone,” she said of the employees.

If the suffering of animals weren’t enough, slaughterhouse employees often labor in dangerous and repetitive conditions.

Workers frequently suffer from lacerations from sharp equipment, and the repetitive nature of the labor often leads to stress injuries on the hands, arms, and back.

Workers are also exposed to the blood, guts, and feces of animals, putting them at risk of contracting various diseases. Chicago’s slaughterhouse working conditions

prompted protest at the beginning of the twentieth century, most notably in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, written in 1906 as an exposé of workplace conditions in Chicago’s Union stockyards.

Chicago Animal Save joins a long line of animal welfare organizations based in Chicago. The Illinois Humane Society, founded in 1869, often worked with health inspectors and obtained an office in one slaughterhouse, allowing them to observe and report on any animal cruelty.

In 1874, the group reported that they had “admonished nearly two thousand persons for unnecessary cruelty to animals,” as Dominic Pacyga writes.

Five years later, Zadok Street, who was part of the Illinois Humane Society, traveled over 18,000 miles on railroads carrying livestock to Chicago in order to report on the terrible conditions. The group later succeeded in obtaining state regulation of the transportation of animals by railroad to slaughterhouses.

Another organization, the Anti-Cruelty Society, was founded in 1899 and prompted by women connected to the contemporary suffrage movement. Their goals were— and still are—to suppress cruelty against animals and educate the public on humane treatment.

But despite the legacy of animal activism in Chicago, there is a degree of separation between Chicago’s different animal welfare groups. Atkinson said she had attempted to connect with the Anti-Cruelty Society to report the abuses against animals she had witnessed on slaughter trucks but had gotten no response.

When asked about the group’s successes, Atkinson acknowledged that change comes slowly. Atkinson said that the group’s presence at slaughterhouses had caused trucks to drive away on three occasions, sparing animals’ lives for the day and causing a disruption to slaughterhouses.

She also cited the mere presence of the group as a success.

“We create a discussion and controversy around the subject of violence against animals,” she said, “that normally goes unquestioned.” Jade Yan is from Hong Kong and currently a freshman at the University of Chicago. This is her first story for the South Side Weekly.

OPINIONS & EDITORIALS

The Solution to “Food Deserts” Isn’t Just Food We need to talk racism, segregation, and income disparity, too

BY DEJAH POWELL

B

y now, many of us are aware of the increasing conversation around “food deserts” in Chicago and across the country. Food deserts are typically defined as lowincome areas in which a significant portion of residents live a mile or more from grocery stores and supermarkets.

In Chicago, the majority of food deserts are in predominantly AfricanAmerican neighborhoods lacking accessibility to fresh food options, with much easier access to fast food, liquor, and convenience stores. While a great deal of the momentum that has emerged around the issue has focused on increasing food accessibility, many of these proposed solutions—including the proposal to increase grocery stores in the city—actually operate within the status quo and fail to make structural change.

In the last few years, we’ve seen Mariano’s open in Bronzeville, Whole Foods in Englewood, and a proposed Shop & Save in South Shore. While grocery stores are a necessary access point for food in communities, they do not bring the kind of structural change needed to transform food environments. On the contrary, grocery stores only change the circumstances for those who choose to spend on healthier food—the filling kind, not

limited to leafy greens—and the time to prepare it. In addition, it’s a conceptually backwards approach to the issue of food inaccessibility to reach out to corporations that created the issue in the first place. Profitdriven businesses have fled to suburbia over the past several decades because demand (and profit) was higher there than it was in inner cities. By turning to them, we are only giving them the power to abandon us once again whenever they choose—which, given the already-meager profit margins in the grocery industry, could happen at any time.

To truly transform food environments, we must shift the conversation towards one of “food apartheid,” which more accurately captures how various structural inequities converge to produce existing food environments. Then, we can clear space for radical solutions that get to the crux of why many African Americans in the city don’t have easy or equitable access to healthy, fresh, and affordable food.

Allow me to backtrack for a second.

My obsession with food environments began when I was a fifteen year old high school student I would spend an incredible amount of time staring out of windows: the window of the Metra and MAY 2, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

POLITICS

Blue Line as I traversed the city to Whitney Young for high school; the window of my mother’s backseat as I followed her on real estate showings that took us to the North, West, and South Sides of the city; windows that passed teenage boys beating drums off the expressway and vendors selling chews and frooties off Stony Island. Each of these windows gave me a glimpse into the soul of the city, both North and South, windows that portrayed a narrative of the devastating inequality that is so starkly visible to Black and brown people in Chicago. The more I became aware this geography, and of those who were most impacted by such blatant segregation, the angrier I became. This anger has become my impetus for seeking out solutions to the food crisis that’s occurring on the South and West Sides of Chicago.

So how do we radically begin to talk about the toxic food environment that has been constructed intentionally in African-American communities in Chicago?

I have spent the past year sitting with this question for my senior thesis. How do you fix an issue that affects the health and quality of life of hundreds of thousands of black people in what should be one of the greatest cities in America? My senior thesis, “Food Apartheid: A Radical Approach to Food Accessibility on the South Side of Chicago,” has given me an opportunity to research and discover the nuances of a food environment that is much more complex than the “food desert” label could begin to explain. “Food apartheid” offers a more just and complete explanation for why black communities lack fresh food and produce.

Food apartheid, succinctly defined by Leah Penniman of Upstate New York-based Soul Fire Farm, is: A human-created system of segregations, which relegates some people to food opulence and other people to food scarcity. It results in the epidemic of diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other dietrelated illnesses that are plaguing communities of color.

In my thesis, I go further, connecting “food apartheid” conditions not only to segregation but also to the roots of capitalism and racism that run deep within American society. My approach necessitates that the current and inequitable food system

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 2, 2018

be understood through the exploitation of the Black worker. The stolen and lost wages from such exploitation historically have left African Americans as some of the lowest paid workers in the country.

Food access and security is linked directly to income and wealth. Median household income for Black families in Chicago is $30,303; the median household income for whites is $70,960. An all-toofrequently heard counter-argument is based on supply and demand theory: that in African-American communities there is a high demand for fast food and thus, there exists a high density of fast food chains.

But we must look beyond that insufficient argument to question why a demand exists for cheap food. If a family is to choose between fresh healthy food, which includes preparation and takes even more time, and cheap fast food, their income will most often force them to choose the latter.

Federal housing policy during the 1930s and 1940s, influenced profoundly by antiBlack racism, has also played a significant role in shaping food environments. Redlining is a process by which the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (and other housing agencies) colored white communities green and approved mortgages in that area, while Black communities were marked red and denied access to loans. Restrictive covenants, private contracts in which homeowners could exclude African-American and other ethnic minorities, were other tools used to keep blacks out of white communities and accelerate segregation in American cities.

Strategic planning around public housing was further used to maintain separation between whites and Blacks.

One way of working to lift residents out of poverty is to address the deplorable segregation in the city. As The Cost of Segregation, a report published by Metropolitan Planning Council found, if we reduced rates of segregation to those seen in Atlanta (the median city for segregation in America), incomes for Black Chicagoans would rise an average of $2,892 per person per year. In addition to this, the region as a whole could earn an additional $4.4 billion income and decrease Chicago’s homicide rate by thirty percent. Pushing for these structural changes works to benefit all in the city who are struggling to make ends meet.

We must also work to increase the minimum wage to at least $15; poverty is

COURTESY OF PROSPERITY NOW

directly linked with rates of food insecurity.

In Englewood, the median household income is $18,900. Data published by the city’s Healthy Chicago portal shows that unemployment stands at 34.8 percent, household poverty at 34.4 percent, food access (areas with low food accessibility) at 29.8 percent and those depending on food stamps/SNAP at 42.7 percent.

Compare that with Lincoln Park, which has a median household income of $88,700.

Unemployment in Lincoln Park stands at 4.2 percent, household poverty at 11.2 percent, food access at 0.6 percent, and those utilizing food stamps/SNAP at 3.9 percent. The disparities are jarring. If we can collectively push for higher wages and fight segregation, the impact on African Americans’ income would increase their purchasing power, and by extension, their ability to purchase quality food and produce.

On a grassroots level, we ought to be taking a community-based approach to food systems. We should be empowering communities by giving them access and ownership to land. As Malcolm X recited in “Message to the Grassroots,” “Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.” This land can be utilized to build urban farms that involve the community in the growing process and create grocery cooperatives that employ residents and resist the capitalist, profit-driven motives of corporations. I had the opportunity to work with Sweet Water Foundation this summer, an

organization that is doing just that. There are other organizations in the city that are doing great work around food access and equity, including the Urban Growers Collective, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, and Grow Greater Englewood.

The food environment in AfricanAmerican communities in Chicago is a byproduct of how Black people have continued to be treated as second-class citizens in this country. The disparities in health, education, wealth, and employment in Chicago all point to this mistreatment.

Can you begin to see how opening a grocery store does very little to alter the status quo?

Grocery stores are necessary amenities, and I commend the organizers working within Chicago to bring food to their communities.

But the problems run deeper, and we will not solve the food accessibility issue with just placing grocery stores throughout the city. The work needed, say, of fighting against the severe segregation and pushing for a higher minimum wage is an uphill battle; but it’s also one that will work to not only transform food environments in Chicago, but also the quality of life for many living on the South Side. Dejah Powell is a graduating college senior from Chicago, majoring Environmental and Sustainability Science and minoring in Business and Community Food Systems at Cornell University. Visit her blog, 20somethingandgrowing.com to hear more of her ideas on food and food justice.

PROFILE

Runnin’ Hot

The Bishop family’s fruity hot sauce line

BY MAPLE JOY

J

ames Bishop was running one day in Washington Park. After jogging a quarter mile around the park, he became extremely hot. A light bulb went off, and that’s when he came up with the name Quarter Mile Sauce Runnin’...“Hot” for the uniquely flavored hot sauce that his family has become known for.

Bishop loves habanero peppers and for years had been mixing and matching his own ingredients, creating his own sauces. In 2013, he threw yet another recipe together, letting it sit in a jug for one year. As family and friends tried out this new sauce, it officially became the winner.

Bishop and his wife, Dorcas, decided to start selling the sauce, and incorporated their own company in 2014. They soon realized some of the challenges facing a small familyowned business. Looking into companies that could professionally pack their product, they realized they would lose much of their creative control in deseeding, cooking, growing, and packaging. But the retired couple had a lot of free time to invest in their hot sauce from start to finish. So the family decided to do everything themselves.

“We grow our peppers. We don’t use chemical fertilizers. We use all natural composts, animal composts. We even use natural pesticide methods,” said Dorcas.

The Bishop family, who live in Washington Heights, purchased land in Pembroke, IL to grow and harvest their habanero peppers. They chose Pembroke because it’s one of the many protected areas in the U.S., managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The rich soil, a mix of sand and black dirt, is perfect for growing hot peppers.

The sauce gets its special flavor through fermentation: vinegar and salt are added to the peppers, and then the sauce sits for an entire year until it’s ready to be packaged and

distributed.

Doing everything themselves has also meant dealing with the bureaucracy of getting their small business registered.

“By being a small company and having to do all the work ourselves, it’s a lot of paperwork and forms. You have to monitor the work while it’s fermenting. It’s kind of tedious,” Dorcas said.

Despite the hard work, the family of five have come together to run a successful business. Dorcas is the president and treasurer, and she oversees day-to-day functions, including selling their product at farmers markets along with her granddaughter Kimani. James is the farmer and director of operations. He works with the farming equipment and does everything from planting to picking the habanero peppers.

Kimberly Bishop-Pitts, the older daughter (and Kimani’s mother), is the advertiser and manages the business’ website and social media accounts. Kendra Bishop, the younger daughter, is a “supporting” secretary—and the go-to person for advice and convening family meetings.

There are three flavors—mild, medium hot, and hot—that range in price from four to ten dollars, depending on the bottle size. I had an opportunity along with other shoppers to try the sauce at the Plant Chicago Farmers Market.

We started with the mild sauce. We all agreed that we could taste the cayenne pepper, which complemented the pleasant, fruity flavor.

“I think it’s really fruity,” said one of the customers standing around Bishop’s table.

“It’s very flavorful. A lot of hot sauces miss out on the flavor.”

Next up was the medium hot flavor, which had a kick to it, but wasn’t

COURTNEY KENDRICK

overwhelmingly hot.

“It kind of numbs my tongue like the toothache plant,” another commented.

Toothache plants leave a tingling and numbing sensation after the first bite, but the initial flavor lingers just like the medium hot flavor of this hot sauce.

Finally, we tried the hot flavor. This was the most intimidating for me, as I am not a hot or spicy lover, but surprisingly this flavor was great too. The hot taste is subtle, and the flavor is never lost.

After trying all three flavors, I purchased a bottle of the medium hot sauce. It’s been a week and I’m halfway through the bottle. If other buyers are devouring this hot sauce as quickly as I am, then the future looks bright for this small family-owned business.

Recently, Dorcas attended a workshop hosted by the Englewood Community Service Center that supports small business owners. Whole Foods representatives attended and they told her they loved her hot sauce. Mariano’s is interested in her product as well.

“The future is to have my own company to process it and maybe my own shop to sell it. I love farmers markets, but I also want to market my product to be in the retail stores,”

said Dorcas.

Dorcas said she would also love to work with chefs at various restaurants across Chicago, which she thinks would be a great outlet for her business.

“I don’t see myself as being a big conglomerate or selling out. I’d rather do my own product. I want to keep the originality of my product,” said Dorcas. “I still want to be a small company that produces an original product.” You can find Dorcas and Kimani at Plant Chicago Farmers Market the first Saturday of each month. Beginning June 3, every Sunday, they’ll be at the McKinley Park Farmers Market.

During the winter, you can catch them on the second Saturday of each month at the 61st Street Farmers Market. Find them online at quartermilesells.com Maple Joy is a contributor to the Weekly. She is from Cleveland but has lived in the Chicago area for almost five years. She is obsessed with Chicago food. In her spare time, you can find her biking on one of the Chicago trails or hanging out at a Chicago event or festival. She last wrote for the Weekly in February about a Hyde Park high school student’s passion for dance.

MAY 2, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

A Neighborhood Pizzeria for Bronzeville A Slice of Bronzeville has just enough sauce

BY NUR BANU SIMSEK

A

fter much anticipation, A Slice of Bronzeville opened two months ago. The restaurant stands at the corner of 47th & King Drive, across from the Harold Washington Cultural Center and Peach’s Restaurant. Its scarce décor, dim lighting, and exposed pipes are reminiscent of “locals-only” coffee shops, but the everpresent smell of tomato sauce and cheese make it clear that we are certainly in a pizzeria.

My friend and I order a veggie pizza without mushrooms and sit down. The R&B music in the background combined with the all-black furniture creates a classy and intimate atmosphere—it would make a sweet study spot during less busy hours. But now, it’s lunch time, and they’re at their busiest, with visitors coming in for individual slices (available all day), full boxes, drinks, wings, and UberEats deliveries. While we wait for our pizza, two patrons in two different booths start chatting, and as another gets up to leave, the owner, Patrick White, asked her how she enjoyed her pizza. She said she liked it, but it was a little too saucy. White calls to an Andrew in the kitchen and notes the “too much sauce” before returning to our informal interview.

White begins by explaining that he wanted to be the very first pizzeria in Bronzeville—a pioneer—and give the community its own landmark pizzeria.

Although he doesn’t have specialized training for pizza-making, he has been in the restaurant business for more than a decade. For him, it’s the crust and the sauce that makes or breaks a pizza.

Originally from Beverly, White moved to Bronzeville fifteen years ago, during the demolition of public housing amid the chaotic and ultimately failed execution of the Plan for Transformation. He moved out shortly after arriving, but has now returned to the neighborhood to open the Slice, which he hopes will fare better in the neighborhood than the past several 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 2, 2018

businesses that have come and gone like H-Dogs, Uncle Joe’s Jerk Chicken, and Vinnie’s Steak House. White is optimistic about the future of the Slice, which he said has thus far been extremely well-received in the area, and is grateful for all the support.

Neighbors have come to tell him that they will “do anything they can to help [the pizzeria] stay here.”

Although they have only been around for a short while, they also seem wellgrounded. White has nine employees who work at the Slice, all of whom, like him, are Bronzeville residents. In a few weeks, they will start offering delivery services. Since opening, they have hosted one private event and plan to be a family-oriented restaurant where people can host other small events such as graduation parties, baby showers, or anniversary celebrations.

Most of the feedback they receive is word-of-mouth and has been mostly positive. A fan-favorite is the classic sausage and cheese pizza, but they also offer more unconventional menu items such as Jerk Chicken and Chicken Philly pizza. The wait time is around thirty-five to forty minutes, but totally worth it: all ingredients are fresh, and each pizza has just the right amount of melted cheese and a soft, crispy crust.

Perhaps it is a little too saucy for some, but for us, it was absolutely perfect. A Slice of Bronzeville, 4655 S. King Dr. Tuesday-Thursday, 11am-10pm; Friday and Saturday, 11am-midnight; Sunday, 12pm6pm; closed on Monday.

Nur Banu Simsek is a contributor to the Weekly.

She is originally Turkish, but came to Chicago from Fairfax, Virginia. She studies philosophy at the University of Chicago and works at the Spiritual Life Office. Her favorite spots to study on the South Side are Build Coffee and Currency Exchange Cafe. This is her first piece for the Weekly.

MAGGIE O’BRIEN

A Cuban Food Haven Grilled steak, seasoned veggies, and some of the best café con leche ever

C

afeteria Yesenia feels like your grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon. This Back of the Yards restaurant, on the corner of 43rd and Ashland, is a South Side staple for Cuban cuisine.

As the only Cuban spot on the South Side, Cafeteria Yesenia has a lot to live up to and does so quite nicely. Their menu, written in Spanish, has a vast array of food options including a hefty breakfast, which is not surprising since they open most days at 6 am (not to mention the glorious fact that they are open seven days a week).

Arriving at 11 am on a Friday, there was no wait for service—the restaurant was calm and empty. In less than fifteen minutes, a friend and I were sitting in front of baskets filled with yucca fries, vegetable empanadas, and a huge steak sandwich. The spices wafted through the air as we inhaled the scent of what would be our first meal of the day.

As a french fry connoisseur, I couldn’t

wait to sink my teeth into the yucca fries.

A Goya bottle of mayo-ketchup was offered as well as a green chili sauce. Trying both, I was satisfied and intrigued by the combination of flavors with this unique style of french fries. Yucca, as a root, is a staple in Latin American cuisine. Jam-packed with vitamins, yucca can be a healthy alternative to classic French fries. They tasted a lot like mashed potatoes without the butter or salt.

They had a very earthy aftertaste, maybe a bit overbearing. If you’re looking for classic french fries, they might not be for you, but if you’re looking to try a twist or healthier alternative, Cafeteria Yesenia’s yucca fries will be the perfect match.

When I think of empanadas, a sweet apple-cinnamon pastry comes to mind.

These, known as notyamama’s empanadas, strayed far from that image—they are filled with a savory spinach filling. The crust was crisp and warm and the spinach perfectly seasoned. Mediterranean spinach pie came to mind, but with more crunch and flavor.

RESTAURANTS

These get a 10/10 and I encourage any fellow vegetarians to check them out.

And then there was heaven in a cup: Cafeteria Yesenia’s well-known café con leche. The drink is served in the type of mug you can buy for $3.99 at Marshalls, and it is everything a great coffee should be: balanced, rich, cream-filled, and just sweet enough. It was great to drink with my meal; I imagine it goes well with nearly all of the items on their menu. I can easily envision making Cafeteria Yesenia my go-to stop for an excellent coffee. It was that damn good.

Cut in half and served on a white, lightly seeded hoagie bun, the steak sandwich was artfully crafted by the cooks at Cafeteria Yesenia. Unlike a lot of fast food spots, Cafeteria Yesenia serves a more classic steak sandwich with veggies like lettuce, tomatoes, and perfectly grilled onions. The smell of its seasoned beef and fresh veggies wafted in the air long after it was almost gone. A non-vegetarian friend of mine was kind enough to give his review on the steak sandwich. When asked to rate the sandwich, he gave it a 7/10 because, although delicious, he wished there was more steak and sauce in the sandwich. However, he did say he regretted being so full because he “wanted to finish the rest”: a sure sign of a good meal.

Cafeteria Yesenia has a charming setting with pastel blinds and huge potted ferns. The walls are beige and white and their menu has a charming illustration of a young Cuban girl with pigtails, drinking from a paper cup with blue flowers. It’s a place you can go for a quick lunch, or an afternoon spent with friends, chatting over Cuban sandwiches and good coffee. With its relaxed and welcoming atmosphere, you can feel right at home in this South Side gem. Cafeteria Yesenia, 4244 S, Ashland Ave. Monday–Friday, 6am–5pm; Sunday, 8am–4pm. (773) 523-8480. facebook.com/Cafeteria-Yesenia Kristen Simmons is a contributor to the Weekly. She is currently in her third year at the University of Illinois at Chicago studying English Professional Writing.

A Mississippi native, she has had the opportunity to live in multiple Chicago neighborhoods. Her favorite South Side food is well seasoned french fries with mild sauce. She last wrote for the Weekly in March about Yollocalli Arts Reach.

Mango and Maki on 26th Street

Japanese-Brazilian cuisine finds an audience in Little Village

BY MICHAEL WASNEY

L

ittle Village wasn’t known for its Japanese cuisine...until now. While there’s still a relative absence of Asian food options in the area, the opening of Sora Temakeria four months ago put this neighborhood on the map for sushi-lovers sojourning to the best spots in the city. But Sora Temakeria isn’t your run-of-the-mill sashimi establishment; its menu is Japanese in inspiration, but with a Brazilian bent. In the Baja—available in both sushi burrito and bowl forms—crab salad and jalapeño come together in a fantastic fusion of these geographically distal but surprisingly complementary cuisines and cultures.

As co-owner Jay Tanaka explained, the whole idea of opening an establishment that fused Japanese and Brazilian food began in Brazil itself, where sushi is called by the Japanese word for hand roll, or “Temaki,” and sushi bars are referred to as Temakerias.

The Temakerias of Brazil have long been sites of culinary experimentation and fusion. Though mango might not be a go-

RAMI KABLAWI

to ingredient amongst the itamae ( Japanese for cook), it’s a crowd favorite among those visiting Brazilian temakerias. It’s shaping up to be a favorite in Little Village as well, particularly for those who order the Pacifico Temaki: a roll that packs crab, mango, avocado, fried onion, sweet chili sauce, and spicy mayo all into a single, delicious punch, and was the best dish the Weekly sampled on a recent trip.

Perhaps the best part of Sora Temakeria is its affordability. Although a few items overshoot $10, most of the mains—all reasonably sized—are south of $8. And if you’re feeling peckish, but not quite starving, opt for something off the Aperitivos menu; of these, the Takoyaki (fried octopus poppers) were the Weekly’s favorite. Like Sora Temakeria’s prices, its employees were pretense-free. All were personable, helpful, and ready to recommend their own personal favorites off the menu. This is the perfect joint for those looking to grab a bite to eat for lunch or dinner, or for those who haven’t

had the privilege of trying a novelty like the sushi burrito, which lies somewhere between a Maki roll and the more traditional burritos you might find elsewhere along 26th Street.

Try this, or anything else on their menu that catches your fancy, and you won’t be questioning why they’ve been on such a roll since they opened four months ago. Sora Temakeria, 3508 W. 26th Street.

Monday–Saturday, 11am–9pm; Sunday, noon–8pm.

Michael Wasney is a contributing editor to the Weekly. Originally from California, he now lives, works, and attends university in Chicago.

He loves Calumet Fisheries, in large part because it reminds him of the coastal seafood he grew up on. He last wrote for the Weekly in March about the Republican candidates running in Illinois’ gubernatorial primary election.

MAY 2, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

What’s On Tap Eight Weekly staffers gathered for our annual sampling of a few South Side breweries’ selections After four years of selling their brews at liquor stores, bars, and, of course, Maria’s, Marz Community Brewing opened their long-awaited taproom last February. A year before that, Lo Rez opened its doors for business in Pilsen. Moody Tongue, also of Pilsen, launched the year before that.

In fact, all of the South Side breweries sampled here opened within the last five years. In short, there’s something of a craft beer renaissance happening south of Roosevelt—from professionals in woodand-steel-converted-factory taprooms, to homebrewers working from their garages and kitchens. For the third time, a group of Weekly editors—from amateur ale drinkers to aspiring aficionados—sat down at our Experimental Station office to try just a few of the beers that the South Side has to offer.

After compiling our comments (some snarky, some sincere) and tallying up our numeric score (absolutely nonscientific, completely subjective), we present to you the 2018 South Side Beer Review.

Whiner Beer has been brewing in The Plant— Back of the Yards’s favorite closed-loop farm and food and business incubator—since fall 2015, and its taproom has been an essential feature since 2016. Aside from promoting “environmentally responsible brewing” and playing a role in The Plant’s anaerobic digester, Whiner is the place to be if you’re in the mood for barrel-aged French and Belgian beers: often sour, always strange. The taproom makes smart use of its home, with plants nestled in its tables and wood-fired pizza you have to venture up a couple flights of stairs to Pleasant House Bakery’s space to order.

Taking their name from the neighborhood’s history as a hub for car dealerships a century earlier, Motor Row Brewing has been serving up traditional Midwestern-style lagers and experimental Belgians from their South Loop headquarters since 2015. Our choice, the Dry Humor, is brewed with sixty pounds of orange blossom honey sourced from Kress Apiary in Northwest Indiana. Check out their taproom, located directly above the brewery on the second floor, to enjoy all their rotating drafts and a handful (or three) of complimentary popcorn.

Hell Kitty Kitty Yeast-Fermented BelgoAmerican Pale Ale 7% ABV

Dry Humor Blonde Belgian Honey Wheat 6% ABV

1400 W. 46th St. Wednesday–Friday, 2pm–10pm; Saturday, 11am–10pm; Sunday, 1pm–8pm. (312) 810-2271. whinerbeer.com

Appearance: A hazy, summery gold—like sun behind clouds.

Label: Playful (and feline) as ever, in a lo-fi MS Paint way—we love the cats, the color, and all the small details, but admit we prefer our beer cans a little less warlike.

Smell: Wheaty and invitingly sweet—pay attention for a hint of orange peel.

Taste: Comes in sweet with appealing citrus notes and a light interplay of hops, making for a crisp finish. A slight, though not entirely welcome, white wine aftertaste.

Drinkability: As easy to drink as water (maybe even a little watery, if we’re frank).

Opinion: This might be Whiner’s most likeable beer yet—though certainly not its most interesting.

Rating out of 100 (median score): 88

2337 S. Michigan Ave. Monday–Thursday, 4pm–10pm; Friday–Saturday, noon–11pm; Sunday, 2pm–8pm. (312) 624-8149. motorrowbrewing.com

Appearance: Translucent, with a yellow-toamber gradient and barely any head.

Label: Clean, classic, boring Chicago themes on a clean, classic howler.

Smell: Light, sweet, and cheerful: we’re transported to an apple orchard as we smell.

Taste: This mild, honey-buttery beer is pleasant enough if what you’re looking for is a beefed-up Heineken.

Drinkability: It’s easy to keep drinking, but will you remember it enough to keep drinking it?

Opinion: This inoffensive non-experience leaves something to be desired.

Rating out of 100 (median score): 60

Lo Rez, one of the newest additions to Pilsen’s burgeoning brewery scene, opened its taproom last spring. A bartender described their beers as “experimental takes on Belgian-style beers” to the intrepid Weekly editor sent to buy samples for the tasting. The Lo Rez beer chosen, Moiré, certainly fits that bill: a saison brewed with “one hundred cucumbers and two pounds of pink peppercorns.”

Check out their expansive wood-and-exposedbrick taproom to try all their drafts; their covered porch is a must-visit as the weather gets warmer.

2101 S. Carpenter St. Wednesday–Friday, 2pm–10pm; Saturday, noon–10pm; Sunday, noon–8pm. (888) 404-2262. lorezbrewing.com Moiré Cucumber Saison 5.5% ABV

Appearance: A cool, lighthearted yellow, with the glint of sunshine dappling a hardwood floor.

Label: A sleek and smooth growler whose subtle green linework matches the beer’s cool color.

Smell: Definitely quite a bit of cucumber in the nose—nothing unexpected here.

Taste: Like someone mixed ale, a bit of mint, and cucumber La Croix. Light at first (think bougie hotel lobby cucumber water) with a crisp, bitter finish that lingers.

Drinkability: Refreshing and light— perfect for a picnic and for fans of the experimental and bitter.

Opinion: We’re not convinced that cucumber has a place in beer, but it was worth a drink.

Rating out of 100 (median score): 60

ILLUSTRATIONS BY LIZZIE SMITH

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 2, 2018

BEER

A self-described collective of “homebrewers, professional brewers and artists that found each other while drinking beers at Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar,” Marz Community Brewing opened their own taproom in McKinley Park last February. Recognizable for its quirky label art and experimental brews, Marz has deep roots in the Bridgeport community. Ed Marszewski, owner and president of the brewery, also runs the Co-Prosperity Sphere, an art gallery that’s home to Lumpen magazine and 105.5 FM WPLN. Ed’s brother, Mike, owns Maria’s—a great spot to try Marz’s newest offerings or pick up a bottle or two to go.

3630 S. Iron St. Wednesday–Thursday, 11am– 11pm; Friday, 11am–midnight; Saturday, noon–midnight; Sunday, noon–8pm. (773) 579-1935. marzbrewing.com Bubbly Creek Scylla Barrel-Aged Brett Beer 6% ABV

Appearance: A very light, pale yelloworange beneath a rich, foamy head.

Label: This label was polarizing, which is out of character for Marz (see our rhapsodizing last year), Some of us liked the mysterious bubbling eyes, but others found the label pretentious.

Smell: Is this kombucha? No, but the smell might fool you.

Taste: Seriously sour—so sour it’s a caricature of sourness. After the shock factor of a crisp citrus funk, there are few other fruity notes and an uncompromising bitter finish.

Drinkability: The Bridgeport residents among us might want to deem this beer supremely drinkable based on name alone, but we’d recommend Bubbly Creek as a chaser in particular—shot of Malört, anyone?

Opinion: Sour beer partisans, take note— whether you like it or hate it, this statement piece is for you. Maybe you’ll even find something besides that first assault of sour bubbliness.

Rating out of 100 (median score): 76

Horse Thief Hollow takes its name from 1850s Beverly, where horse thieves would hide their embezzled equines in the woods there before bringing them to market. Neil Byers opened the brewpub in 2013, rehabbing a former carpet store and using reclaimed wood wherever possible.

After spending eight years working as a chef in South Carolina, Byers wanted a place in his hometown “where people could come for hand crafted beer and flavorful cooking with a Southern accent.” Right now, you can find “lowcountry croquettes,” burgers made from wild boar, and gumbo on the menu.

10426 S. Western Ave. Sunday–Thursday, 11:30am–10pm; Friday–Saturday, 11:30am– midnight. (773) 779-2739. horsethiefbrewing.com Black Sox Black IPA 5.5% ABV 24 IBU

Appearance: Dark brown with a light, frothy head. All the typical dark descriptors come to mind: forest night, cocoa brown, root beer, maple syrup.

Label: The wanna-be western growler is, let’s be honest, atrocious. The horseshoe is alright, but why do the Chicago stars look like that?

Smell: Robust and low-profile.

Taste: The classic bitter citric finish of an IPA is preceded by the roasty, piney hops of a dark beer.

Drinkability: Just one is fine—but its bold thoughtfulness is worth letting linger.

Opinion: Perhaps the most polarizing beer of the tasting: its average score was five points above the median. IPA haters ought to stay away, but if you come closer, you’ll rethink what you thought both a dark beer and an IPA could be. Even if you won’t crave it on the regular, this brew demands your attention.

Rating out of 100 (median score): 53

According to their website, Baderbräu Brewing Company “was founded to revive Chicagoland’s original craft beer, a Czech-style pilsner.” Founder Rob Sama, who got his start as a homebrewer while an undergrad at the University of Chicago, tracked down the original recipe and yeast strain, and the Baderbräu pilsener was reborn. Check out their eclectically decorated, string-light–adorned taproom to try all their brews and homemade Bader Brat, and make sure to stop by the adjoining art gallery to check out some local work as well.

2515 S. Wabash Ave. Monday–Wednesday, 3pm–11pm; Thursday–Saturday, noon–1am; Sunday, noon–11pm. (312) 890-2728. baderbrau.com Berliner Weisse Barrel-Aged German Sour Wheat 3.6% ABV

Appearance: A pastel yellow, like sorbet or sherbet—light, bubbly, and the cloudiest beer of the bunch.

Label: Fittingly, our sherbet beer has a creamsicle color scheme. Add the spaceage sensibility of the design, and you’ve got Baderbräu’s cleanest can yet.

Smell: Pineapple, if you strain for it.

Taste: The tart, sharp brightness of the beginning gives way to a rich berry flavor in the middle and a lemony honey finish. It’s pleasant, well above average, though not the most complex or memorable sour we’ve ever had.

Drinkability: Extremely “crushable,” as Baderbräu likes to say. A great beach beer, barbecue beer, lakefront beer—the perfect companion for the dog days of summer.

Opinion: A playful, spunky beer that suggests summer really is just around the corner. We find this crowd-pleaser difficult to deny, but wish there was more to it than easy likeability.

Rating out of 100 (median score): 80

Moody Tongue describes their style as “culinary brewing.” Brewmaster Jared Rouben applies his culinary experience to making serious, experimental beers and food menus that only feature one sweet item and one salty item: German chocolate cake and fresh daily oysters, respectively. Check out their taproom in a former glass factory in Pilsen, decorated with a white marble bar, leather chairs, and cozy fireplaces, to try their rotating drafts and snack on the rest of their rotating gastronomic fare.

2136 S. Peoria St. Sunday, noon–9pm; Monday, 5pm–10pm; Thursday, 5pm–11pm; Friday, 5pm–midnight; Saturday, noon– midnight. (312) 600-5111. moodytongue.com Sliced Nectarine IPA American IPA 5.9% ABV

Appearance: A deep, rich amber—nearauburn—under a blanket of foam. Lightens with time.

Label: Last year, we asked if Moody Tongue’s deft tongue illustration was enough to save the label from sleek sterility. This time around, even with a blood-orange color scheme, the label isn’t making an impression.

Smell: Vaguely fruity—we want to smell nectarine, but there’s not a whole lot of that here.

Taste: After a light, short-lived floral taste up front, a sharp-then-sweet finish brings the most flavor we’ve seen so far. But we’re surprised and disappointed by the weakness of the nectarine, which was subsumed into the nondescript flavors of a standard American IPA. Drinkability: On the bright side, the beer is smooth and understated. The taste grows on you the more you drink.

Opinion: We like this well enough—a breezy, clean-cut beer—but it’s not our favorite from Moody Tongue (that would be their lemon saison).

Rating out of 100 (median score): 70 MAY 2, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

Bottoms Up

Around the South Side in many different drinks The hunt for the South Side’s most-loved beer cocktail

BY STEFANIA GOMEZ The michelada is a Mexican beer cocktail that generally mixes a Mexican lager of your choice with Tajín—a secret, special chile mixture—tomato sauce, lime, and sometimes Worcestershire sauce (depending on who you ask or what state you’re in). With a highly specialized team of experts, aka my girlfriend and my dad, I tried a handful of the most recommended micheladas in Pilsen and Little Village. To me, the perfect michelada must succeed in a number of categories: first, generously rimmed with lime and Tajín; second, a low sauce-to-beer ratio; third, despite the many I’ve encountered that rely heavily on Clamato, a miche should be nothing like a Bloody Mary; finally, the savory beer and michelada sauce should never overpower the tartness of the lime.

T

he michelada at Pilsen’s Caminos de Michoacan offers four levels of spiciness to choose from—mild, hot, “xtra hot,” and “xxtra hot.” Unfortunately, reader, I am a wimp, and merely chose “hot.”

Their miche came, as it should, with a thick rim of Tajín, and appeared to be the drink of choice for many patrons at the completely packed bar. But the sauce, we found, was mostly tomato juice-based, and overpowered the taste of the beer it was served with. One investigator compared the quantity of sauce to a bowlful of tomato soup (yikes!). In any case, we liked the presentation and thought it was impressive for a neighborhood bar.

Caminos also deserves a shout-out for their wild Friday night cumbia karaoke scene, during which the line tends to wind around the block.

Caminos De Michoacan Bar, 1659 W. Cullerton St. Sunday–Friday, 9am–2am; Saturday, 9am–3am. (312) 226-0687 El Tecolote on 26th Street is a low-key family-owned restaurant—the kind of place with plastic tables, paper napkins, and fluorescent lighting. We went on a Sunday night, when it was full of Little Village families having dinner, and a woman who looked like she might have been someone’s mom asked for my ID. Their miche is cheap, well balanced, and comes with shrimp on the rim. Instead of just lime juice, El Tecolote uses Squirt, the soda made famous in the Mexican cocktail world as a central component of the 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 2, 2018

“paloma,” or “the poor man’s margarita.” This made it slightly sweet and carbonated, which was unique, but in combination with tomato juice, we were craving fresher ingredients.

However, being carded gave me the fleeting and priceless return to youth. And if you’re still hungry after the drink, I’d suggest you try some of their extremely delicious-looking mariscos.

El Tecolote Restaurant, 3519 W. 26th St. Monday, Wednesday–Sunday, 8am–midnight.

(773) 277-1490. tecoloterestaurant.com By far the best South Side miche is the masterpiece at the bustling Del Toro on Halsted, right near Skylark. Del Toro is small and easy to miss from outside, but once you’re inside, it’s usually packed with a large sophisticated crowd. The bar-restaurant is known mainly for their well-hyped tequila drinks like margaritas and palomas. Their miche comes in a comically tall, one-liter St. Germain glass rimmed with Tajín and chilled.

Their mix includes ice, a generous amount of lime juice, and a house-made miche sauce that our bartender proudly noted contains no tomato juice. It met all the marks. It checked all the boxes. And it’s only an additional two dollars to upgrade your beer of choice to a michelada. The investigators will be sure to do that as frequently as possible.

Del Toro, 2133 S. Halsted St. Tuesday– Thursday, 5pm–10:30pm; Friday–Saturday, 5pm–midnight. (312) 733-7144. deltorochicago.com

The best beer-and-shot pairings along the 62 bus route

BY EMELINE POSNER You’re on the 62 bus, riding north from Cicero. But you’re in no rush to get home, and you have a couple bucks in your pocket. Why not take the scenic route, pop in for a beer and a shot somewhere on the way? The Weekly spent several nights investigating the nightlife on Archer, emerging with several endorsements, one note of caution, and a mild hangover.

S

cenario 1: You have $5–$10 in your pocket: Rudy and Ann’s.

It’s one of those places where Old Style on draft’ll only put you $1.50 out of pocket. “Rebecc,” which is short for Rebecca, is a doting bartender, ensuring that conversation never runs flat and shot glasses ($2 Polish vodka; $5 for Jameson) stay full (second shot was on the house).

They’re out of Zywiec, a Polish lager advertised above the vintage wooden cooler, so don’t ask—they don’t have it, probably won’t for a while. We wanted to linger here for hours, shooting pool and admiring the scraggly Norway spruce that grows between scalloped windows at the bar’s end.

5788 S. Archer Ave. Monday–Saturday, 7am–2am; Sunday, noon–2am. Cash only.

(773) 325-1700.

(bottled, $2.50) and a shot of Jameson ($4) on upholstered wooden bar stools. This bar, which has been open since 1990, knows the comforts of life. Beyond bottles, they offer bags of Combos ($1), TicTacs ($1), fruit chews ($1), and lotto tickets (prices vary).

4501 S. Archer Ave. Sunday–Friday, 11am–2:30am; Saturday, 11am–3am. Cash only. (773) 376-1108.

Scenario 2: It’s early in the morning: Kazmierzanka Lounge Rise and shine, it’s 7am and Maria Rak-Hart is opening her doors for the day. Not drinking yet? And why not? The matron of the bar (although her official title is President) will cook you up a plate of Polish food, and if you want something lighter she’ll give you a basket loaded with tortilla chips and salsa. Modelo, Heineken, Miller Lite, and Bud Lite are all on tap, but we settled for a bottle of Old Style ($2.50) and shot of Jack Daniels ($5) and stuck around for a second round.

4785 S. Archer Ave. 7am–2am every day.

Cash only. (773) 890-9002.

Scenario 5: You just want to go to a damn good bar: One City Tap A bar that sits behind a podiatry office in a triangular, Chicago flag–adorned building on the corner of Ashland and Archer can’t help but be the best. We’ve been coming here ever since Marco Lopez bought and revamped the bar in May 2017, and we can’t turn down an opportunity to go back. We snagged an Old Style ($3) and a shot of well whisky ($4), and would’ve grabbed a pint of 3 Floyds ($5) if we weren’t so beer-ed out. Between their tequila selection, rotating special drink deals (check their Facebook page), local brews on tap, Otro Ritmo punk nights, and general good vibes, we have no qualms about offering One City the crown.

3115 S. Archer Ave. Monday–Thursday, 4pm–2am; Friday, 3pm–2am; Saturday, noon–3am; Sunday, noon–2am. (773) 5804338.

Scenario 3: You just want to eat Combos and watch the Sox game: Michael’s Sports Lounge Like Switzerland, this Brighton Park gem is neutral: its doors are open to Sox and Cubs fans alike. But we’re not in Switzerland, we’re on the South Side, and so we’re drinking Old Style (again)

Scenario 4: You want to be turned away for no particular reason: Redmond’s Pub We went into Redmond’s Pub with high hopes, and on the recommendation of baristas at a certain South Side coffee shop. But, despite us having valid state IDs, the bartender wouldn’t serve us—we “just looked a little too young” ($0). So, with great irritation, we UNRECOMMEND this bar.

The Weekly kindly reminds you to tip your bartender well, drink responsibly, and take public transit.

DRINKS

The best mangonada

BY STEFANIA GOMEZ

L

et me just first say that Los Mangos’ menu is four pages long and includes a highdefinition photo of each menu item— brightly-colored paletas, elote loaded with cheese, and something called “Tamalocos,” which, of course, is a portmanteau of “tamales” and “locos.”

At the main location on 26th Street and Central Park Avenue, these photos also cover the walls and the front of the bar.

Combined with numerous overflowing vats of ice cream and chopped fresh fruit, these larger-than-life photos of food make you feel like there’s no end to the treats available to you.

Yet from this crowded field of options arises Los Mangos’ crowning achievement: the Mangonada, a classic Mexican fruit drink. Though their mascot is a pair of mangoes with cartoon faces, and their tables are full of children under the age of twelve, there is nothing lighthearted about Los Mangos’s approach to Mangonadas.

The workstations and tools are stainless steel, and the workers’ focus is sharp. No corners are cut. No expenses are spared.

The Mangonada is served in a cup with three generous scoops of mango sorbet, fat chunks of ripe mango, Chamoy sauce (a sweet and spicy condiment made from pickled fruit), juice from a whole lime, chile, and Tajín. It’s garnished with tamarind candy.

Their Mangonadas are the perfect summer treat. They’re also the perfect winter treat. They’re even a pretty good treat for whatever season we are in right now. Though Los Mangos is certainly not the only South Side nevería to offer it, their Mangonada is better priced and more elaborate than many counterparts.

They also offer a few varietals: its lesserknown cousins, the Vampiro, which features more fresh mango in place of ice cream, and the Chamuco, made with ice, chamoy, fruit, and no ice cream at all. On the days I can’t commit to a whole Mangonada, I’ll order a paleta—a popsicle with bits of frozen fruit—for $1.75. The options are truly endless.

Los Mangos Neveria y Fruteria. 3551 W. 26th St. 7am–10pm every day.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TYLER NICKELL

A map to the best smoothies on the South Side

BY EMILY JACOBI Spring weather in Chicago has long felt out of reach: to finally have a day that could, at long last, be categorized as “jean jacket weather” meant a leisurely bike ride was in order.

My friend Bridget and I thought to use the peaking sunlight and the better half of a Monday to propel us on a smoothie crawl of the South Side. Smoothies are the ideal comfort food of the warmer months—a thirst quench, a nutrient boost, and a form of liquid self love.

With health food trends populating the Chicago food scene, these three spots scattered across the city offer three approaches to the smoothie, and by proxy, three unique takes on the ideal setting for their enjoyment.

to the smoothie bar. As for our smoothie, all twenty-four ounces of it were slurped in minutes. The dates offered a purple-delicious density, a slight creaminess, undercut by the sour tartness of berries. The banana offered a filling and dense base that left us satiated.

A week too early for Bonne Sante’s patio, we took our “Pre-Workout” down the block to enjoy in the sunshine.

e boarded our bikes beginning in Pilsen, weaving east and then south down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to our first destination. Arriving at Bonne Sante Health Foods off of 53rd Street in Hyde Park, we were met with a bustling lunch rush of locals, business people, and students. The shop, sandwiched between Mellow Yellow and Valois, and around the corner from the Hyde Park Whole Foods, is a thirty-five-year old mainstay of the block that hones a holistic and communal approach to food, health, and household goods. The store’s blackboard summarizes its mission succinctly: a space to shop local in a sea of chains and brands. Navigating our way past vitamins, grocery items, and hungry patrons, we made our way to the smoothie bar. With a menu highlighting everything from juice combinations to protein shakes, we settled on the “Pre Workout,” a meal replacement created to supply the kind of stamina we would need to complete our ambitious 100-block bike ride. As our concoction of date, flax oil, orange juice, banana, peaches, and mixed berries hit the blender, we chatted with Bonne Sante’s vegan chef, Barookah Byrd, who fed us samplings of delicious chocolate mousse, carrot and chickpea “tuna salad,” and spicy cayenne hummus made fresh behind the lunch counter. Her recipes can be found right on the shelves adjacent

We meandered through Washington Park as we made our way south to our next smoothie location. Eternity Juice Bar, serving the Greater Grand Crossing community on 75th and Indiana, hits at a sweet spot. It’s connected to Original Soul Vegetarian, and together, the two spots create a hub of delicious and filling plant-based meals. Original Soul Vegetarian, opened thirty-three years ago, serves breakfast until 1pm when it rotates out a daily lunch menu rid of refined sugars, flours, and rice. Its cohabitant Eternity Juice Bar is arranged to cultivate intimacy: the space is cozy and lounge-like, with art-filled walls and tables that orient around one another in a way that makes conversation carry easily from the restaurant to the lunch counter. Patrons were a mix of those picking up takeout and others lingering for a leisurely lunch. We settled on a crowd favorite, the “Tropical Breeze” a peachy-pink medley filled with papaya, mango, and pineapple. The drink was sweet and thirst-quenching, embellished with a brown rice syrup that lent it a summery and saccharine flavor. With my sweet tooth piqued, I decided to sample some of their vegan ice cream. The flavor of the day was peanut-butter carrot—a delicately sweet, cream-toned cup that perfectly accompanied the tartness of our smoothie. Both treats shared a coconut base, lending them a filling

W

Recommended for: work lunch, breakfast, picking up something quick on the go.

Bonne Sante Health Foods, 1512 E. 53rd St. Monday–Friday, 9:30am–8pm; Saturday, 9:30am–7pm; Sunday, 11am–5pm.

richness. Eternity Juice Bar’s mission is inscribed on the walls: “to create a vision of the world where food no longer causes swollen bellies or sad faces.” We left with bellies filled with fruit, wishing we arrived early enough to sample the daily breakfast.

Recommended for: spending some time, bring a few friends and indulge in the lunch menu and a smoothie dessert.

Eternity Juice Bar. 203 E. 75th St. 7am–8pm every day.

Our final stop brought us back to Pilsen. At 18th and Throop, we stumbled into Juice House—a light filled storefront cafe adorned with palm leaves, yellow tones, and colorful chalk-drawings of all of the fruits, herbs, and veggies awaiting our consumption. After considering the berry and the tropical fruit families, we settled on the “Spicy Pilsen,” a green smoothie that packs a zesty, herbal punch. This savory cilantro and jalapeño-based juice blend offers a light yet pungent flavor profile, while following through on the spiciness that the menu promised: it was a perfect balance between earthy and fiery flavors. Owned by Alicia, a decade-long Pilsen resident, Juice House has called 18th Street home since September 2017. To accompany our green smoothie, and the symptoms of my lingering cold, we both ordered shots off the juice shot menu. The “Immunity Shot,” a ginger and turmeric blend, cleansed my sinuses deeply.

I’ll be returning for that vivid yellow mix next time I need a guaranteed boost to my immune system. We chatted with Alicia as we finished off our nourishing, unique, and favorite drink of the day.

Recommended for: a perfect alternative to a coffee shop hang for those avoiding caffeine, great for kids and families, if you feel even the slightest inkling of a cold.

Juice House. 1324 W. 18th St. Monday, Wednesday-Friday, 9am–7m; Saturday, 10am– 6pm; Sunday, noon–6pm; closed Tuesday.

MAY 2, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

Z&H Is Dead, Long Live Z&H An obituary for Hyde Park’s do-it-all café

BY EMELINE POSNER

I

n early April, a banner unfurled in the windows of a beloved storefront on 57th Street, bearing an announcement that would be a disappointment to some and a relief to others: after a year under new, and failing, management, Zaleski & Horvath MarketCafe was shuttering for good.

Z&H opened on 47th Street in 2008, and then on 57th Street in 2010; it operated out of both spaces for five years before shifting operations entirely to 57th in 2015.

During its tenure in Kenwood and Hyde Park, Z&H set the bar for cafés.

In its heyday the café boasted a twopage list of creative paninis, each served up hot on a bed of potato chips; rotating blends of Metropolis coffee; iconic t-shirts; a back cooler with meats, eggs, and vegetables to meet your last-minute grocery needs; an alley-facing, sun-soaked back patio; and an incomparable cross breeze between the patio and the café’s often-open front garage door.

Z&H was what you needed it to be, all the time. There was a seat at the long community table for hunched-over emailsenders (if you were smart enough to secure one before the lunch rush) and a bar stool for those seeking over-the-counter banter with the rotation of impossibly cool baristas. On Friday nights you could ring in the weekend over tacos, music, and (BYO) beers, and on Saturday mornings you could ease yourself out of the hangover and back into the world.

Always, it was a good place to stock up on jam, honey, and crackers for home, and—at least on the day before Thanksgiving—to get a last-minute turkey.

Perhaps the ease with which the café, simply put, did it all could be attributed to the fact that one of the two co-owners had been in the business of Hyde Park cafés for around two decades by the time the pair sold the place in 2016. (Tim Schau had run Istria Café for ten years before teaming up with Sam Darrigrand to open Z&H in 2008.)

But perhaps, I am inclined to think, there was something special about the way the café grew for and around the people who 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 2, 2018

spent their time there.

A customer with a standing order might one day find their name on the chalkboard menu. And baristas weren’t above honoring regular customers with a tongue-in-cheek homage. Take the menu’s most intimidating offering, for instance, the Don’t Tell Tal—a three-pork-meat, two-cheese, giardiniera smothered sandwich grilled on half a baguette—which a former employee named after KAM Isaiah Israel rabbi and Z&H frequenter Tal Rosen (and they didn’t tell Tal, at least not at first).

And then, as those in the Chicago music world will tell you, Z&H had an interest in fostering talent. While they were still getting their feet under them, you could find Vic Mensa, Via Rosa, and Jean Deaux, in turn, heading up the kitchen. Chances are a number of their early tracks had a preview run over the sound system at Z&H before they ever dropped online.

In my four years as a regular, I drank too much coffee, made some friends, ate my way through the entire menu, hunched over my laptop for countless hours, danced, and cried—well, just once, when the chef did a day’s worth of onion-cutting at once. Z&H was a business, and like the rest of them it had owners, employees and customers, profits and expenses, but those distinctions never seemed to carry much weight. It was a home.

Until November 2016, that is, when Darrigrand and Schau quickly and quietly sold the café to new management, and that special something Z&H had dissipated overnight. A rift grew between employees and the new owners, and while the menu stayed mostly the same, quality decreased.

More discerning customers noticed that the Jamon Jamon sandwich’s serrano ham had been replaced with a ham of lesser quality, the stone-ground mustard with regular mustard.

The stripped-down sandwiches were served cold, and without the accustomed flourish. The mood plummeted. Longtime employees, and most regular customers, left.

ELLIE MEJÍA

I kept away from Z&H during this period, save for a single visit in 2017, when I was served lukewarm coffee (not Metropolis) and the wrong sandwich (I ordered the Kristen, Z&H’s classic chicken salad sandwich, and was brought a tuna salad sandwich instead). I was devastated by this snafu, and have not returned since.

So now it’s closed, and yet Z&H will live on. The Chicago Maroon reports that TrueNorth Café, the Andersonville-based chain that is now operating out of Z&H’s old space, will keep the “more classic” sandwiches from the Z&H menu. But the owners will rename the Z&H creations to give them a more “TrueNorth” flavor. (Psst: the Lil’ Smokey and O’Malley is listed on the new menu as the “Gift of the Armando Maggi.” From there, I’m afraid, you’re on your own.)

Against my better instincts, I find comfort in the thought that on a sunny afternoon I could stop by TrueNorth to order a Marty, or failing that, a Lil’ Smokey

and O’Malley, to go. I probably never will, though. Too many associations, too great a sense of loss, too much doubt that a resurrected Z&H sandwich will approach the real thing.

Soon the Z&H letters will be pulled off the brick, and TrueNorth will replace their banner with a more permanent sign. In a year, maybe, students and neighbors will stop accidentally calling TrueNorth Z&H. Eventually Hyde Parkers will forget that the Gift of the Armando Maggi was ever the Lil’ Smokey and O’Malley, and that Z&H was ever there to begin with.

There’s an old, old saying that there are two deaths; the second one comes when those who cared most for the departed stop saying their name. So here’s our promise to you, Zaleski & Horvath MarketCafé: we’ll keep saying your name as long as we can.Emeline Posner is the food & land editor of the Weekly and a freelance writer.

COMINGS & GOINGS

Evelyn’s celebrates a year in Washington Park

W

hen I walked through the door of Evelyn’s, I was greeted by laughter, upbeat music, and a smiling room with a quaint atmosphere. Bright colorful pictures furnished the interior brick walls, and, on the staff ’s shirts, the words “Evelyn’s Food Love” were spelled out in red rhinestones. Evelyn’s opened just under a year ago in Washington Park (it’ll celebrate its first anniversary on May 26), and serves up a variety of home-style food options.

I walked up to the steam table, a glass case displaying the ready-to-order options for that day. I continued to look around and saw a huge chalkboard behind me with the standard menu items, and the daily specials. There was everything from grits with shrimp and crawfish to fried lobster tails to, of course, the popular catfish po’boy.

I was standing next to a woman who walked in shortly after me and was looking at the menu too. I decided to ask her if she had been here before, but not before placing my order for a catfish po’boy, and the last strawberry shortcake parfait for dessert.

After she had placed her order, we decided to sit down and talk.

The woman ended up being Asiaha Butler, the president of community organization Resident Association of Greater Englewood, who’s a regular customer. She was eager to share her thoughts with me about the food.

“I was trying to go to brunch the first day I came here. I had a taste for shrimp and grits. I got the shrimp and grits, and it melted in my mouth. My daughter got the apple cilantro turkey burger. She said she had never tasted a turkey burger as good as that. My husband loves the meatloaf. Today, I’m trying something different, jerk [chicken] Alfredo,” Butler said. “[Evelyn’s is] just fresh food.”

Butler’s family discovered Evelyn’s Food Love back in December and has since been back a handful

MILO BOSH

of times. They intend to keep coming back to try every single item on the menu.

After ten minutes, my food arrived: the catfish with sides of steaming-hot fries and freshly-made coleslaw. I took a bite, and the catfish melted in my mouth, just like Butler’s shrimp and grits. It was soft, moist and flavorful, and the portion size left me with enough food for a second meal.

While stuffing my face with the savory dish, I talked to Valerie Avery Hargrett, another regular who’s been eating at Evelyn’s Food Love since it opened last year.

“My husband and I...come, sometimes two to three times a week. We just fell in love with it. I love her food. It’s healthy. I’m not a fast food person,” said Valerie. As a customer, I could tell why people loved the restaurant so much. Not only was the food outstanding, but Evelyn and her staff were approachable, and even the customers were welcoming toward each other.

When the strawberry parfait came, it was the icing on the cake, literally. The shortcake was moist and sweet, without being overbearing. I ended up staying at the restaurant for two hours, conversing with different customers and staff. I felt like I’d known these individuals forever.

Evelyn Shelton, the chef and owner, said that she hopes to expand within the area or to a neighborhood that needs an economic boost.

“The biggest opportunity has been meeting residents in this community. They are so grateful, so supportive and so appreciative,” she said. “We have customers who come in here and they feel like family now. And they haven’t stopped coming, and bringing people with them.” (Maple Joy) Evelyn’s Food Love. 5522 S. State St. Wednesday– Saturday, 11:30am–6pm; Sunday, 11:30am–4pm.

(872) 818-5557. evelynsfoodlove.com

Daley’s moves... across the street

W

JASON SCHUMER

hen Daley’s Restaurant opened in 1892, its mission— feeding the workers building the El train—was as simple as its food. 126 years later, you’ll still find diners in orange vests and hard hats. But today, they’re building Woodlawn Station: the affordable, mixed-use apartment complex which Daley’s will soon call home.

Yes, the restaurant is moving, and it doesn’t look like those wood-paneled walls and lacquered tables will make it across the street (yes, just across the street) when the time comes. But for now, you can still pass under the shade of the Green Line, slouch in a black leather booth, and count on a perfect stack of pancakes.

Daley’s doesn’t have Michelin stars, a table Obama ate at, or a connection to the mayor’s office—no matter what the name makes you think. It just has good food. The mac and cheese, in an unusual turn of events, is worth writing home about. When a friend of mine asked for a poached egg at brunch last Friday, the waitress didn’t just accept—she asked what temperature she wanted it cooked at. The hash browns are always crispy, the biscuits are always warm, and the coffee runs like water. Best of all (for anyone who didn’t join you at your meal), there’s always gum for sale under the cash register.

So you could call it an institution, but institutions aren’t beloved the way Daley’s is. Beyond a failed renovation in the Great Depression, where the restaurant was a literal hole in the ground for five years, and a cameo in a recent episode of the television show Empire, it’s been a constant for ages. The relocation has high stakes, but even these fears have nothing on the realization that there have been three centuries where you could get breakfast at Daley’s. Here’s to three more. (Christopher Good) Daley’s Restaurant. 809 E. 63rd St. Daily, 6am–7pm. (773) 6436670. daleysrestaurant.com

MAY 2, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

COMINGS & GOINGS

Notable quotes from the January grand opening of the city’s first Culver’s

“I

JASON SCHUMER

t’s very important to me [to open a Culver’s in Bronzeville], especially since I used to live here in the 501 building in Lake Meadows. It was just a focus of mine to make sure we have one in the city, and here in Bronzeville… We provide hospitality, we want people to feel happy while they’re here and enjoy good food while they’re doing it.” —Franchise owner Baron Waller “It creates a good aura of meeting people and meeting new people. This to me is great, it’s like LA Fitness and the grocery store down the street coming in. It revitalizes the neighborhood. It brings people in. You don’t have to travel so far.” —LaVeda McClinton “I did get a butterburger. Quite buttery.” —John Jones (Erisa Apantaku) Culver’s, 3355 S. King Dr. Monday–day, 10:30am–10pm. (312) 808-1100. culvers.com

Fresh Brews

Half a dozen new and notable South Side coffeeshops Stockyard Coffeehouse The permits are approved and construction time is nigh for Bridgeport’s soon-to-be newest and southernmost coffee shop. The two couples behind Stockyard Coffeehouse had always talked about opening something in the neighborhood as a way of giving back to the community, Mayra Carranza told the Weekly. Since all four—Mayra, her husband Fernando Lopez, her sister Guadalupe Carranza, and her brother-in-law Fernando Gutierrez—have some experience in the coffee business, opening a coffee shop seemed like the most natural way to do that.

When a storefront within a two-block radius of both of their homes opened up for lease last year, they jumped at the opportunity.

On offer is standard café fare: coffee drinks made with Big Shoulders beans, pastries, and a small selection of sandwiches, all within a reasonable price range, Carranza 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 2, 2018

said. The team is hopeful that the shop will be up and running sometime this summer— but they won’t announce an official opening date just yet, so stay tuned. But she did say the shop will be open early in the morning to accommodate work schedules and school day mornings, and that there will be seating for twenty. (Emeline Posner) Stockyard Coffeehouse, 558 W. 37th St. Hours TBD. (312) 860-9327. facebook.com/ stockyardcoffeehouse

Laine’s Bake Shop “We’re doing a lot in this tiny space with just four of us,” Laine’s Bake Shop co-owner Rachel Bernier-Green said of her small bakery’s output as she prepared rum cakes to go out for distribution. Since opening in May 2016, the South Side cakemonger has inked deals placing its made-from-scratch

goods in ten Chicago Starbucks locations and all Whole Foods stores in the Midwest region—all while based in a tiny Morgan Park storefront.

Now, armed with word-of-mouth support for its high-quality cakes and a grant from the city, Laine’s is set to leave its current digs this year for two more accommodating locations on the South Side: one a bakery café on 111th Street in Pullman, and the other a distribution-minded baking and production facility with a small storefront at 64th and Cottage Grove in Woodlawn, both of which will serve coffee roasted by Englewood’s Kusanya Cafe.

As an “artisanal bakeshop with a social mission,” Laine’s makes distinctive choices regarding its hires (the recently-incarcerated or homeless), its ingredients (sourced from companies with similar values), and its customer incentives (should regulars wish, they will have the ability to direct a percentage of the purchases they make to a local nonprofit of their choice). And don’t worry, fans of their now-closed Morgan Park location—they’ll be hosting pop-ups at both new locations all summer long until they open. (Sam Stecklow) Laine’s Bake Shop, 756 E. 111th St. and 6437 S. Cottage Grove Ave., both opening this fall.

(844) 352-4637. lainesbakeshop.com

Overflow Coffee Bar Though it’s been open for seven years, Overflow became one of a handful of Black-owned coffee shops in the city when small business incubation nonprofit Entrenuity purchased the space from its original owners in January. Since taking over, new café manager Kari Pendleton— who also runs a line of baked goods that are sold in Overflow, and came to Entrenuity’s attention when she hosted a baking workshop for them while they were in talks to purchase the shop—has focused on making the space more comfortable for its customers and employees while improving its coffee quality. Both the management team and Pendleton, a Chicago native who grew up and found her passion for coffee in Glasgow, Scotland, are acutely aware of the rapidly changing neighborhood that surrounds them—Overflow is just down the street from one of the proposed Amazon HQ2 sites. But the team has been working to learn the flavor of the neighborhood to better serve it, balancing local residents from the South Loop, Chinatown, and

Bronzeville with commuters who work in the area. (Sam Stecklow) Overflow Coffee Bar, 1550 S. State St. Monday–Saturday, 7am–8pm; Sunday, 8am– 6pm. (312) 772-2356. overflowcoffeebar.org

South Shore Brew South Shore residents and career educators Jennifer and Cory Barnes see the opening of South Shore Brew, their forthcoming neighborhood café on at 71st and Bennett, as “[solving] a problem:” youth unemployment in the area. Initially, they’ve committed to hiring exclusively seventeen to twenty-fouryear-olds who are currently attending or have graduated South Shore International College Prep, establishing a pipeline from the school to their shop. The decision also leverages connections they have to nonprofits, businesses, and fraternities to improve the lives of the young people they hire—as well as their patrons. With the goal of reflecting its home neighborhood in all aspects of its existence (under the slogan “Coffee + Pride”), the coffee shop will feature artwork from South Shore high school students and offer sandwiches and other food with “culturally relevant” ingredients, in addition to local Metropolis coffee. (Sam Stecklow) South Shore Brew, 1851 E. 71st St. Opens this summer. Hours TBD.

Build Coffee Build Coffee is, without a doubt, the best thing to happen to the Weekly in the last year.

Beyond keeping us caffeinated through long nights when putting our issues together, the coffee shop mere steps from our newsroom offers a quality of camaraderie, aesthetics, and coffee that outranks everything in its immediate vicinity, and potentially the city.

Headed by two beloved former Weekly editors, Build is always uncannily full of friendly faces—volunteers at Blackstone Bikes, parents and students of nearby Carnegie Elementary, Weekly editors. As the Chicago summer heats up, be sure to visit to pick up an iced café de jolla with oat milk and/or a cinnamon bun the size of your head. (Sam Stecklow) Build Coffee, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Monday–Friday, 8am–5:30pm; Saturday and Sunday, 9am–5:30pm. (773) 627-5058. buildcoffee.com

DEVELOPMENT

Sputnik Coffee Fresh, affordable, and consistent are the key words at Sputnik Coffee, the café and roastery that landed in New City in early April. When I walk into Sputnik on a Friday afternoon, brothers Vova and Greesha Kagan are behind the counter, together manning the till and roasting the last of the Columbia beans in the vintage roaster they picked up in Ohio last year. The four-person coffee team, which also includes friends Michael Roytman and Diarmuid Horan, has spent the last six months perfecting and distributing their blend: one that tastes good even if the water-to-coffee ratio is a bit off, and whether it’s brewed in a French press, coffee maker, or pour-over.

Their house blend—a rich and smooth medium-roast blend of Columbia, Brazil, and Sumatra beans— goes for $2 a cup. You can take home a half-pound bag of their beans for $6, which is very much a steal. At the front counter, they also offer sizeable breakfast bars ($3), croissants, brownies, and other assorted sweets (prices vary) from Delightful Pastries in Jefferson Park—though by the time I’d arrived, most had been snatched up by earlier customers. (And, while I was there, two customers stopped in for the second time that day, which is a sure sign that the coffeeshop is hitting the right notes.)

Sputnik may eventually offer a couple simple sandwiches, Vova tells me, but they don’t want to cut into other local businesses’ markets. If someone asks for meal suggestions, they’ll send them one block west to the panadería, or to one of the several groceries and taco joints on 51st or 47th.

It’s hard to miss Sputnik: a sign bearing their logo—Belka and Strelka, the first dogs to go into orbit and return alive, in front of a Chicago-flag emblazoned rocket ship—hangs in the window facing out over Hoyne. But just in case you miss the sign, the Sputnik team has helpfully set up a sign on the sidewalk that reads CAFÉ and points you toward the door. (Emeline Posner) Sputnik Coffee, 2057 W. 51st St. Monday, 6am–5pm; Tuesday–Friday, Sunday, 6am–6pm; Saturday, 7am–6pm. (847) 668-5575. sputnikroasters.com

License to Grow

Why are many urban farmers forced to operate in a legal gray area?

BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER

H

istorically, agriculture and urban planning have had a tight-knit but fraught relationship. In the lower-income neighborhoods of nineteenthcentury American cities, livestock—necessary sources of food and wealth—were common, as were concerns about the public health consequences of dense tenements clustered with people and pigs. Some early attempts at outlawing animals for sanitary reasons were met with public derision: As the New York Times reported in 1865 in response to the apparent arrest of a cow in New York City, “The spectacle of ten or twelve policemen guarding a solitary cow on her way to the cattle-jail provokes too much merriment even for those who are interested in having the streets kept clear of four-footed nuisances.”

But over the course of the nineteenth century, the expanding power of the field of public health in urban planning meant that many forms of urban agriculture, particularly those involving animals, were significantly curbed.

Urban agricultural practices reemerged in force during the 1970s, when suburbanization and the widespread demise of manufacturing created neglected city cores dotted with vacant lots. Gardens sprouted up in response, the result of neighborhood residents reclaiming abandoned land for their own purposes. And while this version didn’t involve driving hogs through streets, it relied on a similar principle of self-sufficiency, as prospective gardeners cleared out sites littered with detritus, replaced blacktop with topsoil, and canvassed cities for equipment donations.

Now, community gardens and urban farms sit snugly within residential, business, and industrial districts. They serve as educational spaces, supply local farmers markets, and beautify their neighborhoods. By 2012, a Google Earth survey by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Crop Sciences found that Chicago had 4,648 sites of food production, most of them small residential gardens.

Chicago’s city planners were slow to catch up to the ubiquity of the city’s gardens

and farms. (They weren’t unusual in this regard—a few cities, like Boston, created open space designations in the eighties that allowed for community gardens, but most had no clear land-use provisions for urban agriculture.) It wasn’t until 2011 that the city finally recognized urban agriculture in its zoning code, creating land-use designations for both urban farms and community gardens. And while some urban farmers still believe further changes are necessary, others are focused on another initiative: clearing up the complicated, often prohibitive business licensing process that currently exists for commercial growers.

The 2011 zoning amendment created and defined two types of agriculture permitted in the city—urban farms and community gardens. Urban farms are just what they sound like: larger-scale agricultural operations where produce is grown to be sold. They’re usually permitted “by right”—meaning that you don’t have to obtain a special permit to operate one—in non-residential areas, mostly parts of the city zoned for business and manufacturing. There are exceptions to this general rule; rooftop urban farms, akin to the non-commercial garden atop City Hall, are allowed in all downtown areas.

On the other side, community gardens, often smaller than urban farms, are meant to function as spaces for “beautification, education, recreation, community distribution, or personal use” within a particular neighborhood. They’re permitted in pretty much every part of the city except areas zoned for manufacturing.

Though owners—usually a nonprofit or neighborhood organization, if not an individual—aren’t allowed to run dedicated commercial operations, “incidental sales” are fair game, and don’t require the owner to get a business license.

“People have had vegetable gardens going way back. In Chicago, because it was a big meat industry city, backyard chickens and geese—an incidental use—were normal to have,” said Abe Lentner, an adjunct lecturer

in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “Everyone probably knows people who sell things on Etsy. Just because you sell a few things that you make doesn’t make it a home-based business.”

The amendment also established certain building requirements for agricultural plots: urban farms, for example, must have fencing and screening, as well as parking for employees. That’s frustrated some farmers, who think the stipulations act as restraints on the possible flexibility created by farming in a city, particularly one with plenty of vacant land on the South and West Sides. “You have to say, here, we don’t need to put in parking because nobody lives on the block anyway...

We shouldn’t put all of this permanent infrastructure as if it were a permanent business,” said Ken Dunn, founder of the Resource Center, a nonprofit environmental organization.

Dunn’s Resource Center runs City Farm, a farm that operates on vacant land and shifts locations every couple of years when the plot it’s working on is slated for development. From 2011 to 2014, it ran a farm at 57th Street and Perry in Washington Park, until the city decided not to extend the lease. It moved into a vacant lot near the old Cabrini-Green public housing complex in the early 2000s, then left at the end of 2015 to make way for a mixed-use development.

The farm’s transience is its point: it provides work for neighborhoods on land that would normally remain idle.

Dunn believes the city should institute the City Farm model on a large scale, temporarily turning many of the city’s vacant properties into short-term urban farms that would benefit communities with high unemployment rates. “We have to realize that we are in an emergency situation in our city, as well as more broadly...If [people] need jobs, we bring them, no matter how glamorous,” he said, estimating that Resource Center farms can generate up to $150,000 per year in revenue by selling to and composting for MAY 2, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

DEVELOPMENT

ELLIE MEJÍA

Christian Belanger is a senior editor at the Weekly and a reporting fellow at City Bureau. He’s lived in Chicago since 2013. Currently in Bridgeport, he enjoys long walks up the Palmisano Park hill, and burning vegetables he means to roast. He wrote for the Weekly last month about a report showing the rental affordability gap on the South Side.

20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 2, 2018

high-end restaurants. “We need a solution in the next few months, or the next year or two. We’re in trouble: let’s look at what we can do.”

For Dunn, then, the strength of urban farming lies in its flexibility, the temporary reprieve it can provide by easily moving in and out of economically depressed areas; Lentner, for his part, thinks the benefit of urban farming is its proximity to the city’s core. By most metrics, farming outside the city is the fiscally prudent choice: land, taxes, and labor costs all tend to be cheaper.

But the comparative advantage of an urban farm lies in its easy access to food vendors and restaurants. To take advantage of it, Lentner says, city farmers have to go beyond “just producing tomatoes...Instead, take the raw product, prepare it in a certain way and deliver that. If you were raising chickens in the city at a large scale, you wouldn’t just sell eggs, but would sell quiches, because you have a much greater ability than just simple production of commodities.”

Actually selling their products, though, has been a surprisingly tricky process for many farmers to navigate. Currently, farmers largely have two business licenses available to them: a peddler’s license for small-scale farmers, and a wholesale license for bigger operations. Both have their disadvantages, according to the Chicago Food Policy Action Council (CFPAC). If a farm has a peddler’s license, each person in the business has to buy their own, which can get expensive, and there are restrictions on when and how they can sell their produce. A wholesale license works well for the biggest farms, like Gotham Greens in Pullman, but isn’t a good option for more mid-size businesses because of onerous infrastructure and inspection requirements.

Because those options are insufficient,and the licensing process at the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) can be confusing, many farmers operate without a license. “Most people don’t have a license, because they’re operating in a grey space where there’s no obvious license to go for,” said Lauralyn Clawson of Urban Growers Collective, an organization that helps communities develop sustainable food systems.

Clawson is also the co-chair of a CFPAC working group proposing a modified version of a third existing business license for urban farmers, an effort that’s been gradually building momentum over the past three years.

The CFPAC working group has already met with the city once, and plans to present its proposal to the city in two weeks. “After that,

it depends on how quickly the City moves on it,”said Simms.

CFPAC is pushing for a modified license because it can’t create a new one; in 2012, Mayor Rahm Emanuel charged BACP with cutting its number of licenses by sixty percent, and to largely refrain from creating new ones.

(It’s not a complete moratorium: on April 18, for instance, the city announced a new license for mobile boutiques.) Instead, the working group wants to modify the mobile food business license for produce merchants.

The mobile produce merchant license was initially created specifically for StreetWise’s Neighbor Carts, a program designed to help homeless people earn revenue by operating traveling produce stands.

As written, the license is unnecessarily restrictive to urban agriculture. Because part of the purpose of Neighbor Carts was to encourage healthier options in food deserts, one of the license’s requirements was that at least fifty percent of produce merchant business take place within areas underserved by grocery stores. This presents an obstacle for farms that aren’t already located in areas defined by the city as “underserved,” which can still include neighborhoods with low healthy food access. The CFPAC working group has presented several possible solutions to this problem, including suggestions that the requirement be reduced, or replaced with a more general requirement.

Still, Sims and Clawson emphasize that the point is not to eliminate the requirement entirely, just to make it more manageable.

“We’ve gotten feedback from communities around [the fifty percent] number,” Clawson said. “We want some number that would encourage and really require businesses to give back to the communities in which they’re farming.”

Nick Lucas, the programs manager at Advocates for Urban Agriculture, one of the groups working with CFPAC on the proposal, echoed this point. “The mobile produce merchant license was focused on increasing food access, and that’s something we very much care about, too,” he said.

Ultimately, the zoning amendment, business licenses, and the discussions around both initiatives reflect a broader aim of food policy advocates: minimizing the cost of selling produce or starting a garden, thereby ensuring that the fruits of urban agriculture are distributed more equally. As Lucas put it, “Urban farms should have the lowest possible barrier to entry—not expensive and straightforward.”¬

EVENTS

BULLETIN CCC/CHA Partners in Education Information Session Malcolm X College, 1900 W. Jackson Blvd., Room 1102. Wednesday, May 2, 10am–noon, noon– 2pm, and 6:30–8:30pm. Free. (312) 553-2830. bit.ly/CCCandCHA The Chicago Housing Authority and City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) are teaming up to host several information sessions on how eligible participants can attend CCC at low or no cost. Learn about the program deadlines, requirements, and academic programs to put you on a path to a better career. To be considered for funding, you must attend an information session before registering for classes. (Maple Joy)

Black Women, Sex, and the Lies Our Mothers Told Us The Silver Room, 1506 E. 53rd St. Monday, May 7, 6pm–8pm. Free. (773) 947-0024. thesilverroom.com The Silver Room is inviting all mothers, daughters, and aunts to come by and hear author and community psychologist Dr. Hareder McDowell read excerpts from her new book. The event will also give attendees the opportunity to discuss their own experiences around the dynamics of mother-daughter relationships within the Black community. Come with open hearts, and open stomachs as well—wine and light refreshments will be served alongside the discussion. (Michael Wasney)

Young Entrepreneurship Summit Hamilton Park, 513 W. 72nd St. Saturday, May 5, noon–4pm. Free. bit.ly/YoungESummit Local creative professionals from the fashion, film, photography, radio, DJ, and graphic design industries are participating in a panel titled “Creating Opportunities with Your Passion.” Creative minded youths ages thirteen to nineteen are invited to come learn about how to build careers in creative entrepreneurship. (Tammy Xu)

Cybersecurity Bootcamp Wilbur Wright College, 4300 N. Narragansett Ave. and Kennedy-King College, 6301 S. Halsted St. Applications due Sunday, May 6; classes begin week of Monday, June 18. Tuition Free. (773) 265-5343. pages.ccc.edu/apply/techbootcamps

Looking to jumpstart a career in cybersecurity as a risk analyst or professional contractor? The City Colleges of Chicago is launching a bootcamp that will prepare students to pass the CompTIA Network+ and Security+ certification exams, both highly valued industry certifications. The program is tuition free and meets twelve hours a week, twice in the evenings and once on Saturdays.

(Amy Qin)

VISUAL ARTS Kimski 2-Year Anniversary Jam Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar, 960 W. 31st Street. May 5–May 6, 3pm–3am.

(773) 823-7336. kimskichicago.com Celebrate Cinco de Mayo the, um, nontraditional way by marking the two-year anniversary of a Korean-Polish restaurant attached to the beloved Bridgeport haunt Maria’s. A twelve-hour bash will feature booze, DJs, and bands, such as Panda Riot, the rapper Serengeti, and the dance/electronic group Dar Embarks. In addition to Kimski’s pork belly bowls, scallion potato pancakes and other fusion faves, there will be food from the pop-ups Hungry as F*ck and Slow Motion for Meat. ( Joseph S. Pete)

Yollo Spring 2018 Exhibition Yollocalli Arts Reach, 2801 S. Ridgeway Ave. Friday, May 4, 5:30pm–7pm. Free. (773) 5211621. yollocalli.org Yollocalli is holding a showcase for the work of all its wonderful and talented youth artists.

No matter what medium you’re into, there will be a little bit of something for everyone: photography, written work, graffiti and mural painting, and much more. Yollocalli is a kid-friendly space, so bring the whole family.

(Michael Wasney)

and gifts, along with free food. Make sure to bring a donation for an expecting parent and you’ll get entered into a special raffle.

(Roderick Sawyer)

MUSIC Chris Murray, Cosmos Ray, DJ Chuck Wren Reggies, 2105 S. State St. Thursday, May 3, 7pm. $5 in advance, $8 at door. 21+. (312) 9490120. reggieslive.com To celebrate Jump Up Records’s twenty-fifth anniversary, singer-songwriter Chris Murray will bring his Chicago-by-way-of-Jamaica melodies to Reggies. He’ll be joined by Cosmos Ray, best known as the lead vocalist for reggae band Akasha, and and by DJ Chuck Wren, the head of Jump Up Records.

(Christopher Good)

South Side African Dance Classes Gary Comer Youth Center, 7200 S. Ingleside Ave. Saturday, May 5, 11am–12:30 pm. $15.

(773) 241-6080. muntu.com Muntu Dance Theatre’s dazzling live show was one of our top picks in last year’s “Best of the South Side” issue. Now, they’re sharing the magic with a series of drop-in dance classes at Gary Comer Youth Center. Regina Perry-Carr of Nunufatima Dance Company will guest-choreograph this Saturday’s lesson.

(Christopher Good)

South Shore Drill Team Spring Show Gary Comer Youth Center, 7200 S. Ingleside Ave. Saturday, May 5, 5pm–7pm. $20. (773) 752-7830. southshoredrillteam.org Drumroll, please. This Saturday, the extraordinary South Shore Drill Team will

hold an one-day-only showcase at its home base in Greater Grand Crossing. From the snare fills and flag twirls to the somersaults and rifle tosses, any performance from the group is a guaranteed adrenaline rush.

(Christopher Good)

The Mothers of House 7421 S. South Chicago Ave. Saturday, May 5, 9pm–3am. Free parking on corner of 75th St. bit.ly/mothers-house With Mother’s Day around the corner, we all have letters to write and calls to make. But first, mark your calendar for this excellent allfemale lineup, featuring respected South Side DJs Celeste Alexander, Mz. Nicky, and Lora Branch. Get there early: promoters will have a gift bag for the first twenty-five mothers in the building. (Christopher Good)

Soul-Frica Sundays Renaissance Bronzeville, 4641 S. King Dr. Sundays, 7pm. No cover charge. (773) 6905416. renaissancebronzeville.com End your week right and dance the night away in Bronzeville. Resident DJs Terry Hunter and Greg Winfeld––each one a formidable figure in the history of Chicago’s house scene––will spin soul, R&B, and whatever else gets the people moving.

(Christopher Good)

STAGE & SCREEN Grown Folk Stories The Silver Room, 1506 E. 53rd St. Thursday, May 17, 8–10pm. Suggested $5 donation. (773) 947-0024. info@thesilverroom.com Join “Grown Folk Stories” on the third Thursday of every month for two hours of an eclectic collection of unrehearsed, five-minute

It Takes a Village Studio 71 Art Gallery, 1834 E. 71st Street.

Sunday, May 6, 1pm-6pm. Accepting donations.

For more info, email Dionne Victoria at butterflycommunitychicago@gmail.com or Kwynn at kwynnriley@gmail.com In celebration of the life of David Kwynton Flynn Jr., “It Takes a Village” is an event promoting life and the appreciation of community. This event will feature a great lineup of performers such as Christian JaLon, Brittney Carter and Kwynology, and there will be various vendoers selling crafts MAY 2, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

C L A S S I F I E D S

EVENTS

General stories told about the experiences we have in our everyday lives. (Soulet Ali)

Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards 2018 Submissions Submissions due Sunday, June 17, 11:59pm.

(312) 374-1555. bit.ly/2hwGhH2 Students across Illinois in K-12 are invited to submit their original works of poetry to the second annual revitalized Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards. Winners will be honored at a ceremony at the Poetry Foundation on August 25. (Tammy Xu)

Quiet Room Open Mic: Chicago The Revival, 1160 E. 55th St. Saturday, May 19, 9pm artist sign-up, showtime 9:31pm sharp until 11pm. $10, ages 18+. bit.ly/quietroomopenmic This open mic hosted by poet extraordinaire Brandon Alexander Williams, formerly known as Re@l Talk, will be a night for anyone ready for all bars, with no phones, no intros who loves spittin or wanting to juslisen.

(Nicole Bond)

Spotlight: A.J. McLenon

Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative, 1456 E. 70th St. Friday, May 11, 7:30pm–10pm.

Free and open to the public, no RSVP required. rebuild-foundation.org Two short films by multimedia artist A.J. McClenon will be screened, anda conversation with McClenon follows. First in the double feature is Black Water: Polarity which explores the relationship between Black people and water, using dance, historical accounts and personal experiences, followed by Sharks, Adolescence and Being the Darkest Girl in the Pool, a coming-of-age story encompassing such topics as the sport of fishing, grief and the politics of sexual identity. (Nicole Bond)

Spring Opening Smart Museum of Art. 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. May 7, 7pm–8:30pm. Free. (773) 702-0200. smartmuseum.uchicago.edu Get smart and head to the UofC’s art museum to see the “vastly opened gallery space” and get a first look at the work of Thai artist Tang Chang. Graduate students will give talks on the works on display, including 22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ MAY 2, 2018

the atmospheric prints from “The Multiple Sorceries of Felix Behot.” As always, it’s free and open to the public. ( Joseph S. Pete)

FOOD & LAND Man vs. Machine Volunteer Composting Day The Plant, 1400 W. 46th St., backyard.

Saturday, May 5, 9am–1pm. Free. (773) 8475523. plantchicago.org Screen and sift! Screen and sift! This will be the calling cry at Saturday’s composting day at the Plant. After screening and sifting, hosts Bubbly Dynamics and Closed Loop Farms will treat volunteers to a free lunch and Compost 101 class. Afterwards, peruse the Plant’s market day, or head up to the third floor for a class on seed-starting. You’ll be an expert in all things farm and garden by the day’s end. (Emeline Posner)

Seed Starting with Urban Canopy The Plant, 1400 W. 46th St., 3rd fl. Saturday, May 5, 3pm–4pm. $15. (773) 847-5523. bit.ly/2HRvc02 The goal of Urban Canopy is to make local produce available to everyone, and to create a more sustainable and equitable food system in Chicago. This organization will be hosting a one-hour, hands-on workshop on how to start seeds at home using re-purposed everyday supplies. Participants will also leave with their own seedlings to plant this spring.

(Maple Joy)

Chicago Community Grant Program Salon South Loop, address posted day of the event.

Wednesday, May 9, 6pm–10pm. $5–$10. chicago@burnerswithoutborders. bit.ly/ChiCommGrantProgramSalon Burners Without Borders Chicago and Bold Urban Renaissance are teaming up to give grants to organizations and individuals working on sustainability projects in their community, and you can have a say in who gets the grant if you come to the salon on May 9. For $5–$10, attendees will get the chance to listen to presentations by programs contending for the grant, submit a vote, and receive a delectable dinner from Edible Alchemy Foods. (Michael Wasney)

The World’s Fair 2018 at Native Foods Native Foods, 1518 E. Harper Ct. Friday, May 11, 4pm–9pm. bit.ly/WorldsFair2018 What’s better than the 1893 World’s Fair that was held in Jackson Park? The World’s Fair that’s being held at Native Foods! This World’s Fair will be an exhibition in late June showcasing local musicians, artists, and organizers. Dine at Native Foods and meet some of the participants while enjoying fresh vegan cuisine. Twenty percent of proceeds will go to support The World’s Fair. (Sam Joyce)

Chicago River Day Multiple locations. Saturday, May 12, 9am– noon. Free. Registration required. (312) 9390490. bit.ly/ChicagoRiverDay Friends of the Chicago River will host their twenty-sixth annual volunteer day at sixty locations along the Chicago River. Volunteers will work to remove garbage, plant native seedlings, and clean up the river. Tools, gloves, and free t-shirt provided. (Sam Joyce)

Foraged Foods for Female Health The Plant, 1400 W. 46th St. Saturday, May 12, 10:30am–12:30pm. $35, which includes foraged lunch. Buy tickets at bit.ly/ForagedFoods. (773) 847-5523. plantchicago.org Visual artist, permaculture designer, and forager Nina Lawrin will walk workshop participants through the basics of foraging wild edible plants, specifically those that can assist female hormonal health cycles.

Takeaways include recipes for various hormonal phases, foraged vinegar, and identification instruction. (Leah Menzer)

Tiny Tunes Studio is a new music studio for kids in the South Loop neighborhood. We offer music, baby yoga and zumbini (that’s Zumba for kids!) classes for kids ages 0-5, seven days a week. Classes are drop-in based - not session-based - just whenever you’re available and we have classes on the schedule. You can learn more about the studio and classes here: www. tinytunesstudio.com. You can also rent Tiny Tunes Studio for a private party!

Email tinytunesstudio@gmail.com for more details!

Announcements The National Latino Education Institute (NLEI) will host a Job Fair on Thursday, April 12, 2018 at its main building at 2011 West Pershing Road in Chicago. The fair runs from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. and admission is free. Don’t miss the opportunity to job search, network, and meet with employers. Bring plenty of resumes and dress for success. Free workshops will also be onsite. For more information and to register, please call us at 773-247-0707 ext. 264. www.nlei.org

Merchandise I pay top dollar for your vinyl records.

Rock, punk, soul, jazz, folk, etc. LP’s 45’s, whatever you got. Give me a holler and get some cash instead of letting your records sit there and collect dust!!

Contact: 773-372-6643

C

L

A

S

S

I

F

I

E

D

S

Volunteers Wanted

Legal Notices

Biological Rhythms Research Lab at Rush University Medical Center: Teens between 14 and 17 years old are wanted for a study of the effects of light on the body clock. Subjects stay at our lab for 2-3 weekends. While in the lab, subjects can play games or watch TV with other subjects and study staff. There will be time to complete homework too. No drugs or invasive procedures like blood draws. Subjects will be paid $1000 for successfully completing the entire study.

Free parking in attached garage for all lab visits. Contact: sleep_study_8@rush. edu or (312) 563-4781

Pink Giraffe provides a social setting for lovers of art to explore new talents and find inspiration. We offer weekly paint classes, that are BYOB for optimal self expression! We are available for private events and birthdays for all ages. Find us on Groupon, Eventbrite, social media and visit our website, www. pinkgiraffepaint.com, to stay connected and learn about upcoming classes.

Pink Giraffe Art Studio, 604 E. 61st St., Chicago, IL 60637 (773) 609-5651

Jobs We are recruiting for a team of membership consultants to introduce new professionals to our platform.

You need to be sociable, enjoy making new connections and thrive working to targets. This is a part-time role. Email your resume to careers@kvngdm.com. www.kvngdm.com/careers

Coffee tastes so much better when you know the farmers Relationship Coffees • Direct Importing • Local Roasting

Services Are you in CREDIT JAIL? Do you want to buy a house or a car and are struggling to get approved for a loan because of your bad credit? Let us break you out of credit jail and get you the loan you deserve. Give us a call for a FREE credit consultation. Contact: 833-4682733 or m.oliver@creditopoly.com. www.creditopoly.com

ORIGINAL BRIDGEPORT HYDE PARK ART CENTER SOUTH LOOP ROOSEVELT COLLECTION bridgeportcoffee.net

MAY 2, 2018 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

SENIORS GET 10% OFF EVERY WEDNESDAY (Valid for in store purchases by customers 60 or older only)