June 6, 2014 | The Summer Issue

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY JUNE 4, 2014 ¬ ARTS, CULTURE, & POLITICS ¬ THE SUNNIEST PAPER SOUTH OF ROOSEVELT ¬ SOUTHSIDEWEEKLY.COM ¬ FREE

WINDCHILL, PUGS ATOMZ, IMAN, STEAK, LEMONADE, TAROT, IMAM OUSMANE DRAME

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MORE INSIDE

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JUNE 4, 2014

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is a newsprint magazine based out of the University of Chicago, for and about the South Side. The Weekly is distributed across the South Side each Wednesday of the academic year.

In fall 2013, the Weekly reformed itself as an independent, student-directed organization.

Previously, the paper was known as the Chicago Weekly.

Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Deputy Editor

Bea Malsky Spencer Mcavoy John Gamino

Senior Editors Josh Kovensky, Harrison Smith Politics Editor Osita Nwanevu Stage & Screen Meaghan Murphy Editor Music Editors Zach Goldhammer, Jack Nuelle Visual Arts Editor Emma Collins Education Editor Bess Cohen Online Editor Sharon Lurye Contributing Editors Jake Bittle, Rachel Schastok Editor-at-Large Hannah Nyhart Photo Editor Lydia Gorham Layout Editors, Emma Cervantes, Sarah Claypoole Senior Writers Ari Feldman, Emily Holland, Patrick Leow, Stephen Urchick Staff Writers Olivia Adams, Maha Ahmed, Christian Belanger, Jon Brozdowski, Cindy Dapogny, Lauren Gurley,

Olivia Dorow Hovland, Noah Kahrs, Olivia Markbreiter, Julian Nebreda, Paige Pendarvis, Jamison Pfeifer, Arman Sayani, Olivia Stovicek Senior Photographer Luke White Staff Photographers Camden Bauchner, Juliet Eldred, Stephanie Koch, Siddhesh Mukerji Staff Illustrators Ellie Mejia, Wei Yi Ow, Hanna Petroski, Maggie Sivit Editorial Intern

Zavier Celimene

Business Manager

Harry Backlund

5706 S. University Ave. Reynolds Club 018 Chicago, IL 60637 SouthSideWeekly.com Send tips, comments, or questions to: editor@southsideweekly.com For advertising inquiries, contact: (773)234-5388 advertising@southsideweekly

Cover by Julie Drallos, juliedrallos.wordpress.com

IN CHICAGO A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors

Give Peace a Chance the Rapper

Last weekend, Chance the Rapper tweeted in support of the Save Chicago campaign, a non-profit group seeking to dissuade Chicago youth from gun violence. The rapper tweeted “ambiguously” about a May 23 event. Though the rapper admitted that the #May23rd event was easily misinterpreted by some as a new album release date, it was also intended to be a city-wide day of peace.

Chance considers his campaign a victory declaring on Twitter that Chicago went “forty-two hours from Thursday to Saturday without one shooting.” While this may be true, it’s hard to give much credit to tweeting for solving structural problems. It also becomes much harder to celebrate now, with the news that this weekend, the South Side lost two musicians—fifteen-year-old Kenwood Academy jazz band guitarist Aaron Rushing, who was killed days before his band was set to perform at Symphony Hall—and seventeen-year-old Englewood resident MacArthur Swindle, a.k.a drill rapper OTF Nunu, who was shot dead on 87th St. at three in

the afternoon. While Chance may be getting featured in Time for covering of the theme song from Arthur at the Sasquatch Music Festival, it may take a more concerted effort to change headlines here in Chicago.

Guns Out

The latest Emanuelian fiat ain’t so bad. The mayor is rahming new gun control legislation on Chicago, after the Illinois State Supreme Court ruled the city’s ban on gun sales in violation of the Right to Bear Arms (!). The new ordinance will keep gun stores at least 500 feet away from schools and parks, while mandating that all firearm purchases be videotaped. Summer is here, and recent tragedies bear witness to the sober fact that the murder rate tends to rise with the mercury. Rahm’s plans are good, but are only a stopgap measure—Indiana, where guns and ammo flow free like milk and honey, is still a short trip away. ¬

IN THIS ISSUE pekin

What is wanting, at least for this reviewer, is more information from Bauman about the character of the theater and its various players.

emily holland..........4 orthogenic school

“Our walls have a lot of curves, there’s a real effort on not being rigid.”

kiran misra...............7

tarot cards

heliport

Such people with a taste for speculation might be advised to stop by Nitecap Coffee Shop in Pilsen.

“They came here and told us that it was Disneyland-by-the-sea.”

lucia ahrensdorf.....6

bess cohen and jake bittle.............5

studio gang boathouse

“We got the short end of the stick as far as the river goes.”

jake bittle and rachel schastok......8

gideon’s confessions

64th and cottage grove

olivia stovicek...............9

rachel schastok....10

He’s a great observer, at various points “fascinated by the tragic splendor of it all.”

The Grand Ballroom has seen the fortunes of Woodlawn rise and fall around it.

imam ousmane drame

windchill

pugs atomz

The food is a “means to purchase the heart of those inquiring about Islam and becoming Muslim.”

“If there was no backdrop, it just wouldn’t be music.”

“We rapped over this song from Bahamadia, “True Honey Buns.” Flawless.”

iman

charlie gu’s mansion

maha ahmed..............11 “The thing is, either you change your community or someone will change it for you.”

maira khwaja..........15

zach goldhammer.......12

“Seriously, Tom Cruise lives here.”

zach goldhammer and rachel schastok.....16

mark hassenfratz.......14 steak and lemonade

Nor could anyone provide a theory or even a guess as to why steak was originally paired with lemonade.

jake bittle and emma collins.....26

BOOKS

The Opening Act

Thomas Bauman looks back to the Pekin Theater

BY EMILY HOLLAND

2

700 South State Street was once an anchor in a lively network of saloons, cafés, and vaudeville houses, as well as Chicago’s first major home for African-American theater. The Pekin Theater, as Thomas Bauman writes in his new history of the venue, was “engulfed” by the Dearborn Homes in 1946 and demolished in 1952. But until then it was a cultural icon on the stretch of State Street from 26th to 39th once known as “the Stroll,” and Bauman’s book reflects that rich history.

The Pekin: The Rise and Fall of Chicago’s First Black-Owned Theater is structured around the life of one Robert T. Motts, who founded the theater and served as its executive director from its opening in 1904 until his death in 1911. As director of the theater, which offered some of the best and most comfortable outfitted entertainments on the Stroll, Motts was a leading figure in Chicago’s African-American cultural scene.

“The political and social uses to which he put his wealth and influence carried a distinct element of racial consciousness and commitment,” Bauman writes. A former gambler and saloon owner, Motts was determined to develop the Pekin, as he put it, into “a playhouse worthy of the name and a credit to the Negro race.” When he died, “four thousand mourners, black and white,” showed up for his funeral.

One of the most impressive things about The Pekin is how much Bauman manages to reconstruct from so few remaining primary sources. As Bauman informs us, “No scripts, sound recordings, or archival records from the Pekin have survived.”

Instead, he relies heavily on (often lively) write-ups in “black weeklies and white dailies,” as well as other sources which allow him to reconstruct an intricately detailed 4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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timeline of the Pekin’s history, including, it seems, nearly all the shows that played there and the actors and actresses who played in them. A particularly critical aspect of the theater’s history is the evolution its top-ofthe-line stock company, which was, at one point or another, home to some of the first well-known African-American theatrical talent in the United States. Lawrence Chenault, Lottie Grady, and the beloved Harrison Stewart all had numerous runs on the Pekin stage. Nor was the Pekin wanting for musical talent: Joe Jordan, a celebrated composer of both ragtime and vocal anthems, spent time at the Pekin as a sort of composer-in-residence.

What is wanting in Bauman’s account is more information from about the character of the theater and its various players.

The Pekin provides an exhaustive collection of facts, but this reviewer finds it difficult to imagine what it might have been like to attend a show there. The book is thorough in its details but lacking in imagination; by the time I finished it, I knew the birth and death dates, and the middle initials (Bauman is particularly meticulous about providing middle initials), of nearly everyone involved in the story of the Pekin, but I didn’t know much about what they were like as people. What did they say that was thought provoking? How did their contemporaries describe them? Bauman quotes a few surviving letters, but The Pekin would have benefited from some more exploration of the humanity behind the history.

Still, Bauman’s thorough knowledge as a musicologist is one of the highlights of the text. The few pages of sheet music that do survive are subjected to his thorough analysis, and I found it gratifying to read about the way that Joe Jordan subverted Mendels-

sohn’s “Wedding March” in his “artful” song “Lovie Joe.” Bauman places the Pekin’s African-American theatrical music within a distinct tradition and is fastidious in discussing the ways it interacted with the popular music of its era.

Beyond its details, The Pekin deserves praise for delivering this significant piece of history. Anyone who is interested in African-American theater, or even in the history of social consciousness and art in Chicago, can benefit from this clearly written and well-researched exploration of a nearly forgotten playhouse. We certainly wouldn’t have eta Creative Arts without the Pekin, or even many of the plays that have found

a home at Court Theatre; we needed Chicago’s first black-owned and operated theater to give racially conscious plays a voice.

Though its original purpose was simply high-quality entertainment, its existence was an important milestone, as Bauman reminds us. When vaudeville finally gave way, according to a 1911 article in the Chicago Defender, the Pekin played host to those first critical works of art with “a deeper and grander meaning.” Thomas Bauman, The Pekin: The Rise and Fall of Chicago’s First Black-Owned Theater. University of Illinois Press. 264 pages.

PROPHECY

Luck of the Draw A tarot card reader says “sooth” in Pilsen

BY JAKE BITTLE AND BESS COHEN

Y

oung folks—be they lovers cherishing the spring humidity or tortured twentysomethings mulling over existence—often flock to cafés to sip coffee and contemplate the higher things in life: love, the future, etc.

Such people with a taste for speculation might be advised to stop by Nitecap Coffee Bar in Pilsen, where every Tuesday Laura Gonzalez performs tarot card readings. Gonzalez, a self-declared “natural psychic and tarotologyst” will, according to her website, help you “to understand the purpose of issues (large and small) in your life” for a fee of $1 per minute. All this while you drink one of the best espressos in Chicago and listen to the soundtrack of Across the Universe blasting perhaps a little too loudly.

While shuffling the tarot cards (each intricately illustrated with sacred objects or bulging cleavage) Gonzalez explained that, contrary to popular assumption, she would not tell your future, but reveal trends in your life that may inform your decisions about the future. She compared it to a movie preview, and how sometimes the scene in the preview isn’t necessarily in the movie. “It’s like that, except you’re the director,” she said.

After you ask for a focus (e.g. financial future, romantic life, life in general), Gonzalez waves the deck of tarot cards over a lit candle, evidently to cleanse the cards of their clairvoyant residue. She flips over a number of cards and places them across the table with slow deliberacy, explaining to you their meanings and the relationships between them. What follows are the individual experiences of two Weekly reporters.

JAKE I requested that the focus of my reading be my love life, and the first card that turned up was the Queen of Swords. Gonzalez divined that my significant other used mean words to make me feel defeated and unloved. As we proceeded card by card, subtleties of my romantic situation became apparent: my loved one did this because she was raised in a family of “meddlers” and “active personalities,” and her rude words often made me want to be rude and cruel in return. The last card turned up was Judgment, oriented upside down. Gonzalez told me that this meant that I needed to turn the card right-side-up and communicate with my partner. My loved one and I needed to stop judging and being cruel to each other if we didn’t want our relationship to turn “dark.”

Being uninitiated into the world of the occult, I will not attempt to pass judgment on the validity of the advice she gave me. It did not seem that there was much truth to

the divinations Gonzalez made about my life and my romantic situation, but in the end it may be all about perspective, and it’s possible that in the blindness of my ignorance I have not seen what the spirits saw.

Curious psychonauts and those in need of guidance from the spirits should head to Nitecap themselves and see if Gonzalez’s cards hold any real magic.

BESS Though I asked for a general reading, to “see what’s up with me,” Gonzalez (or another force) sought some direction, and while she was shuffling the deck, a card jumped from it.

“Are you looking for love?” Gonzalez asked. I told her I was in a happy relationship and glanced down at her skull ring, trying not to take it as a bad omen.

As the reading proceeded, it became clear that my current romantic relationship was based on a strong foundation. It was true

wei yi ow

love—in the cards, as they say. But those same cards also revealed that our relationship was unconventional and at risk of meddlers.

As for me, personally, Gonzalez found I was an intensely private person (despite my willingness to share my tarot reading with a public audience) and that this, paired with my tendency to be a workaholic (despite getting a tarot reading on a Tuesday afternoon), meant that I could sometimes be a grump. One card told her that I go between light and dark with ease. “It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s not indifferent,” she said. Another card suggested that I would benefit from “telling people to fuck off” more often. These, I thought, were wise words.

as she collected the cards at the end of our reading. “Whatever your heart tells you.”

Both my heart and my watch told me it was eight to ten minutes, but something, perhaps otherworldly, obliged Gonzalez her $15 as I slurped up the rest of my espresso and returned to the sweltering sidewalk.

There are a multitude of words that we could use to describe Gonzalez’s auguries—balanced, cautionary, infuriating, enlightening—a testament perhaps to the wide scope of the cards’ sagacity. Gonzalez emphasized that her job was simply to relay these revelations, without identifying explicitly from whom they came. “I don’t understand it,” she said. “I usually don’t. As long as it makes sense to you.” ¬

“That was ten or fifteen minutes,” she said JUNE 4, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

HELIPORT

Fight Over Flight The bitter debate over the Halsted heliport

BY LUCIA AHRENSDORF

A

t 2420 South Halsted Street, a heliport is set to break ground. Perched on the border of Bridgeport and Pilsen, the project is not alone—less than two and a half miles away, a Vertiport has begun to sprout thanks to sponsorship from Mayor Rahm Emanuel. That port will be built near Stroger Hospital, and will be used mostly for medical needs, although the city plans on opening it to corporate charters as well.

The Pilsen project, however, is geared towards the commercial. The $12.5 million facility will be owned by Chicago Helicopter Express (CHE), which plans to use the helipad to offer scenic tours of Chicago, as well as access to O’Hare, Midway, and charters for corporate commuters. Approved by the Chicago Plan Commission and the City Council and supported by the 11th Ward Alderman James Balcer, nothing stands to prevent the heliport from becoming a reality—except the widespread disapproval of the neighborhood’s residents.

The residents believe that the project threatens their safety and their peace.

They say it even shakes their faith in local government. A number of community members feel that their community leaders have overlooked them, and fear that care for their well-being and happiness has been overtaken by a business geared towards in6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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dulging the frivolities of the wealthy.

With the helicopter flight path moving from Pilsen and Bridgeport over the Stevenson Expressway near Chinatown, citizens of all three neighborhoods are concerned by the possible dangers and inconveniences—noise pollution, potential for crashes, and decreased property values—to come from the project. Local government and the helicopter tour company have held a few community meetings to create a dialogue. However, some citizens feel that the meetings did not allow them a voice.

“There have been no local studies on this,” said Debbie Liu, a Bridgeport resident. “Worst of all, no one was informed.

I reside in the tallest building in its flight path and we were not even informed.”

Liu lives in a high-rise apartment building on 24th and Canal Streets, less than a mile from the site and about two blocks away from the expressway that the helicopter routes trace. She was not notified of the project until after it was approved.

“CHE uses the quietest helicopters on the market, and will not be flying over anyone’s home or business at any time,” their website advertises. “A new sound barrier will absorb and deflect any additional noise created from operations, ensuring zero disturbances to the local community.”

Liu believes that just because the helicopter doesn’t fly directly over residencies

hanna petroski

or businesses doesn’t mean they will not be affected by the noise. “The flight path is just right by my building. My building is already subjected to higher-than-average noise levels from the highway and planes.”

Liu also criticizes the way the project coordinators have communicated with the community. “I am just frustrated that it never occurred to them to speak with the community with cultural competence,” she says. “There was no bilingual information given out to the area residents. The people in my building do not recall ever getting any notices. From what I know, they didn’t reach out to Chinatown residents. It is unreachable to the public.”

Complaints from across the community are beginning to snowball into a court case. John Tominello, a Bridgeport retiree, began to look for legal help with his wife, Janet Lamonica, after finding out about the heliport through an advertisement in the Bridgeport News. The retired couple, who have lived in Bridgeport all their lives, have

serious concerns about the project, and have begun to work with the Hoff Law Group to fight the heliport. The firm is looking into the matter and is unable to comment on the legality of the CHE project at this time.

Tominello is angry. “They came here and told us that it was Disneyland-by-the-sea, it was going to be affordable tours for the poor and children—as if they were clamoring for tours—when in reality, it’s a corporate helicopter hub whose main purpose is to shuttle rich people back and forth from the airports.”

Though he is upset about the inconvenience of the heliport, Tominello is most peeved by what he perceives to be Alderman Balcer’s betrayal of Bridgeport’s tightknit community. “We’re a community of generations of people and he hasn’t even stuck up for his own people, he just turned his back on us. He doesn’t even tell us that they’re going to put a flight path over your head or put in a helicopter hub. It’s so deceitful.”

EDUCATION

Jerry Mead-Lucero of Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization (PERRO) is gathering Pilsen residents to try to fight the project. PERRO has organized several meetings to discuss ways to fight the helipad, and the movement has already scored a few successes—Pilsen Alderman Danny Solis withdrew his support from the project in February. Though he originally supported the project, Solis changed his mind in light of the lack of communication between project coordina-

tourist attraction is coming to a neighborhood that would otherwise never have any visitors,” Heffernan claims. “It’s going to boost business, create jobs, and educate children. Our mission statement is to make helicopter tourism safe, accessible, and affordable. We’ll be offering the lowest price point helicopter tour in the world and making it accessible to everyone.” The price of a thirty-five-minute tour of downtown for a single passenger is $199.

The official company website has a list

A Fresh Milieu The Hyde Park Orthogenic and Day Schools expand their classes

BY KIRAN MISRA

Nothing stands to prevent the heliport project from becoming a reality—except for the widespread disapproval of the neighborhood’s residents. tors and the community.

In a letter issued to City Plan Commission Chairman Martin Cabrera Jr. and Commissioner Andrew Mooney, Solis said: “I have since learned that the developer has failed to meet with key neighborhood groups and has not secured formal support from any community organization.”

The presence of two helicopter hubs in such close proximity to one another has garnered attention from the organization Noise Free America. Ted Rueter, founder of the organization, calls the heliport “a sonic assault on the Pilsen neighborhood.”

His concern centers around the affect that the noise would have on the citizens of the neighborhoods.

“Noise lessens property values,” Rueter argues, “makes it impossible for individuals to peacefully enjoy their own property, and is related to community deterioration.”

On the other side of the argument, Trevor Heffernan, CEO of the Chicago Helicopter Express company, sees his venture as a boon to the community. “A great

of benefits that the endeavor will bring to the community, including “revenue for local businesses, more jobs, and education programs for local schools and churches.”

Several businesses in the area believe the project will help boost local mom-and-pop operations like Connie’s Pizza and the Polo Café.

Despite the complaints of community members, Heffernan insists that the company has focused on “educating the community and providing a way for them to understand facts and put our processes in place and operate without impacting the quality of life of the surrounding community.” When asked about community outrage, Heffernan notes: “Whenever there is something new or something people are not educated on, there is always resistance.”

And yet, in spite of that outrage, the City Council has already approved plans for the heliport. Whether the helipad will be a blight on three neighborhoods or a job-creating tourist attraction, Heffernan’s vision is set to be realized. ¬

“T

he last thing these kids need is perpendicular walls. So our walls have a lot of curves, there’s a real effort on not being rigid,” said Timothy Shannon, chief development officer at the Hyde Park Day School and the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School. The Orthogenic School is entering its hundredth year in Hyde Park as an education facility for children and adolescents with severe emotional disorders.

This year, the two schools will be able to expand their impact from a brand-new campus on 63rd Street and Ingleside Avenue. The plans for the building were student-centered from the start of the process.

Students spoke directly to designers about what they wanted and needed from the new building. The design of the school incorporates twenty-eight meticulously chosen colors to stimulate student engagement without distracting them. Great care was given to choosing everything from textures to tile in order to create a “strong environment of mental health.” The building will be home to both the O-School, as it’s called by the students and staff, and the Hyde Park Day School, both of which are currently located on 60th and Dorchester.

“When the University said we wouldn’t have the building after 2015, that they weren’t planning on renewing our lease, the board had a hard decision to make,” said Shannon. “We thought about our options, whether we should just say, ‘Okay, this has been a good run,’ and close the school down, or whether we should try to move to another building. In the end, the board made a bold decision to custom-build a new campus.” In the five years since that decision, the campaign called upon key benefactors, tapped into historic endow-

ments, and applied for new market funding through their Stand Tall Campaign, resulting in a brand-new 73,000-square-foot architectural triumph on three acres of land.

The two schools share a gym, art room, and multipurpose room in the center of the three-story building, as well as a residential area on the third floor. “We also have a transitional living center for more independent students aged eighteen to twenty,” added Shannon. “Many of them are going to college or will soon go to college and need a strong, supportive place to come back to at the end of the day.”

“We call our program ‘milieu’ treatment because we focus on development both inside and outside of class, building relationships. Usually students have gone through two or three failed educational attempts before they come to our school and they’re desperate and their parents are desperate.”

The Day School was founded in 2000 and educates students age six to fifteen with learning differences like dyslexia and language impairments. “It’s the only school of its type in Chicago,” said Shannon, adding that most students reenter normalized education after a few years at the school, and ninety-five percent of graduates go on to college.

The O-School plans to expand enrollment to ten more students, and the Day School will be able to serve about forty more. This may not sound like a huge expansion, but a small community like this is central to serving those with emotional disorders. “We serve as a pathway to hope,” said Shannon. “I’ve talked with a lot of the students’ parents and they’ve said we have changed their lives and changed their families.” JUNE 4, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

DEVELOPMENT

Without a Paddle A stalled boathouse and the city’s commitment to the South Branch of the river

BY JAKE BITTLE AND RACHEL SCHASTOK

R

ahm Emanuel noted in a 2011 press release that if Lake Michigan was Chicago’s “front yard,” then the Chicago River ought to be treated as the city’s “backyard,” and embraced as its “next recreational frontier.” In the press release, the mayor announced another step in the city’s decades-long attempt to completely revolutionize its riverfront: that is, to transform a vein of water so polluted that it has earned the nickname “Bubbly Creek” into a friendly and accessible destination for city residents. With $1 million in EPA funding, the city would construct four boathouses at various points along the riverbed, split evenly between the South and North Sides.

Two of these boathouses have been assigned to Studio Gang, the architecture firm behind the Aqua building in the Loop and the University of Chicago’s forthcoming Campus North Residence Hall. These two boathouses are the WMS Boathouse at Clark Park on the North Side and the boathouse at 28th and Eleanor Streets, in an area now known as “Park No. 571.” The boathouse at Clark Park was completed in 2013 to rave reviews from the Tribune and other publications; its diagonal design and repetition of “M” and “V” shapes beautifully mimic the motions of rowing. The two boathouses not designed by Studio Gang, at Ping Tom Memorial Park and River Park, are complete and under construction, respectively.

Right now, Park No. 571 is in no condition to receive rave reviews: the site of the fourth and final boathouse is currently a fenced-off lot, overgrown with vegetation and untouched by construction. Until the late 1960s, the patch of land was owned by Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co. (now simply Peoples Gas), and dominated by a natu8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JUNE 4, 2014

ral gas plant that, as one resident, Jack (who declined to give his last name), remembers, shot flames “seventy-five feet into the air.”

Peoples Gas eventually sold the land to the city of Chicago, and since then the “park” has remained empty and undeveloped.

After the announcement of the boathouse project, however, the land was fenced off.

Another resident recalled that people on Eleanor Street used to hang out down by the rocks on the edge of the river—an area known simply as “the rocks”—before it was fenced off completely.

Now, the only inhabitants of the weedfilled land where the boathouse is slated to be built are racks full of canoes labeled “LINCOLN PARK ROWING CLUB,” which some area residents speculate have been moved there because of construction at North Side boat launches.

Five Eleanor Street residents claim they have not heard anything from the city or Studio Gang about the proposed boathouse since the aforementioned 2011 press release. At least two residents had forgotten there was even a boathouse planned for their street.

Despite the increased traffic it would bring to Eleanor Street, most residents say they’re in favor of the boathouse. The area currently sees some traffic from rowing clubs, including teams from Loyola University and a rowing team of breast cancer survivors, who frequently park their cars on Eleanor before launching their boats. But if the Clark Park boathouse is any indication, the construction of the Eleanor boathouse would involve a full parking lot and significant beautification of the Eleanor Street block.

The Chicago Parks District responded to inquiries about the Eleanor boathouse by saying that they are “currently in the

process of fundraising and working with local community groups and the Alderman [James Balcer of the 11th Ward] toward the completion of the fourth boathouse, with a planned location of 32nd [sic] and Eleanor.” Studio Gang has yet to release a plan for the boathouse, and said that interviews regarding the Eleanor site did not align with their current plan for public relations, recommending that we ask again in a few months.

Chicago has managed to revamp the downtown riverfront over the past forty years by building an extensive (and still in-progress) river walk along the water’s edge and erecting new condos along the near North Branch. Accomplishing this much in forty years is impressive, but the Loop was never home to natural gas plants and bubbly creeks; the riverfront restoration project on the South Branch, of which the two South Side boathouses are perhaps the first major component, is a vastly different project. It is not just the area around Eleanor and Ashland that is

courtesy of studio gang

filled with rusting bridges and unkempt spaces, but the whole length of the river’s South Branch, which makes the city’s revitalization a larger project in remodeling an entire part of the city. Some residents of Eleanor Street see the lack of progress on the Bridgeport boathouse as a deliberate slight to the South Side by the city in its riverfront transformation efforts; only time, it seems, will tell if the city follows through on its ambitions of revitalizing both branches of the river.

“They used to cut the grass regularly, with the gas plant, but then [Peoples Gas] sold the land, and now I have to call and gripe and moan to get them to cut the grass,” said Jack, pointing to the overgrown field that is Park No. 571. “We [Bridgeport] got the short end of the stick as far as the river goes. We get stuck with the heliport [for more info, see page 6], they changed flight paths so now the planes going into Midway fly over here, and look at that, no boathouse.” ¬

BOOKS

Piling up the Years A review of Joseph G. Peterson’s Gideon’s Confessions

BY OLIVIA STOVICEK

M

ost people feel aimless or apathetic from time to time, but for the title character of Gideon’s Confessions, stasis is a way of life. Describing himself as “a compass without a magnet”—directionless —he wallows in indecision about his career and his life, enabled by regular checks from a generous uncle.

Though Gideon recounts his story without shame, or even the sense that he ought to be ashamed, it’s clear from the start that he can’t keep this up without consequences.

But Gideon’s Confessions, the fourth book

by Joseph G. Peterson, who lives in Hyde Park, does not seek to criticize its subject, antihero though he may be. Instead, it explores his motivations with nuance, turning a journey through Gideon’s psyche into a powerful meditation on the allure of inaction and the paralyzing effects of choice.

Gideon is defined by this paralysis; his every interaction with others is regulated by the knowledge that he, unlike them, just watches the time go by as he runs errands and gambles and lies in bed. But he is a compelling character because this attitude is not just rooted in a fear of failure, although that’s certainly a contributing factor. Instead, he seems to be held back chiefly by his genuine enjoyment of the world around him. At first, he asks, “What’s the point of piling up all these years?” and comes up empty-handed. But as he continues it becomes clear that life for him is not meaningless, so long as it isn’t joyless.

He’s just disdainful of “the whole concept of working on a treadmill only to end up old and broken with your legs chopped off from diabetes or with a breathing hole poked into your throat.”

This awed pleasure in the world’s details is evident in, among other things, Gideon’s attachment to his surroundings.

Gideon’s Confession, is a book that could happen anywhere. Yet it happens in Chicago: there are visits to Division Street

and Second City, a view from Promontory Point of the leonine sun rising over the lake—even the late-afternoon light that Gideon describes as special to May here is recognizable. Peterson’s evocations of Chicago are undercut by the motif of New York as the place to go, where things are changing and alive. But that tension is essential, because it’s part of Gideon’s understanding of where he lives. To him, details such as the May sun aren’t a backdrop to his comfortable stagnant existence but rather an integral part of it. It can be hard to tell how much of this attachment comes from the pull of the city itself and how much is tied up in simple resistance to change, but he has put his roots down in Chicago, and he has friends and haunts he loves here.

In any case, Gideon’s sharp-eyed attention to those friends underscores his enthrallment with everyday life. As he narrates his own story, the focus is not so much on the details of scene—these Peterson evokes with just a few deft strokes— as on the details of the mind, and thus of character. Gideon shows a sort of captivated interest in the inner lives of his neighbor and sometime gambling buddy Walt, and his bartender-cum-confidant, Vic, if not nearly as much as he does in himself.

He might not be the type to inquire deeply or with much concern, but he’s a great observer, at various points “fascinated by the tragic splendor of it all” and “in love with all of humanity.” In his telling, even minor characters leave their mark, from Horst, the former crewman of the U-boat in the Museum of Science and Industry who gives Gideon a brief summer job at his manhole factory, to the miserly funeral home owner John Boettcher, whose Cro-Magnon-like face and black garb recall the grim reaper.

Delving briefly into these individuals’ stories never comes off as a distraction, for though they may not have any major effect on the plot, they certainly have an effect on Gideon. Each small tale alters our per-

ception of him, filling out the picture in a way that illustrates what kind of person he is—one who’s capable of living devoid of ambition, and how he came to be that way.

They also point to the luxury of his position; few of the people he meets have the ability, economic or otherwise, to choose to do whatever they want. Although some of these asides drag on for a little too long, the overall effect is to make reading the book feel like listening to a well-spun yarn, complete with tangents and rich color.

At the same time, we’re given little reason to question Gideon’s sincerity. He appears to hold nothing back, and he asks for no forgiveness, either. If the book is a confession, the reader serves not so much as a priest as a companion on the next barstool, despite Gideon’s Catholic background and the soft religious undertones that occasionally appear in his language (he talks about wishing to be a disciplined teetotaler, “the true secular saints of this world”). There’s a kind of flirtation with the theme of redemption in the use of this subtle Christian motif, but it never feels central to the story, and Gideon’s friendly rather than penitential style actually allows his tale to feel truer and more intimate, unclouded by judgment or a fear of it.

Gideon’s best foil comes in the form of the book’s other extraordinarily candid character: his girlfriend Claire. Claire is ambitious and decisive, in comparison not just to Gideon, but also to nearly anyone else. Her plans for the future fill three pages. And those plans include Gideon: within a day of meeting him, she tells him that they’ll probably be married. But while Claire is stunningly forthright with Gideon, Gideon saves his deepest openness for us; he tells us things he obviously leaves out in their conversations. His relationship with Claire points to his basic problems with commitment; despite how well they work together, he continues to waver about whether to throw himself into the relation-

gideons confessions

ship emotionally, a problem only exacerbated by Claire’s asking him to join her in New York.

The story could veer off here into the belabored trope of the young man afraid of committing to a relationship. But this test arises from the same fundamental problem that stops Gideon from getting a job, and so instead it reveals the real trouble with his lifestyle. As Gideon lets months and then years pass as he hesitates to devote himself to anything other than getting drunk and spending his uncle’s money, it becomes clear that his refusal to choose hurts both him (despite his occasional assertions otherwise) and the people around him. The careful escalation of his inaction’s collateral damage and the struggle it creates within him are in many ways the book’s emotional core, and they shape it into something beyond a simple tale of indolence.

When something finally changes, the book swiftly concludes. The ending is abrupt, only pages long, and though it’s been set up for longer, it still feels short, a little too short to be entirely convincing.

But that’s a minor lapse, and in a way it feels appropriate. Gideon has been frozen in time as the people around him change and grow; anything capable of overcoming that inertia must necessarily come as a sort of snap, or jolt. Joseph G. Peterson, Gideon’s Confessions.

Switchgrass Books. 130 pages.

JUNE 4, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

JUNCTURES

64th & Cottage Grove A tale of two buildings

BY RACHEL SCHASTOK

J

ust a block south of the 63rd and Cottage Grove Green Line, on the northeast corner of the intersection, sits a squat two-story building. Its facade of light stone is punctuated by decorative maroon bricks and sets of three arched windows framed with golden wood. Though not imposing, the building quietly calls attention to itself with its combination of textures and mesmerizing repetition of small shapes. It begs the viewer to stand and consider it, or perhaps to run a hand over the curls of the putti in its carved stone molding.

This is the Grand Ballroom, previously known as the Frank Loeffler Building.

In November 1923, Loeffler purchased the lot’s previous building, a double storefront with tenements in the rear, from the notoriously corrupt former-mayor William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson for $150,000.

Loeffler had that building demolished and constructed the Frank Loeffler Building, the two-story Renaissance Revival structure that remains there. Its current occupants include JB One, a carry-out restaurant; Teazze Salon; and the office of 20th Ward Alderman Willie Cochran.

In the Jazz Age years after it was built, the Loeffler Building was neighbored by the 3,200-seat Tivoli Theatre movie palace and the seven-story Pershing Hotel.

The Loeffler, in its heyday, was home to the largest beauty parlor in Chicago and the Chinese-owned Cinderella Cafe, a thousand-seat space whose central feature was an enormous crystal slipper suspended from the ceiling above the dance floor.

As Chicago’s Black Belt expanded in the 1940s, white residents moved out of this pocket of Woodlawn, and its hotels and ballrooms began their second lives as hubs of the South Side’s African-American 10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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jazz and social scenes. The Loeffler Building became known as the Grand Ballroom, and hosted lavish pageants, dances, and fundraisers for sit-in protests. The Pershing Hotel became black-owned in 1943, and would go on to host countless artists, including Earl Hines, Ahmad Jamal, and Charlie Parker, in its ballroom through the 1950s and 1960s.

Before that, however, the Pershing was the site of a bitter conflict over issues of housing and segregation during World War II. The U.S. Army had planned for a number of redistribution centers for returning overseas veterans. Under this program, dozens of hotels and other buildings across the country were vacated in order to provide temporary housing for soldiers returning from abroad. The soldiers were to be given the opportunity to rest for a few weeks, sometimes in the company of their wives, before returning to combat.

African-American community leaders denounced the plans to seize the Pershing on several grounds. In October 1944, the Chicago Defender reported that the Army intended to keep the centers segregated, which community leaders decried as a Jim Crow program that would almost certainly lead to inferior care and amenities for African-American veterans. Some objected to the repurposing of the Pershing at all, in light of “a critical civilian housing need” that the building met as a residential hotel. This concern highlights the hardship of housing scarcity that plagued the city’s African-American community in the era when racially restrictive covenants still limited the areas in which they could live.

An all-star delegation of leaders— Walter White, secretary of the NAACP; Channing Tobias, secretary of Negro work for the YMCA; and Mary McLeod

fire insurance map

Bethune, president of the National Council of Negro Women—expressed their opposition in an in-person meeting with President Roosevelt. While the Army did initially seize the hotel, they soon abandoned the plan, and the African-American troops left after a single month. The local community celebrated this change of plans as a victory over Jim Crow.

By the mid-1960s, the Pershing had undergone countless changes in ownership (writer Lorraine Hansberry and her family owned it briefly in the early 1960s) and was falling into disrepair. In 1974, the Defender called it “an eyesore in the Woodlawn community.” The Pershing Hotel was demolished in the 1980s and remains an overgrown vacant lot. The Tivoli Theatre closed in the mid-1960s and a Family Dollar store now occupies the site.

The Grand Ballroom is now the lone indication of 64th and Cottage Grove’s Jazz

Age history. It has seen the fortunes of the neighborhood rise and fall around it, and its own fortunes experienced an upturn in 2003, when developer Andy Schcolnik acquired the building. He began a restoration project in partnership with now-defunct ShoreBank, a community-development bank established in the 1970s to fight racist redlining practices on the South Side. The Ballroom is now fully restored and open as a concert hall and private event space, according to its website. Comparing the fates of the Pershing and the Grand Ballroom is a reminder of the fragile contingencies of historical preservation. While we might like to think otherwise, the distance between pristine restoration and the wrecking ball is often nothing more than a question of which gets there first. ¬

FAITH

To Purchase the Heart A South Side mosque offers charitable services, faith attached

BY MAHA AHMED

M

asjid Al Farooq, located in Calumet Heights at the intersection of 89th Street and Stony Island Avenue, considers itself one of the main Islamic centers on the South Side.

The closest place of Islamic prayer that isn’t in a storefront or house is Masjid AlFaatir, located about forty blocks away at 47th and Woodlawn. But Al Farooq was not always such a formidable establishment: it began as a group of men praying in the basement of a house, until a Malian immigrant named Ousmane Drame moved to Chicago and became their, imam.

Drame moved to Chicago and joined the congregation in 2002, back when it was an ethnically homogenous group of West African men. In the twelve years since the mosque’s inception, he has traveled with it from 75th to 71st to 89th Streets, and outside of it from city to city and state to state to raise funds to buy the property that is currently Masjid Al Farooq. “I drove personally from here to Miami when collecting money for this place. It’s almost sixty hours of driving,” Drame explained with pride.

Today, the mosque is incredibly ethnically diverse—rare in an extremely culture-oriented faith like Islam, as evidenced by the dimly-lit prayer room that ropes men and women off from one another. Pakistani men laugh and converse with West African immigrants—both parties’ mother tongues peek through their English. Around them, African-American and Middle Eastern congregation members perform du’a, a personal communication with Allah. Drame himself stands at the front of the congregation, his short

frame full of faithful conviction, speaking in broken English to a member inquiring about prayer times.

The cost of the property was roughly one-million dollars, according to Drame, but only a tenth of that money had its origins on the South Side. The majority of it came from connections the imam built on his drive across the country, and it was all contributed for zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, which mandates a donation of 2.5 percent of one’s wealth (if they are above the poverty line) to their local Masjid (synonymous with the term “mosque”) with the aim of helping the poor and “those whose hearts are inclined toward Islam,” in Al Farooq’s case. In fact, almost all of Al Farooq’s community-oriented programs are sustained by the zakat from not only congregation members, but also residents of the South Side at large.

These programs include the transformation of the mosque into a food pantry every Friday, a counseling program for mental and physical health concerns, a “matrimonial service,” and a “halfway house for the needy”—though all of these largely beneficial resources either aimed at or were originally intended for the purpose of da’wah, the proselytization of Islam.

While Imam Drame says that their “door is open for everyone,” Al Farooq’s website calls this food a “means to purchase the heart of those inquiring about Islam and becoming Muslim.” The matrimonial service focuses on finding suitable spouses for female members of the congregation based on “compatibility as it relates to religion.” Even the application process for the needy housing program,

maha ahmed

which Drame explains as “five houses owned by the mosque used for the purpose of housing those who happened to be kicked out of their houses,” favors those who want to become Muslim but don’t want to be tempted by the wrong things.

In short, the mosque offers its services to anyone who desires them, fostering a community that is racially and socioeconomically diverse but largely religiously uniform.

The mosque also offers a janazah (Arabic for “funeral”) funding program.

“Ninety percent of the people around here have no life insurance,” recounts Drame.

“I’ve seen somebody left with a dead family member for three weeks before we come up with the necessary funds to do the janazah. Now the brothers are required to pay ten dollars, and sisters [are required to pay] five dollars. So we keep the money aside and if a death happens, we just take the money and pay the funeral expenses.” The program benefits those who aren’t a part of the congregation in the greater South Side areas with funeral expenses as well.

In addition to these community-oriented programs, Al Farooq tries to serve the youth of the area through weekend Islamic studies classes and a Hifz program, which helps children memorize verses of the Qur’an. Drame revealed that the mosque is working on creating a new youth center as well. “If you look at it, Muslim kids on the South Side, they

don’t have a center if they want to play basketball or something,” one congregation member says. “They have to go somewhere where the area is not conducive to them. It doesn’t help their faith.”

Currently, Al Farooq’s youth academy teaches 120 children, ages five to seventeen, about Islam with the help of only eight volunteer teachers. The mosque’s board, comprised of two women and fifteen men, including Imam Drame, created this academy in order to combat the lack of resources available for South Side Muslim youth. “Of course we have [an Arabic] program in the suburbs and elsewhere, but it’s so expensive.” Drame notes. “You have to pay six to seven hundred dollars per child a month and people that are living here, they are low-income families…that’s an obstacle. And besides that, there’s a bitter but true racism. The kids from the South Side have a hard time being admitted into those boarding schools. Any time I take a child there they will give me lots of reasons, but later on I find out that they just have a problem admitting a kid from here because of stereotyping.”

Though Masjid Al Farooq’s inclusivity extends beyond race and culture to offer resources to people of systematically neglected socioeconomic backgrounds, at the end of the day it is still a religious institution. ¬

JUNE 4, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

Sampling the Wind

WindChill showcases Chicago’s instrumental hip-hop scene

BY ZACH GOLDHAMMER

T

he past three years have seen a massive resurgence of interest in the Chicago hip-hop scene. The reasons for this sea change have been repeated ad nauseam in hip-hop blog posts, documentaries, and op-eds. But regardless of whether these chronicles focus on the nihilistic violence of Chief Keef and the drill scene or the label-defying charisma of Chance the Rapper and the SaveMoney affiliates, the perspective is almost always focused on the rappers and not the team of artists supporting them. In particular, Chicago’s innovative hip-hop producers have been almost entirely written out of the narrative.

Ben Niespodziany, a journalist who writes under the name Neonpajamas for the hip-hop blog MishkaNYC, hopes to correct this oversight. On May 27, the day of his twenty-fifth birthday, Niespodziany released <Windchill: A Chicago Instrumental Experience>, a project which collects eighteen previously unreleased instrumental tracks from some of Chicago’s most influential producers. The tracklist includes contributions from Windy City-born heavy-hitters like Thelonious Martin , a nationally-known rapper who has produced projects for Curren$y and others, the local collectives THEMpeople, who recorded Chance’s first mixtape in Pilsen, and OnGaud, known for its collaboration with Mick Jenkins, Chicago’s unofficial poet laureate.

Niespodziany met many of these producers through his work as a Chicago-based music journalist. Though Niespodziany was born in northern Indiana, he decided to move to Chicago to chronicle the city’s exploding music scene. His early interviews with Thelonious Martin and the rapper/producer Tree—who also appears on the <WindChill> project—helped Niespodziany develop connections with many of the city’s vanguard hip-hop artists.

After spending his college years listening to a steady rotation of beat tapes from vanguard producers like Blockhead and Wax Tailor, Niespodziany became passionate about the instrumental side of hip-hop. Yet he found that not all of his favorite Chicago producers were particularly eager to be interviewed. “They are so focused on the art, that as soon as they finish one project they just move right on to the next,” he says of 12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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THEMpeople. ”They’ll have me over to their place to listen to music but the actual process of sitting down and doing anything that’s not directly related to the music is just not in their head. It’s just about the music for them.”

A collective like THEMpeople, which is run by just four producers—without publicity or management--can have a difficult time becoming well-known. But Niespodziany says THEMpeoplethey have managed to become “the most well-received underground group in the city” strictly through word-of-mouth, and have released what he considers one of the best projects of the year with their latest mixtape, Smoke Breaks IV. In order to attract more attention to these groundbreaking artists, Niespodziany began soliciting instrumental tracks from many of the artists he interviewed. While THEMpeople was the first group he contacted when he began planning the mixtape in March, they didn’t sign onto the project until late May, just days before the release, when they saw that the lineup for the tape included names like Tree, Thelonious Martin, Martin $ky, and OnGaud.

Niespodziany spent months organizing the submissions and revising the track listing.

Part of the challenge came from the wide range of styles presented on the tape.

“With Doc da Mindbenda, Thelonious Martin, even Tree, there is a little bit more of traditional style in the sense that they’re more focused on finding old samples and have more breezy, summertime sound in their production,” he says. On the other end of the spectrum, Niespodziany recruited producers like Boathouse and Hippie Dream, who he says, ” have more of like a cloud rap, slowed-down West Coast style, almost like Clams Casino.”

Niespodziany tried to bridge these two worlds by using songs like OnGaud’s “Whooo”—a track which pairs heavily swung drums with a modulating, pitch-shifted vocal sample—to create what he calls the sense of “speeding through traffic,” and transition from “the traditional barbeque song into the more up-inthe-clouds tracks.”

In addition to contacting local producers, Niespodziany also tried to showcase the works of local visual artists on the album’s multiple covers. Though he initially sought out Hebru Brantley, the artist responsible for Fake Shore Drive’s concert posters, he even-

stephen urchick

tually gave up when he found out that Brantley had been commissioned to work for Lebron James. Instead, he sought out three other illustrators.The main cover—which shows a stylized Chicago chicken shack storefront— may look familiar to fans of SaveMoney. The artist, Nico Washington, has designed album art for several SaveMoney releases, including projects by Leather Corduroys and Dally Auston. Niespodziany also recruited two more illustrators: Gold Status—the brother of WindChill producer Smoko Ono—and Logic, a frequent THEMpeople collaborator.

Just five days after its release, the project has already received positive mentions from some of Niespodziany’s favorite blogs, including Fake Shore Drive and Mass Appeal, as well as a few unexpected European sites.

Niespodziany, who is now also a contributor for other music review sites like Pigeons & Planes, Potholes in my Blog, OG Matress, and Viper Magazine, hopes to expand the

WindChill project into a trilogy, with collections of tracks by national and international hip-hop producers included in subsequent tapes.

For now, this vision seems to be restrained only by Niespodziany’s budget, which is effectively nonexistent. Niespodziany, who supports himself primarily through part-time employment as a social worker and as circulation desk assistant at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library, is charging no money for his releases and has paid nothing for the submissions he’s received.

But Niespodziany wants to emphasize that the project isn’t about him—it’s about the artists. “Respect the producers, man. I think beat tapes and instrumental projects are so cool,” he says. “If they didn’t exist, it would just be spoken word for a lot of rappers.

If there was no backdrop, it just wouldn’t be music.At the end of the day, I think they need more love.” ¬

MUSIC

Editor’s Annotated Track Picks from WindChill Thelonious Martin - “HayZeus/Marilla”

Here, Thelonious Martin proves that its no accident that he’s become one of the most highly-regarded and well-recognized producers currently working in Chicago. On the first half of track, Martin shows off his technical mastery of low-frequency soundscapes, chopping up a heavily compressed slap bass into a unique groove. On the high end, Martin sprinkles in some chimes and a lightly spaced-out synth line. The beat sounds like what you would imagine Larry Graham and Sun Ra making if they were assigned to re-write the theme song for Miami Vice. After about a minute, the beat fades into static and transitions to what sounds like a radio dialing into a radio broadcast of a Brazilian singer-songwriter (possibly Caetano Veloso), strumming a bossa nova-tinged acoustic guitar. The spare acoustic guitar track transforms once Martin throws in some subtle bounce with a muted sub bass kick and a few light snare hits. It’s probably the most delicate moment on the record and lasts just a few fleeting moments before the tuner turns once again and the track fades back into radio static.

THEMpeople - “SUPERDOVA”

“SUPERDOVA” is a good introduction to THEMpeople’s sound.

. Though the funky brass blast that forms the main melody on the beat wouldn’t sound out of place on a classic nineties boom-bap track, thedrums are clearly unique. . After throwing in some of the collectives’ signature vocal drops, the beat scientists introduce a digitally slightly distorted percussive assault, which they manage to sneak in through slowly modulating low-pass filter at the beginning of the track. After about a minute and half, the frenetic drumrolls phase out and are briefly replaced low-end kicks that fall more squarely in the pocket. The horns, likewise, are gradually replaced by eight-bit computerized soundscapes and a grungy guitar line, before ultimately dissolving into digital dust. So if you didn’t already, now you know: THEMpeople ain’t playing.

Martin $ky – “Chordz”

Maybe the strongest and most straightforward track on the tape is Martin $ky’s thick-as-brick song “Chordz.” As the title suggests, the power of the track is mainly built around an insanely catchy chord progression, yet the chords themselves wouldn’t attract much attention if they weren’t being articulated through an impossibly fat synth sound. The sound only becomes more gorgeous once $ky cuts the plodding drum track and throws in an

arpeggiated synth line over the titular chords. There is nothing particularly complex about the track, but a sound as big as this is hard to ignore.

Tree - “Spaghetti”

Despite being the lead-off track on the project, Tree’s “Spaghetti” sounds like nothing else you’ll hear on this release. It’s also a tall order to flip a sample that’s already been immortalized by one of the greatest hip-hop producers of all time. Nonetheless, Tree goes ahead and does just that by sampling Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s “I Put A Spell On You,” a song which most hip-hop fans recognize from the menacing stomp in the backdrop of the DJ Premier produced, Notorious B.I.G. anthem, “Kick in the Door.

Tree’s transformation of the tune is entirely unique. The rapper/ producer throws in his signature “soul-trap” hi-hats at odd intervals throughout the track, while Screamin’ Jay’s shrieks and hollers for revenge. Meanwhile, the producer strips away all the hi-fi bass stomp that appears on Premo’s rendition and instead creates a chaotic, stuttering sound clash which dances at the edge of falling completely apart, but somehow works in the end. ¬

JUNE 4, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

MUSIC

WHPK Veteran: Pugs Atomz The rap format DJ talks CTA Radio, freestyling, and hip-hop history

BY MARK HASSENFRATZ sterling price

A

s the son of WVON DJ Vincent Price, Sterling Price—aka Pugs Atomz—was exposed to the business side of radio at an early age, but his path back to the on-air control board followed a circuitous route.

As a student at Kenwood Academy, he became interested in graffiti and rap. In 1993, he formed the Nacrobats crew, a massive hip-hop collective which now has over ninety members. Later, while studying painting and video production at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Atomz helped form the Chicago hip-hop label Birthwrite Records, which would release the debut album of fellow Englewood resident Psalm One. It was Atomz’s desire to showcase his music and the music of those he cared about that eventually led him back to the airwaves. Along with his co-hosts, Thaione Davis and KMax, Atomz started broadcasting the CTA Radio show on WHPK in 2000. Fourteen years later, Atomz continues to broadcasts his three-hour radio show every Wednesday night at nine.

How did you first start DJing at WHPK? In terms of DJing, I got started by working with Schur Marketing. I used to deliver records to the different DJs, and over the course of that, they asked, “Do you rap?” And they would let me on the air sometimes to freestyle.

In terms of getting involved with HPK, that was my friend Reyna. She brought me and three of my friends up to HPK for the Saturday night show. It was on one of those random nights where we were all hanging out, and we’re like, “Yo, it’d be nice to get on the radio and freestyle.” And she was like, “Oh, I know the DJ.” She made the call and brought us in.

We were all excited. For us and our work and our world, it was our first big look, because we’re on the radio now.

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We rapped over this song from Bahamadia, “True Honey Buns.” Flawless. Four dudes, each person came in and out, all improvised. And we were like, “Ah, we’ve made it now.” So between that and doing the marketing I got really acquainted with HPK. How did CTA Radio get started?

It was started because the guys on Wednesday night—which included this guy Natural who became the DJ for Typical Cats [a hip-hop group that first formed at WHPK]—they were graduating, and were moving back to New York.

Somebody needed to take over the show, and they were like, “Would you like to do it?” At that point in time I didn’t really think about doing a radio show, I didn’t even have experience in working the

boards or anything.

At the same time, I was becoming cool with this guy Thaione Davis, and he was making mixtapes and we both were starting to rap together with the Nacrobats.

From there, I was just kind of like, “Well this is an opportunity. Hey, Thai, I know you know how to do this, why don’t we do this together?” Thaione is one of those people where if he’s a part of anything, he goes a hundred percent.

So we go, and then when I get to the show, I find there’s somebody else that’s gonna compete with us for this spot on Wednesday night: KMax. He was our competition, but in the same breath, him and KMax were friends. I just wanted it; I don’t really want to have to fight for it, argue about it. So I said, “We should all just do it together.” I just didn’t want to lose the show. It was a great opportunity to play music.

At the time, I didn’t really understand the task at hand. It sounds easy in a way: three hours; you play what you want to play. But in the grand scheme, after the first three or four shows, I was like, “I need more variety of music, and also just to listen to more music.” It really broadened my spectrum, and to a point I really felt it made me listen to rap in a deeper way. Seeing how these things go together. Hearing how certain tempos and references from one record will translate well into the next one being played. I began to feel more how my pops and his friends felt listening to jazz.

WHPK is an all-volunteer station.

How do you make it work volunteering?

Why do you volunteer?

To me, that’s the cool part about it. Because it’s volunteer, you have more freedom to do it how you see fit. Me and Cos and KMax and Thaione, we all used to work for [WPWX] Power 92 in marketing. At a point, I was like, “I should be a radio DJ on here,” and my dad was a commercial radio DJ, and he would always tell me, “You don’t want that job.”

And the more we were working there, I realized it would be cool, but I wouldn’t be able to play the music that I like. And a sense of doing it for the love, you’re more cautious in a way, but you’re also more loose. The way I used to describe our show was that anybody has a chance to come on our show and play their stuff, you just have to meet certain criteria to get to that chance now.

At HPK, so many famous musicians have been through those doors. It’s amazing to think that this is a volunteer station as opposed to a place that’s built-up and super nice. It’s a place that is like college radio stations, half run by the university, half run by [pledges]. And to have everyone from a Kanye West down to get their music heard here...all those key people in rap music now have been through those doors, and that sense of history and necessity. HPK is the first place to ever play rap in Chicago; it’s the foundation. To me, that was a duty. I want to keep that thing going. ¬

How to Fish A Muslim-led effort to uplift the Southwest Side

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BY MAIRA KHWAJA

he Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), founded in 1995, works in a modest office building on the corner of 63rd and California. Though Muslim-led, the organization works with groups across the Southwest Side to effect social change through a variety of anti-violence and youth-outreach programs, including the annual Takin’ It to the Streets festival. At IMAN’s office, I’m welcomed by a woman wearing a hijab. The man sitting at the front desk asks me to sign in on top of a stack of Arabic newspapers. I sit down with Shamar Hemphill, youth director of IMAN, and three members of the youth council: Raynele Allen Dees, Joshua “Zeus” McClain, and Darren Harun McGraw, who’s also on the organization’s board.

We discussed how IMAN approaches youth organizing to prevent violence on the Southwest Side.

Does IMAN’s Muslim affiliation make it unique?

Shamar: A unique aspect of it is that yes, we are Muslim-led, but our leaders, our base, are not all Muslims. We partner with St. Rita [a church next door]. For instance, there was a shooting literally right here on Fairfield, on Joshua’s block, and right in front of St. Rita we all did our Friday congregational prayers together. It just happened to be Good Friday, so the Catholics were out and had their processions, and there’s an Ethiopian synagogue and the Muslims made their jumma [Friday prayer] all in their same space. We gathered funding for the family—for the funeral—in that community.

I think that the fact that the Catholic priest can come here and say “salaam alaykum,” or that at a Muslim-led organization a young Latina, Catholic woman sits on the board and brings her friends, shows that we provide that type of [interfaith] space. You know, with our youth council, we have six Muslims, about four Christians, and about two Catholics.

Raynele and Zeus aren’t even Muslim. Y’all don’t even think about it when y’all come in this space.

Zeus: I feel like when I come here, everybody just treats me with respect. I don’t get pushed for not being a certain type of religion. And it’s a safe place away from the streets. It’s like a second home away from home, basically.

Tell me about your organizing efforts.

Shamar: 2007 was when we officially standardized our youth department, and we knew we wanted a functional department. So we did a needs assessment. The original youth council went around ten to twelve blocks

asking what’s literally taking place. They surveyed around three hundred to four hundred young people. The usual stuff: teen pregnancy, no jobs, violence...We wanted to have an asset-based approach, and we didn’t want to create youth programming that was [based on] what we wanted them to be, but [instead wanted to find out] what it is they already possess, and is already innate, and we wanted to design based on that.

We started to think about how to insert young people and insert them into our programming.

They don’t come into our doors as organizers!

It really started out that first year with these pop-ed forums called “Each One Teach One” that they still do to this day. It happens pretty much monthly, with twenty-five to thirty youth coming together around a specific topic.

The youth council leads it and the great thing is there’s not many spaces where it’s young people learning from each other. Without it, in typical organizing forums...there’s a certain structure, and the roles are already kind of written out. But this is more like knowledge-based sharing and relationship building.

I’m an organizer, and I believe that we should teach young people how to fish.

FAITH “Wow, okay, the father that gets deported or the black father that gets targeted and locked up...they’re in the same boat.”

Which of your programs do you see as most effective in preventing youth violence?

Shamar: I see two things. The popular education space [Each One Teach One] is where young people can be safe in their learning.

They can build relationships they otherwise normally could not build because of the warlike symptoms of the neighborhood.

Digital Media Masters [a career development initiative] is that level of political consciousness that is being raised while you’re researching blogs and learning how to write. We have to provide these supplemental education spaces, separate from attacking the gun folks.

For Digital Media Masters, we have a whole computer lab set up across from our youth center to focus on media literacy. And that’s really focused on thinking about not only how to utilize media, but also creating a different narrative on how to report news and how to think about news in your community outside of the typical news that’s shown every day.

And also we want to make this a media hub on the Southwest Side, and expose [youth] to venues toward the tech industry.

Harun: Muslim Run is [also] one. We try to work with corner stores and basically up the standards of food quality in the stores. I feel like that helps out a lot with anti-violence, because I feel like the stores become an epicenter of drug activity, gang activity, prostitution.

This is where people hang at all the time, so it’s not just what’s going on inside. It’s also outside.

Shamar: Harun is one of the youth council who’s leading that aspect of the campaign.

The idea of the campaign is that they sign a two-year aspirational document that really states that they’ll be a part of working toward a healthier avenue and treating the customers with dignity. The statement’s intent is basically, for example, Zeus can go into a store and say, “Hey, how you doin?’ ” and he can be called by his first name and not looked at as being suspicious.

Harun: The thing is, either you change your community or someone will change it for you. And that’s when gentrification happens.

And so you know that’s coming…with Whole Foods, you know. That’s why we’re working with these corner stores. And they know, they realize, it’s easy to sink or swim. And so we’re using that as our bargaining chip to reform their stores. ¬

We work from a grassroots human-rights framework. It’s another way to think about violence on the South and West Sides. A lot of times communities are being pitted against each other through laws, and through this idea of “they, them,” and it’s important to understand that, for example, immigration is not a Latino thing. It’s a human rights violation, a human rights issue.

Criminal justice is not a black thing, it’s a human rights issue, and [if] young Arabs can think about immigration in relation to criminal justice, then the Latinos can think,

JUNE 4, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

HOUSING

A Palace on South Louie The origin story of Charlie Gu’s majestic Chinatown home

BY ZACH GOLDHAMMER AND RACHEL SCHASTOK zach goldhammer

C

hinatown’s South Louie Parkway—just one block long, located squarely between Ping Tom Memorial Park and the Chinatown Square shopping district—is, for the most part, a quiet residential street.

The rows of plain brick homes, built by the Richland Realty Group in 2002 as affordable housing for workers and recent immigrants, sit at the lot lines of the narrow road, lending it the feel of a suburban alley.

Among these houses, there is only one that attracts attention, what with the tangles of ivy that cover its white stone facade and cascade down its balconies and spiral staircases. Several chubby putti overlook the house’s regal gate, guarding the garden of Chinese trumpet f lowers, tree peonies, and wisteria, while gilded dragons adorn the home’s large upper-story windows.

The house is a labor of love created by first-generation immigrant and mortgage-broker Charlie Gu, who, along with his wife Sandy, has dedicated years to crafting his ideal home. To some, the house—which includes a personal home theater, an “Arabian-style” master bedroom, a ping-pong room, and 16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JUNE 4, 2014

a tiny kitchen hidden behind a mirrored glass wall—may seem excessive and opulent. But if you spend any time talking to Gu, it becomes clear that that the home’s grandeur is born in large part from a keen sense of thrift.

The art on the walls alternates between lush oil paintings of American forests and European-style impressionistic water scenes, and was all purchased on the cheap from HomeGoods, a T.J. Maxx subsidiary—with the exception of several Chinese-style silk paintings, whose price Gu cites as $1.50 a piece in China. The dark red drapery lining the walls of the master bedroom is, he reveals, no more than repurposed tablecloths from Target.

Other aspects of the house are designed with function in mind, but form is not forgotten. The clandestine kitchen, where Gu often finds himself cooking for guests, is hidden away behind mirrors due to his preference for Chinese stir-fry. The dish, he says, creates too much smoke to cook comfortably in the presence of visitors.

There’s no denying that a large part of the home’s design is purely aesthetic. Gu says that his eye for detail and

design developed from his early interest in art. “When I was in China” he says, “before I went to college, I [was] painting every day, dreaming of being an artist. But in China, at that time, too many people were waiting to go to art school. They took probably one in one hundred people. It was so hard to be an art student then because China has too many people. So I changed my major to finance when I went to college.”

After finishing his studies in China, Gu moved the U.S. with the dream of designing his own home. He wanted a space larger than the 1,000-squarefoot condo he grew up in in Beijing, one where he would have the opportunity to exercise his own aesthetic preferences. After first moving to Los Angeles, a city he disliked due to the heat, Gu decided to move to Chicago. He bought a sixty-four dollar Greyhound bus ticket and embarked on the forty-eight-hour journey.

Though he wanted to live in Chinatown to be close to familiar culture and food, he was initially unable to afford living there. He instead moved to the more affordable, nearby Bridgeport.

While living there, he worked a num-

ber of odd jobs, including making fake jewelry, before eventually breaking into the mortgage business. Though he was grateful for the work, the entry-level job didn’t pay much. Still, Gu was not dissuaded.

His big break came through a connection he made while he was working in the mortgage department at the Richland Group. The development group, which has worked in Chinatown since the late 1980s, was completing construction on the Santa Fe Gardens, a development of affordable single-family houses on what was then vacant land owned by the Santa Fe Railway. Gu was looking to move to Chinatown—but he wanted his house to be constructed according to his own design.

“The builder is a friend of mine, so I said I would just change the design a little bit,” Gu says. “But actually I changed the blueprint f loor by f loor: windows, doors, the height, everything.” Gu gathered materials on the cheap from China, and this cost-cutting strategy wound up inf luencing the style of the house.

“In China, they like the European style: more glamour, you know. America, now, likes more country style—wood

color, a more natural look,” Gu explains.

“But the Chinese really like the European royal style, with lots of gold plating and stuff like that. So I purchased gold moldings, marble, and so on.”

Now the president of his own company, Leading Mortgage (located in Schaumburg), Gu still has a sense of humor about the humble origins of many of his materials. He’s quick to point out which items he purchased at discount stores or constructed himself. Far from cheapening his work, these more modest pieces serve to show how skilled Gu is as a designer; with the deliberate placement of each object—and the anchoring effect of a few showcase items like Chinese-imported crystal chandeliers and Victorian-style couches—Gu is able to create a sense of pristine luxury by context.

The house has been mistaken for a temple, an easy mistake given the gilded dragons and carefully arranged f lowers.

“One time I was doing decoration in the back,” Gu says, “and a man comes up to me and says, ‘Is this a place of worship?’

I asked him, ‘What do you mean?’ Be-

cause this is a new word for me: worship.

He was surprised that I didn’t know the word. Then he explained, ‘Worship...it is the place to please God.’ I said, ‘Oh, now I understand! But no, this is a place to please myself.’ ” As we speak, several family groups pass by the home. Some stop and gawk, others take pictures.

“Sometimes people are curious about who lives here,” he says. “So I tell them, ‘Seriously, Tom Cruise lives here.’ And they go ‘Really!?’ A lot of times people think this is a restaurant, and ask, ‘Why is this restaurant never open?’ ” Yet Gu says that few people ever ask about the house’s story.

“The Chicago Tribune, a few years ago I think, came by and took pictures, but they said, ‘Hey, these are amazing condos!’ They didn’t think it could just be a single family home.

“Nobody knows the story of the house—except for my neighbors—because no one ever asks to come inside,” Gu adds. “They only see the outside.” ¬

JUNE 4, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JUNE 4, 2014

SUMMER GUIDE

FESTIVALS Saint Anthony Hospital Summe Fest

Summer’s a time for carnivals, barbecues, and—according to Saint Anthony Hospital—complimentary immunizations. On Saturday, June 7, St. Anthony will host an afternoon-long Summer Fest on their campus grounds in North Lawndale. Open to the public, they’ll pair dental screenings with DJs, free food with free physicals, family-friendly entertainment with family health education. The hospital promises to supplement the traditional festive docket of music, dancers, and carnival games with wellness workshops, preventative-care tips, and back-to-school check-ups. They’ll also conduct a Cutest Kid Contest and a community-wide car and bike show. Get fit and have fun. Saint Anthony Hospital Summer Fest, 2875 W. 19th St. Saturday, June 7, 11am-4pm. (773)484-4386. sahchicago. org (Stephen Urchick)

Version Festival 14

Urban Operating System. That was last year’s Version Fest theme, and catchy and hip as it is, it captures perfectly what the Public Media Institute aims to do again with this June’s Version Festival 14: The Placemakers. By bringing together gardeners, urbanists, artists, and activists, this annual Bridgeport festival celebrates and promotes the use of underutilized public spaces for cultural happenings and creative expression. Embark on a nine-day journey through minimarkets, music showcases, artist warehouses, and streetscaping projects. Help these placemakers transform Chicago neighborhoods’ cultural ecology, promote economic prosperity, and build a better urban society while preserving and respecting the stories of these rejuvenated spaces. Various locations in Bridgeport. June 21-29. versionfest.org (Maha Ahmed)

Chicago Gospel Music Festival

This June, good shepherds will drive their flocks in droves to two Chicago locations for the city’s annual Gospel Music Festival. Preview events for the main festival will happen at the Chicago Cultural Center in the Loop, but the main fest comes to Ellis Park, at 35th and Cottage Grove, for two days of its three-day run. Stars include Tye Tribbett, VaShawn Mitchell, and Tasha Cobbs, as well as the McDonald’s Inspiration Celebration Gospel Tour, featuring Kurt Carr, the Mississippi

Mass Choir, Anthony Brown & group therAPy, Uncle Reece, and Moses Tyson Jr. The festival will also include a tour of Bronzeville, an arts and crafts sale, and a kids activity area. Better yet, the entire fest is free. No alms required.

Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., and Ellis Park, 37th St. and Cottage Grove Ave. June 27, 11am-3:30pm; June 28-29, 11am-10pm. cityofchicago. org (Jack Nuelle)

W. Cermak Rd., between Morgan St. and Ashland Ave. July 31-August 3. fiestadelsol.org (Lucia Ahrensdorf)

Taylor Street Festa Italiana

This July, the DuSable Museum celebrates African-American culture, identity, and history in its fortieth annual Arts & Crafts Festival, offering you a chance to immerse yourself in a collision of traditional and experimental fine arts, performances, crafts, student art, quilting, food, and vendors. Past years have featured spoken word, jazz vocalists, and West Indian folk dances. This year promises to raise the bar as the festival enters its fourth decade.

DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Pl. July 12-13.

(773)947-0600. dusablemuseum.org (Maha Ahmed)

Have you ever wanted to play the wine snob, listening to Andrea Bocelli while having deep discussions about fruitiness? Have you ever wanted to squish grapes with your toes while jamming to Bon Jovi? If any of this appeals to you, then the Taylor Street Festa Italiana is a must. A true festival for the palette, the Festa Italiana will provide for any and all cravings: pasta, pastries, antipasto, wine—and meatballs. If you’ve ever secretly wanted to know how many meatballs you can eat in one sitting, then don’t miss the meatball-eating contest.

If you’re hungry for good music, the festival will provide that too. Tribute bands will be covering well-known Italian favorites. The festival will also offer children’s entertainment and cultural activities. Taylor St. at Ashland Ave. August 14-15, 5pm-11pm; August 16, noon-11pm; August 17, noon-10pm.

Suggested $5 donation. starevents.com/ festivals/festa-italiana (Lucia Ahrensdorf)

Chinatown Summer Fair

Festival de la Villita

DuSable Arts & Crafts Festival

Experience one of the largest cultural festivals in the Midwest at the Chinatown Summer Fair, a one-day outdoor extravaganza that attracts more than 40,000 people annually. Ride a pony, pet a goat, listen to live music, or watch a traditional lion dance while nibbling on food from one of Chinatown’s many restaurants. You can even bring your baby, or someone else’s, or yourself, to participate in the cutest baby contest.

Come witness the mixing of old and new, of Far East and Midwest, as the iconic festival celebrates its thirty-sixth year. Wentworth Ave. from Cermak Rd. to 24th Pl. Sunday, July 20, 10am-8pm. chicagochinatown.com (Maha Ahmed)

Fiesta del Sol

Fittingly named after the sun, this grand outdoor event—which claims to be the largest festival in the Midwest— spans four days and celebrates Latino culture and community of the past and present. With Aztec dance groups preserving traditions and community outreach programs on topics ranging from immigration rights to public health, Fiesta del Sol is an exuberant expression of Latino culture in Chicago. Organized by the Pilsen Neighbors Community Council, the festival is a fundraiser for the neighborhood. 1400

Festival de la Villita, a celebration of Little Village that commemorates Mexico’s independence from Spain, is now entering its twenty-fifth year. The festival’s final day is capped by the 26th Street Mexican Independence Day Parade. Eat delicious food, ride colorful carnival rides, take in art of all sorts, and—if you’re lucky—soak up the presence of famous soap-opera stars. 26th St. and Kostner Ave. September 12, 6pm11pm; September 13-14, 2pm-11pm.

(Lucia Ahrensdorf)

Hyde Park Jazz Festival

Are you climbing up a wall like a spider, in anticipation of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival? Well, join the club. Hyde Park summers are defined by this twoday bash. Featuring local as well as nationally and internationally renowned performers, the festival has earned its place as a summer checkpoint right up there with the Fourth of July. This year, the weekend will close with the legendary piano stylings of Craig Taborn, in his first solo performance in Chicago, at Rockefeller Chapel. Other performers include the JD Allen Quartet, Tomeka Reid in her stunning string trio, Orbert Davis’ Chicago Jazz Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble, and the South Side favorite, the Houston Person Quartet. Dana Hall’s Black Art

Movement will also showcase a special project with musical collaboration, featuring Russ Johnson on trumpet and John Wojciechowski on reeds. Various locations in Hyde Park. September 27-28. hydeparkjazzfestival.org (Mark Hassenfratz)

VISUAL ARTS speculationscapes

During May and June, Jekyll&Hyde in Hyde Park will host “speculationscapes,” a group show focused on critical inquiry about the world in which we live. The exhibition will explore landscape, seascape, and cityscape as the media for intellectual scrutiny by bringing together the architectural expertise and creative vision of a talented group of artists. “speculationscapes” inquires about the role of high-density human impact, relationships between machines and their makers, and light events such as the existence of widespread laser beams in landscapes. Featured pieces will include dark spaces paired with food coloring and leafless flowering stems. “speculationscapes” promises to deliver a unique and speculative approach to the surroundings we inhabit. Jekyll&Hyde, 1227 E. 54th St. Through June 7. Gallery open by appointment. (773)691-9541. jekyllhydepark. tumblr.com (Arda Sener)

Shovel, Spoon, and Braid

What happens when a trio of artists relocates to a rural valley in central Wisconsin? An upcoming show at ACRE, “Shovel, Spoon, and Braid,” answers this question, and explores themes of sustainable living in intentional communities and coexistence with natural environments. Artists Adam Wolpa, Josh Hoeks, and Charlotte Wolf are collaborating for the show: Wolpa and Hoeks will be displaying visual evidence of their radical lifestyle change, including carved wooden spoons and diagrams for rural construction projects, and Wolf will be showcasing her photography, which documents the relationships of women to natural environments. ACRE Projects, 1913 W. 17th St. Through June 9. Sunday-Monday, noon-4pm. acreresidency.org (Emma Collins)

Ruthless Powers

The dead are rising at the antena project space in Pilsen. Artists Liz Born and Victoria Martinez will use dead plants, trash, and roadkill to attempt to answer the question, “How does a body JUNE 4, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19

become a monument?” Their works address decayed bodies, both architectural and biological, and the footprints they leave behind in the world of the living: the exhibition will feature portrayals of abandoned buildings, artificially preserved corpses, and the like.

Born chiefly makes woodcuts, while Martinez creates found object assemblages that are inherently narrative. Art creates life, death creates life, and life creates art and death creates art. antena, 1755 S. Laflin St. Through June 13.

Saturdays, noon-5pm. Free. (773)3403516. antenapilsen.blogspot.com (Emma Collins)

Model Pictures

Artist Ross Sawyers built and subsequently photographed scale replicas of unfinished model homes, (in)complete with holes in the walls and plastic in the windows. The photographs presented in “Model Pictures,” his first major Chicago solo show, highlight current housing and economic crises through images of these unfinished and empty new houses. Haunting and uncanny, the model model homes bridge the surreal and the (unfortunately) real.

Unlike life-sized abandoned model homes, though, Sawyer’s models are swiftly destroyed after their insides are documented. Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Through June 13. Monday-Thursday, 9am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, noon5pm. (773)324-5520. hydeparkart.org (Katryce Lassle)

Imaging/Imagining

One of three parts of the UofC’s “Imaging/Imagining” exhibition, the Smart Museum presents “Imaging/ Imagining: The Body as Art.” Curated

by UofC physicians, the exhibition explores anatomical representations as art.

Selections from a wide range of places and times come together in an exploration of anatomical accuracy and artistic imagination. Parts two and three are the Regenstein Library’s Special Collections show, “Imaging/Imagining: The Body as Text,” and Crerar Library’s show, “Imaging/Imagining: The Body as Data.” Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. Through June 22. Tuesday-Wednesday, 10am-5pm; Thursday, 10am-8pm; Friday-Sunday, 10am-5pm.

(773)702-0200. smartmuseum.uchicago. edu (Katryce Lassle)

Fault Lines

It’s said that we walk on shaky ground, 20 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JUNE 4, 2014

but sometimes that seems a little hard to remember. This June, the Beverly Art Center will present “Fault Lines,” an exhibition by artists Jennifer Mannebach and Brian Dortmund that makes that shaky ground explicitly visible.

The artists take complete, constructed visuals and distort them, revealing the chaos that, through the creative process, gives way to and consequently underlies objects of beauty. For Mannebach this means taking a clean surface, like glass, and adding common detritus like tape and graphite. Dortmund creates landscapes that appear worn by the scars of age. In addressing the chaos of both creation and destruction, Mannebach and Dortmund’s works in “Fault Lines” remind us of the fragility of our constructed world. Beverly Art Center, 2407 W. 111th St. Through June 22. Monday-Friday, 9am-9pm; Saturday 9am-5pm; Sunday 1pm-4pm. Free.

(773)445-3838 www.beverlyartcenter. org (Austin Brown)

Continuum

Prospectus, an art gallery in Pilsen that chiefly features Latin American art, will be displaying a collection of works by artist Ginny Sykes, created from 1993 to 2013. Sykes’s approach to art is multifaceted: she makes collections of abstract paintings that are tied together by common color schemes, public murals and mosaics, and even an outdoor sand installation called “Healing Grounds.” Prospectus will curate a selection of her work, in what is sure to be a vibrant and varied show. Prospectus Art Gallery, 1210 W. 18th St. Through June 27. Wednesday-Sunday, noon-5pm; Monday-Tuesday by appointment. prospectusartgallery.wordpress.com (Emma Collins)

Round Trip Ticket

Ugly Step Sister Art Gallery presents a two-part exhibition featuring works by Kieran McGonnell. McGonnell’s work has taken the art world by storm, gaining an underground following in Chicago, New York, Ireland, and the further reaches of the galaxy. Three years ago, the artist’s life was cut tragically short. Ugly Step Sister Art Gallery has curated a three-month-long retrospective of the late artist’s works: the current installment features his early paintings, while the next will showcase his later and more widely known works. “Round Trip Ticket” highlights McGonnell’s signature use of serious subjects, oil and watercolor, and vibrant use of color, in an attempt to preserve his legacy. Ugly

Step Sister Art Gallery, 1750 S. Union Ave. Through July 6. Saturday-Sunday, noon-6pm. Other hours by appointment.

(312)927-7546. uglystepsisterartgallery. com (Mark Hassenfratz)

Propeller Fund Project Space Launch

Since 2010, the Propeller Fund has awarded grants to Chicago-based artists to promote art in the city. On May 24, the exhibition for the 2012 Propeller awardees opened to the public at Mana Contemporary. Visit the gallery to see exhibitions by local, Propeller-funded artists and art organizations, like The Franklin, Art Patch Project, and Bad at Sports. Pieces on display include artistic studies of the Constitution, underground cinema, and independent comics. One video installation even utilizes the classic Chicago television programs Studs’ Place and Bozo’s Circus.

For art that is current, local, and unapologetically entertaining, don’t miss the Propeller Fund launch show. Mana Contemporary Chicago, 2233 S. Throop St. Through August 31. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm. Free. (312)850-8301. (Amy Harlowe)

Diverse Expressions

In memory of the Stonewall riots, a seminal moment for gay resistance in New York forty-five years ago, June is now LGBT pride month. HumanThread, a gallery in Bridgeport dedicated to “arts and education for a sustainable human society,” is marking the month by showcasing queer art and artists—a celebration of diverse identities in the local arts community, and a reminder that the struggle for equal rights is ongoing. HumanThread Gallery, Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th St., fifth floor. June 5-27. Opening reception June 20, 6pm-10pm. Free.

(312)646-0627. humanthread.net (Kalil Smith-Nuevelle)

Special Gentlemen’s Time with Paul Hopkin

“Some might think bathroom salad tossing distasteful, but they will change their minds when they witness [Paul] Hopkin’s delectable vegetable arrangements!” Who could resist such an invitation? Slow, an exhibition space that exists somewhere in the realm between apartment gallery and commercial venue, has a new space. The aptly named “Loo” is located in Slow’s bathroom, and its inaugural exhibition will be “Special Gentlemen’s Time with Paul Hopkin.” The show will feature wa-

tercolor and ceramics by Paul Melvin Hopkin. Loo’s curator, Jeffrey Grauel, advises art connoisseurs to bring cash, because the pieces will be priced to sell, and sell fast. As a bonus, there will be a preview of artwork from Slow’s upcoming collaboration with Sideshow Theatre Company, “don’t trust the floor.”

Go, enjoy the art, but maybe skip that salad. Slow, 2153 W. 21st St. June 6-July 26. Opening reception June 6, 6-9pm.

Saturday, 12-5pm. Free. (773)645-8803. paul-is-slow.info (Wednesday Quansah)

Under the Surface: A Photographic Portrait of the Middle East

Art meets cultural exchange at this exhibition featuring the work of Hossein Fatemi, an Iranian-born photojournalist who was the first Iranian ever to embed himself within the United States military. The mission of the exhibition is to “lift the figurative veil” that shrouds the daily ins-and-outs of life in the Middle East from many in the Western world and to give patrons a fuller and more complex understanding of the region than is usually provided by the neverending footage of bombed out villages and wailing mothers on CNN. Fatemi’s current project was inspired in part by an experience he had with a female friend in Tehran who was detained by police for not being properly covered by her hijab, and his images range from stern-looking clerics gathering outside a mosque to Iranian youth dancing and smoking in the privacy of their homes. In addition to the photographs, there will be a panel discussion featuring prominent members of Chicago’s Middle-Eastern community and a musical performance by Bad Mashadi, whose style is advertised as “a contemporary fusion of Persian and Balkan music that incorporates electronica and urban American dance music.” Chicago Urban Art Society, 600 W. Cermak Rd. June 7, 7pm-midnight. $25 online; $30 at the door; $15 student. chicagourbanartsociety.com (Wednesday Quansah)

Coast to Coaster at Cobalt Studio

That underappreciated object, the coaster, selflessly protects tabletops from the threat of chilled beverages and pesky rings of condensation. How many coffee tables has the coaster rescued from watermarks? How many messes has it stopped in their tracks? Hasn’t this humble guardian earned some recog-

SUMMER GUIDE

nition? An upcoming exhibit at Cobalt Studio features the coaster as an artistic medium. Pieces made on or out of coasters will be on display, some functional and some, like Chicago-based artist Keith Camion’s work—made with upraised glass shards and metal spikes—quite clearly non-functional.

Other artists include Nick Depeder and Antonio Martinez. The gallery is still accepting submissions that meet these simple specifications: must be creative, must involve coasters. Whether you’re interested in designing or you simply need a more aesthetically interesting place to set your mug, join in on Cobalt Studio’s coaster craze in the coming weeks. Cobalt Studio, 1950 W. 21st St. June 13-July 13. Opening Friday, June 13, 6pm-10pm. Free. (773)6641163. cobaltartstudio.blogspot.com (Rachel Seebach)

Gestos Gráficos: René Arceo and Friends

Welcome to the wonderful world of printmaking. Printmaking extends far beyond simple woodcuts: there are linocuts, serigraphs, and collographs, just to name a few. In an upcoming show at the Bridgeport Art Center, artist René Arceo, along with a large number of printmakers he has collaborated with in the past, will exhibit works that use these mediums in day-glo hues against black backgrounds to create prints that are both striking and surreal. They offer images of mythical creatures contorted into impossible positions or poised for battle, anthropomorphic celestial entities, and eerie dreamscapes. Think Dali armed with velvet coloring posters. Bridgeport Art Center, 1200 W. 35th St. Opening reception June 20, 7pm10pm. Through August 1. Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm, and by appointment.

Free. (773)247-3000. bridgeportart.com (Emma Collins)

STAGE & SCREEN M. Butterfly

David Henry Hwang’s Tony Award– winning play, M. Butterfly hits the Court Theatre to close out the season.

An arresting reimagining of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly through a post-colonial lens, Hwang’s play chronicles the affair between French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and the male Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu. Under the direction of Charles Newell at Court, M. Butterfly takes an aggressive look at sex, espionage, and imperialism.

Hwang is a masterful and adventurous

playwright and he offers a deconstruction of his source material’s Orientalist angle that is both playfully imaginative and downright powerful. Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through June 8. See website for showtimes. $15-$35.

(773)702-7005. courttheatre.org (Shanice Casimiro and Meaghan Murphy)

Jacob

“And Jacob was left alone, in his luxurious high-rise in downtown Chicago.”

Timothy Gregory, actor, director, playwright, founding artistic director of Provision Theater, and host of HGTV’s New Spaces, has wondered what every Chicagoan-with-a-luxurious-high-rise wonders to themselves when looking from their sweeping windows at the bustling loop below: what if I were to wrestle with an angel until the breaking of the day? From this, he brings to us Jacob, a new production at Provision Theater that brings Genesis’ tale of Jacob wrestling the angel to a modern Chicago. Therefore, to this day, the people of Chicago do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, even when piled beneath dripping peppers in Italian beef sandwiches. Provision Theater, 1001 W. Roosevelt Rd. Through June 15. (312)455-0065. provisiontheater.org (Isabel Ochoa Gold)

Movies under the Stars

Chicago Film Archives and the Black Cinema House will host a series of acclaimed yet often-overlooked films, mostly centered on black musical culture and underrated classics. Themes vary: the show on August 16 will focus on giving context to the upcoming Chicago Jazz Festival, while the offerings on June 21 will include Southern folk tales and music, with Judy Peiser of the Center for Southern Folklore attending. July 19 will feature Juke Joint, directed by and starring Spencer Williams in one of his last feature films before moving into his most well-known role as Andy in Amos ’n Andy. Some of the most exciting films here are a tour movie of Duke Ellington in Japan, an intriguing look at cultural cross-pollination between East and West, and a biopic of jazz drummer Elvin Jones, intertwining his personal and professional life to create a more complete view of the musician as a human being. Join the Chicago Film Archives out in the park this summer for some forgotten films that look back to the past, but still brim with vitality. Black Cinema House, 6916 S. Dorchester Ave. Through August 16, 8:30pm. Free. (312)243-1808. chica-

gofilmarchives.org (Austin Brown)

Cabaret

Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome to a revival of the 1987 revival of Cabaret at the Logan Center. For three nights only, director Dani Wieder and her ensemble of UofC students will bring the grit of Weimar Germany’s nightclub scene to the significantly less seedy Theater West, recreating a time of unrest for both the world and Berlin’s seedy underworld. The musical, currently starring Alan Cumming and Michelle Williams on Broadway (where tickets are a lot more expensive), follows the showgirls and Emcee of the Kit Kat Klub as the song and dance leaks off the stage and mingles with the club’s multifarious clientele. Join this scantily clad troupe on a dimly lit journey filled with love, lust, jealousy, and heavy eyeliner. Remember, don’t tell mama! Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. June 5-7. Thursday-Friday, 7:30pm; Saturday, 2pm and 7:30pm. $6 in advance; $8 at the door. (773)702-2997. arts.uchicago.edu (Bess Cohen)

Redmoon Summer Celebrations

Redmoon Theater’s bringing their flair for big, monumental performances to a block party near you. Paving the way for the city-wide Great Chicago Fire Festival, the spectacle theater company has partnered up with fifteen neighborhoods and thirty-five different community organizations to contribute art, crafts, and tornadic grill-mastering to local ballgames and cook-outs. They’ve refit a horse trailer as an elaborate photo-booth and editing studio. They’ve erected a mobile, motorized, three-storied BBQ Cyclone, rigging it with a sound system, nine Weber grills, and all the cooking necessaries. And they’ll be carting these installations to locales from Uptown to South Shore for the next five months. Because nothing says city-wrecking inferno like a good weenie roast. Summer Celebrations 2014. June 5-October 3. See website for full date and time information. Free.

(312)850-8440. redmoon.org (Stephen Urchick)

News From The Service Entrance: Live at Printers Row Lit Fest

Over the last twelve years, Mario Smith has made a name for himself as one of the most distinctive voices on WHPK. On his Public Affairs show, News from The Service Entrance, Smith has developed a reputation not only for his

distinctive poetic speech rhythms but also for his reports and polemics on local politics and culture. Now, on Saturday, June 7, you’ll have a chance to see and hear Smith broadcast his show live, outside of the studio walls and up in the Loop. As part of the Printer’s Row Lit Fest, Smith will be joined by blogger and inventor of the “#solidarityisforwhitewomen” twitter thread Mikki Kendall, architecture critic Lee Bey, and “Leave No Vet Behind” activists Rob and Alvin Walker. Printers Row Lit Fest, 425 N. Michigan Ave. Saturday, June 7. apps.chicagotribune.com/printersrow (Meaghan Murphy)

Lovers on Their Own / This Is How the World Ends

What is a play like when it’s experienced outside of the theater? In Tori Telfer and Danny Resner’s latest project, narrative and production both take a perspective-shifting turn as the two artists take their intriguing new short plays to various neighborhoods and all sorts of nontraditional venues. Their DIY theater, self-written and directed, aims to be thought-provoking, accessibly cheap, and unusual; the trailer for the show includes snippets from Telfer’s Lovers on Their Own about “the kind of girls that go to gallery openings alone,” looking “mysterious and vampiric,” and the memorable line in Resner’s play: “And I thought, oh no, as soon as we get on the plane to Johannesburg, this girl’s gonna start speaking in tongues.”

Catch their exploration of failures of communication and possible apocalypses while it’s still on the South Side, and you’ll also hear the lyrical improvisations of the band Rooms Trio. June 6, Elastic Arts Foundation, 2830 N. Milwaukee Ave., 9pm. $10. June 7, Chicago Actors Studio, 2040 N. Elston Ave., 9pm. $10. June 12, Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219-21 S. Morgan St., 9pm. $5. More dates and locations online. irrealplayers. tumblr.com (Olivia Stovicek)

Story Club South Side

You almost drowned but were miraculously plucked from the waves by a good Samaritan. You almost went an entire week without using Facebook but then caved on the final day. Now is your chance to share your tales of close calls with tragedy and nearly missed accomplishments with the world: the theme of this month’s Story Club South Side, a nonfiction storytelling live-lit experience, is “Almost.” “It was so close. But then something else, something unexpected, happened instead,” reads their JUNE 4, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 21

SUMMER GUIDE

teaser. “It was definitely more interesting that way.” There will be four featured performers and several slots for open mic performers, who have eight minutes each to spin their yarn. Open mic artists are not required to adhere to the theme, and the only guidelines for stories are that they be “thoroughly true, thoroughly ambitious and thoroughly wonderful.” The event is BYOB and BYOPie in light of the fact that Pleasant House Bakery is just down the street. Co-Prosperity Sphere, 3219 S. Morgan St. Tuesday, June 17, 7:30pm.

Suggested $10 donation. storyclubchicago. com (Wednesday Quansah)

Movies in the Park

Every third Saturday this summer, the DuSable Museum of African-American History will sponsor the outdoor screening of an inspirational and family-friendly movie. June’s film is the live-action adaptation of the beloved Fat Albert TV show, in which Fat Albert (SNL’s Kenan Thompson) and his friends leave the animated world in order to help teenage Doris, unpopular and reclusive after the death of her grandfather, Albert. Watch as the Fat Albert gang try to guide her through some of the difficulties that come with losing a family member and with growing up, all while dealing with the troubles of adjusting to their newfound three-dimensional bodies. July features 42, the story of Jackie Robinson’s struggle and eventual success in breaking through racial segregation in baseball. And in August, the critically-acclaimed, Oscar Award–winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom will be screened. An incisive look into the lives of backup singers, the list of those interviewed includes Merry Clayton, of “Gimme Shelter” fame, and Judith Hill, longtime backup singer for Michael Jackson. DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl. June 21, July 19, and August 16, 6pm. Free. (773)947-0600. dusablemuseum.org (Austin Brown)

Chicago’s Watershed: A 156Mile Choreography

Stravinsky’s groundbreaking Rite of Spring comes to life this summer, in Clinard Dance Theatre’s “Chicago’s Watershed: A 156-Mile Choreography.” Diving straight into Stravinsky’s seminal work, Clinard Dance Theatre is stripping the music down and building it back up with Dmitry Samarov’s video-projected ink work and EStrella Piano Duo. With original choreogra22 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

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phy based in the style of flamenco, the entire work is built around the dissonance and consonance of the Chicago River, the brutal beauty of the city’s landscape. Clinard Dance Theatre aims high for the avant-garde in this multi-disciplinary tour de force. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Friday, June 27 and Saturday, June 28, 8pm. $25; $55 VIP (Saturday only). (773)7022787. arts.uchicago.edu (Meaghan Murphy)

Textured Lives

This summer the Chicago Film Archives and Rebuild Foundation are partnering to present a series of outdoor screenings exploring the spoken and written word. Starting with the family friendly short Fat Albert: Write A Poem, Share Your Feelings, the event then shifts into films that focus on the lives of three distinguished writers.

Gwendolyn Brooks has the poet discussing her life while depictions of the environment accompany readings of her verses. Lorraine Hansberry: The Black Experience in the Creation of Drama presents Chicago-born writer Lorraine Hansberry’s growth and vision, tracing her life from childhood to her breakthrough as the first woman playwright to be produced on Broadway. The final documentary in the series, The Writer in America: Toni Morrison, has the writer herself explaining the struggles of being a young novelist and includes readings from her novels. RSVP is recommended, and there is a potluck-style dinner preceding the show at 8pm.

Black Cinema House, 6916 S. Dorchester Ave. Friday, June 27, 9pm. blackcinemahouse.org (Shelby Gonzales)

The JOMBA! Initiative

Chicago’s Deeply Rooted Dance Theater and Durban, South Africa’s Flatfoot Dance Company bring three years of cultural exchange to the stage of the Logan Center. Coinciding with American Independence Day, this collaboration and symposium will explore themes of freedom, slavery, and survival. What is the impact that art can have? Artistic directors Kevin Iega, Lliane Loots, Gary Abbott, and company artists will reflect on their experiences collaborating cross-continent, and their own perspectives on dance and the global community. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St. Monday, July 7, 7:30pm. $10. Reservations recommended. (312)795-9777. arts.uchicago. edu (Meaghan Murphy)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Chicago Shakespeare in the Parks will be touring Chicago this summer in the interest of bringing their adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s classic comedy, to as many theater enthusiasts as possible. One of the bard’s most well-known plays, Midsummer recounts the marriage of Theseus, the duke of Athens, to Hyppolyta, the queen of the Amazons. Most of the plot, though, concerns the love-trials of a group of young Athenians, as they navigate both the obstacles posed by their parents in the city, and the hijinks of the fairies in the surrounding woods.

South Side parks that the company will perform in include: Tuley Park on July 22 at 6:30pm, Washington Park on July 27 at 4pm, Gage Park on July 31 at 6:30pm, Hamilton Park on August 1 at 6:30pm, Marquette Park on August 12 at 6:30pm, Ridge Park on August 13 at 6:30pm, and the South Shore Cultural Center on August 14 and 15, at 6:30pm. July 18 through August 17. See website for full date and time information.

Free. (312)595-5600. chicagoshakes.com (Austin Brown)

MUSIC Sunday Evening Jazz

Sunday nights just got a whole lot better.

The Hyde Park Jazz Society has settled into their niche at Room 43, providing fantastic jazz entertainment to the South Side with no intention of leaving anytime soon. While the Society is a key supporter of the annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival, why should you have to wait until that comes around for some great jazz? Living up to its mission of the preserving and encouraging jazz performance, the Jazz Society is putting up jazz bands every Sunday at Room 43 this summer. June will feature acts such as the Dana Hall Quintet and the Taylor Moore trio, and the last Sunday of the month will include a jam session with sidemen to be announced.

Room 43, 1043 E. 43rd St. Sundays, 7:30pm-11:30pm. $10 for adults, $5 for children and University students with ID. (773)285-2222. hydeparkjazzsociety.com (Mark Hassenfratz)

First Mondays Jazz

Why are South Side summers awesome? Same reason as the rest of the year: jazz. The U of C is sponsoring a First Mondays Jazz Series at the Arts Incubator in Washington Park, pro-

grammed by former artist-in-residence Tomeka Reid. The series will take place from now until October. In the past, performers have included Maggie Brown, Ernest Dawkins’ We Free Trio, and Marquis Hill’s Blacktet. In addition to introducing Chicagoans to some of the best and brightest jazz musicians around today, the series will acquaint its attendees with the Incubator. The brainchild of artist Theaster Gates, the Incubator is now home to another series just like this one (which you should totally go to), artists-in-residence, arts education, and community art projects.

Arts Incubator, 301 E. Garfield Blvd.

First Monday of every month through October. 7pm. (773)702-9724. arts.uchicago. edu (Mark Hassenfratz)

Ravi Coltrane Quartet

Sporting one of the most familiar names in jazz history, Ravi Coltrane comes to the Jazz Showcase with his own take on the instrument his father made legendary. A prolific performer in his own right, Coltrane released his seventh solo album, Spirit Fiction, in 2012, his first on the Blue Note label. Classified as a “post-bop” performer, Coltrane treads the jazz landscape transformed in the wake of his father’s heyday. With his soothing saxophone, Coltrane excels as both bandleader and soloist, leading his quartet as he squeezes out meandering sonic explorations. As one of the new fathers of the present-day jazz scene, Coltrane is not to be missed. The Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth Ct. June 5-8. 8pm and 10pm. $25; $40 VIP. (312)360-0234. jazzshowcase.com (Jack Nuelle)

Chicago Women in the Blues Festival

A boisterous blues revue comes to Reggies in the first weeks of summer. This show highlights some of the best female blues singers in the city while maintaining a hearty grip on Chicago’s rich blues past. A rotating cast of performers keeps each show different, while special guests abound. These women are a group of powerful voices, instrumentalists, and performers, several of whom have performed with blues greats such as Ike Turner and Jimmy Smith.

Billed as an almost mini-festival happening at the same time as the larger Chicago Blues festival, this “bevy of blues-belting bombshells” will be sure to keep things nice and nostalgic in the South Loop. Reggies, 2109 S. State St. June 13. 7pm. $10-15. 17+ (312)949-

0120. reggieslive.com (Jack Nuelle)

CyHi the Prynce

Hailing from Georgia, CyHi the Prynce is a hip-hop artist who is currently signed to Kanye West’s record label, G.O.O.D. Music, as well as Def Jam Recordings, Akon’s Konvict Muzik, and Bu Thiam’s BuVision. CyHi first appeared on the hip-hop scene in 2010 after being signed to G.O.O.D. Music and making an appearance on West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy that same year. Since then he has self-released five mixtapes, been included on G.O.O.D. Music’s compilation album in collaboration with Kid Cudi and John Legend, and received writing credits for West’s Yeezus (2013).

His latest mixtape, Black Hystori Project (2014), was released this past February and is described as a “conscious hip-hop concept album focusing on the history of black people in America.” It also happens to be a great showcase for this gifted storyteller. The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. June 13. Doors 9pm. $30; $300 for VIP table. 21+. (312)753-5700. theshrinechicago.com (Shelby Gonzales)

Black Flag

Without Black Flag, punk rock would not exist. Well, that’s not totally true, but it would be a lot lamer if they didn’t. The band is nothing short of revolutionary when it comes to the creation of hardcore punk, mixing elements of heavy metal into their violent, clangy, anti-authoritarian noise sound.

They are also innovators of the punk DIY aesthetic, which they applied to their famous underground recordings.

Formed by Greg Ginn in 1976 in Hermosa Beach, California, Black Flag have earned themselves a substantial cult following from constant touring in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Unlike many punk bands, they managed to break away from the standard threechord format of punk rock, creating a stylistically diverse discography. And they’re still rockin’. Highly recommended for those who are brought down by the establishment. Reggies, 2105 S. State St. June 17th. 7pm. $20$25. 17+. (312)949-1020. reggieslive.com (Mark Hassenfratz)

Sounds of History

The DuSable Museum has been celebrating African-American history since 1961, and the upcoming Sounds of History 2014 Jazz Series indicates that the impending summer heat has not hindered their efforts. “We’re jazzing it up

on the third Wednesday of the Month,” the tagline declares, and DuSable certainly delivers. The series of performances will come in three parts—the first is a tribute to Max Roach, Buddy Miles, Tony Williams, and Elvin Jones, and will feature Ernie Adams, Charles Heath, and Xavier Breaker. The second, “Celebrating Fifty Years of a Love Supreme,” is a tribute to the legendary John Coltrane, featuring musicians such as Isiah Collier and Ari Brown, among others. The third and final installment of the series is “Funkin with Acoustic Soul-Tribute to Jimi Hendrix and James Brown,” featuring Dee Alexander. DuSable Museum, 740 E. 56th Pl. June 18, July 16, and August 20. 6pm8:30pm. Free admission with lawn chairs and blankets; $25 for a table of six. Food and beverages provided by Norman’s Bistro. (773)947-0600. dusablemuseum.org (Mark Hassenfratz)

The Afro Jazz Experience with Sean Alvarez

Part of a monthly series (though it appears he’s taking August off), Sean Alvarez brings his expansive appreciation for all things jazz to Maria’s Packaged Goods this summer. In both June and July, Alvarez will spin treasured jazz classics like John Coltrane and Nina Simone alongside progressive and world forays into jazz which include nu jazz, seventies soul jazz, afrobeat, and Brazilian bossa nova. Combining a deep nostalgia for jazz’s rich past with an appreciation for the progressive and ever-changing direction of the genre, Alvarez is committed to its entire musical landscape—from swinging beginnings to groovy future. Maria’s, 960 W. 31st St. June 22 and July 27. 5pm-9pm. community-bar.com (Jack Nuelle)

FARMERS MARKETS * = accepts Link card

* Beverly

This market features an impressive variety of produce and number of regular attendees. Its best-known item is a specially bred sweet corn that is only available in the summer. The market also has multiple bakers, fresh-cut flowers, and several types of locally raised meat.

95th St. and Longwood Dr. Through October 26. Sundays, 7am-1pm. (Sarah Claypoole)

Bridgeport

The Bridgeport market is small, but offers quite a few artisanal goodies, rangJUNE 4, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 23

ing from cheese curds to tomato sauce.

It sometimes opens up for pets, so look out for a “Going to the Dogs” day.

Midwest vendors include Wisconsin’s Brunkow Cheese. 35th St. and Wallace Ave. Through October 4. Saturdays, 7am1pm. (Sarah Claypoole)

* Chatham: Seaway Bank Farmers Market

Since 2005, this market has featured organic produce grown by farmers from Pembroke Township, seventy miles south of Chicago. The market aims to provide healthy, fresh food in a neighborhood underserved by supermarkets and overrun with fast food.

Farmers are present to answer questions about nutrition and agriculture.

87th St. and Langley Ave., in the Seaway Bank parking lot. July 23-September 24.

Wednesdays, 9am-2pm. (773)602-4865. seawaybank.us (Emily Lipstein)

* Englewood/Anchor House

Opening in late June, this new market is the first in Englewood since the closing of an independent market in 2011.

In the past year, the neighborhood has gained attention as the epicenter of the city’s Farmers for Chicago Initiative, which may factor into the produce selection offered. 76th St. and Racine Ave. June 28-October 25. Saturdays, 8am1pm. (Sarah Claypoole)

* Englewood: Wood Street Farm Stand

Founded in 1996, Growing Home ­­­works to empower Chicagoans through the establishment of USDA-certified organic urban farms. Over the past nine

years, the organization has acquired the rights to this two-thirds-acre plot of land in Englewood and turned it into a wildly successful urban farm. In 2012, they produced and sold 13,000 pounds of organic produce. Produce is sold from April through November at an on-site farm stand. Wood Street Farm Stand, 5814 S. Wood St. Through October 29. Wednesdays, 11am-4pm. (773)4347144. growinghomeinc.org (Emily Lipstein)

* Hyde Park

Plans are in the works to bring the Hyde Park farmers market to Harper Court, but for now the market remains in its corner of Harold Washington Park, just across the Metra tracks from the growing UofC-led development.

53rd Street and S. Hyde Park Blvd. June 5-October 30. Thursdays, 7am-1pm. (Sarah Claypoole)

* Fuller Park: Eden Place Farmers Market

Located in the middle of the Fuller Park neighborhood, Eden Place Farmers Market sells produce grown by farmers in Eden Place Farms, the final product of the massive Fuller Park cleanup project started in 1997. A perfect example of successful urban agriculture, the farm grows its produce in hoop houses, raised beds, and twenty-five neighborhood lots. Eden Place Farms works to employ local residents (the unemployment rate in Fuller Park is forty percent) and to train urban farming entrepreneurs. The organization also does other public outreach, hosting

WHPK Rock Charts WHPK 88.5 FM is a nonprofit community radio station at the University of Chicago. Once a week the station’s music directors collect a book of playlist logs from their Rock-format DJs, tally up the plays of albums added within the last few months, and rank them according to popularity that week.

Compiled by Andrew Fialkowski and Dylan West Artist / Album / Record Label 1.Ryley Walker / All Kinds of You / Tompkins Square 2. Trans Am / Volume X / Thrill Jockey 3. La Sera / Hour of the Dawn / Hardly Art 4. The People’s Temple / Musical Garden / HoZac 5. Klauss Johann Grobe / Im Dinne Der Zeir / Trouble in Mind 6. Frankie Cosmos / Affirms Glinting / Self-Released 7. Dopelord / Black Arts, Riff Worship, & Weed Cult / Self-Released 8. Swans / To Be Kind / Young God/Mute 9. Opposites / Printer’s Ink on Everything / Granola Bar 10. BIGCOLOUR / Manifest Ecstasy [Single] / Self-Released 11. Carsick Cars / 3 / Maybe Mars 12. Gluttony / Beyond the Veil of Flesh / Vic 13. American Football / American Football [Reissue] / Polyvinyl 14. Frijgard / Bellum Aeternum Est / Self-Released 15. Obnox / Louder Space / 12XU

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workshops for adults and children and welcoming volunteers to help out in the fields. Eden Place Farmers Market, 43rd St. and Wells St. Through October 11. Saturdays, 8am-2pm. (773)624-8686. edenplacenaturecenter.org (Emily Lipstein)

*Greater Grand Crossing: Healthy Food Hub

This market, just south of Grand Crossing Park, hopes to help “transform urban to rural communities through education, entrepreneurship, and access to healthy, affordable food” provided by “a just, holistic local food system.” In addition to opportunities to browse and shop, it is also accepting volunteer applications for the summer. 7823 S. Ellis Ave. Through December 20. Every other Saturday, 10:30am-2pm. (Sarah Claypoole)

* Pilsen Community Market

Founded in 2008, the Pilsen Community Market gives Pilsen and the near and lower West Sides access to farmfresh produce every Sunday, provides education about nutrition and healthy eating, and holds live music events and yoga classes. Produce comes from both local and regional vendors. 1800 S. Halsted St., Chicago Community Bank parking lot. Through October 26. Sundays, 9am-3pm. pilsencommunitymarket.org (Emily Lipstein)

* Pullman

This farmers market in Arcade Park is situated just steps from the Historic Pullman Foundation. It includes gluten-free items and soup mixes, in addition to the standard fare, and offers two dozen vendors and the occasional live music act. 111th St. and Cottage Grove Ave. July 9-October 29. Wednesdays, 7am-1pm. (Sarah Claypoole)

* Roseland Community Farmers Market

Attempting “to create a food oasis in a food desert,” this market is assisted by the Chicago Community Garden Project. The Pullman project gets some of its produce from the Cooperation Operation, which operates a garden in a former toxic waste site. 11400 S. Michigan Ave. Through October 6. Saturdays, 9am-2pm. (Sarah Claypoole)

South Shore–Rainbow Beach Park

Opened in 2013 as a joint effort of the Ashe Park and Rainbow Beach Park

Advisory Councils, this market is intended as a response to a lack of healthy food in and around South Shore. In contrast to many of the more regionally focused markets, the South Shore market prides itself on getting the majority of its vendors and produce from Chicagoland. 79th St. and South Shore Dr. June 22-August 24. Sundays, noon-5pm.

(Sarah Claypoole)

*Washington Park: Chicago Botanic Garden’s Windy City Harvest Farm Stand

Windy City Harvest trains adults to practice sustainable urban agriculture in a nine-month program, building experience in organic urban farming.

Aside from learning about sustainable production, students gain skills essential for starting and running a business.

In addition to hosting this program, Windy City Harvest provides public workshops about small-scale sustainable urban farming. 555 E. 51st St.; Little Village location at 3750 W. Ogden Ave. July 9-October 8. Wednesdays, 9am1pm. (847)835-6970. chicagobotanic.org/ windycityharvest (Emily Lipstein)

* Woodlawn: 61st Street Farmers Market

Just outside the Experimental Station, a business and cultural center, this outdoor farmers market offers fresh produce along with meat, cheese, eggs, and prepared items from farms around the region. The market also features live music, demos by chefs, an on-site food and sustainability expert, as well as after-school cooking classes for youth and adults. The Experimental Station founded the market in 2008 in order to provide Woodlawn and surrounding neighborhoods with fresh, affordable, and healthy foods, while also working to educate consumers about nutrition.

61st St. between Dorchester and Blackstone Ave. Through December 13; indoors at the Experimental Station, 6100 S. Blackstone Ave., starting in November.

Saturdays, 9am-2pm. experimentalstation.org/farmers-market (Emily Lipstein) ¬

JUNE 4, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 25

FOOD

Baba’s, Bubbas, and Firehouses—Oh My! A tour of the South Side’s steak and lemonade restaurants

BY JAKE BITTLE AND EMMA COLLINS

W

e’ve all seen them. They’re colorful take-out-only shops, holes in the wall on street corners or in shopping centers, usually named after the arbitrary combination of foods you can buy there: Steak and Lemonade. For whatever reason, there are a dozen or more of these restaurants—which seem exclusive to the South Side—scattered as far north as Pilsen, as far west as Cicero, and as far south as 115th Street. No one at any of these restaurants, be they patron or manager, is sure which restaurant—Bubba’s, Baba’s, Babas [sic?], Firehouse, and the others —came first, even though most of them claim to be the “original.” Nor could anyone provide a theory or even a guess as to why steak (which here means a Philly cheesesteak-style sandwich, though some restaurants are known for fish or chicken instead of steak) was originally paired with lemonade (which here means anything from pulpy true lemonade to slushies of various flavors, including piña colada and blueberry). ***However, in spite of our failureto solve the steak and lemonade mystery, the Weekly has rounded up some of the steak and lemonade restaurants on the South Side to highlight the best and worst places to quench your thirst (and, uh, get thirsty again?) this summer.***

Firehouse Steak & Lemonade [13th and Ashland]

As far as steak and lemonade restaurants go, Firehouse in Pilsen offers a pretty relaxed dining experience. Sandwiched (get it?) between a vacant storefront and a Foot Locker in one of those desolate suburban-feeling shopping centers that’s mostly parking lot, Firehouse is the only store in sight with a consistent stream of patrons entering and exiting. Inside, surprisingly, is a generous array of seating, enclosed by a low wood-paneled wall. As is characteristic of most S&L joints, the walls are plastered w i t h

nicholas cassleman

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brightly colored posters that scream bargains at you. You can get NOT ONLY a traditional Philly sandwich, but also a Southern BBQ Philly Sandwich, a Wild West Philly Sandwich, a Ruben Philly Sandwich, a Ragin Cajun Philly Sandwich, and three types of chicken Philly sandwich. If you came to Firehouse looking for something other than a Philly sandwich, don’t worry: they also offer thirteen different types of burgers, five other non-Philly sandwiches, three varieties of hot dogs, “Buffalo Thunder Wingz,” three salads, and the entire menu of “Captain Hook’s Fish and Chicken,” which is contained within the restaurant in combination Pizza-Hut-andTaco-Bell fashion.

The Original Philly sandwich is exactly what it claims to be—a large quantity of steak stuffed between two soft yet hefty pieces of bread and garnished with cheese, onions, green peppers, and mayonnaise. The sandwich is both un-

remarkable and unpretentious. The lemonade, however, (which, it should be noted, is actually a sixteen- to twenty-ounce. lemonade slushie in a plastic cup topped with a domed plastic lid and swathed in plastic wrap) strikes a perfect, mouthwatering balance between sugar, lemons, and Yellow No. 6, elevating Firehouse to a top-notch steak and lemonade restaurant. 1600 W 13th St, (312) 226-1188

Baba’s Famous Steak and Lemonade [51st and Indiana]

Baba’s was the most unwelcoming of any steak and lemonade restaurant we visited.

Sitting on the corner of 51st and Indiana, it is a large but strikingly empty room.

Because of its size, the space seems quite well suited for furniture, which makes its absence particularly unsettling. Behind a thick and soundproof wall of bulletproof glass (you have to poke your head through the space created by the revolving, doggie-door sized food-dispensing slot to order), two employees cooked sandwiches at a leisurely pace. The food emerged hot but bland, and the lemonade slushie tasted half-melted and wholly artificial. 130 E 51st St, (773) 548-6288

Babas Original Steak and Lemonade [71st and Michigan]

Just a short walk from the 69th Street Red Line station, Babas is a cramped take-out joint with a menu so large and confusing that it lines about Seventy percent of the store’s walls. Its tiny, boiling-hot waiting area is usually fi lled with people waiting for their orders. Babas (“the original,” of course) sells classic Philly cheesesteaks, slathered with mayonnaise and green peppers, for $3.99, but many customers opt for the more expensive Super Philly sandwich, which for some reason is made with chicken. The sandwiches come out of the kitchen piping hot in about forty-five seconds, and should be eaten immediately: the steak is juicy and flavorful, and the cheese is gooey and delicious. Steer clear of the flavored

“lemonade,” though: it’s just ice with a dollop of artificial flavoring. Call ahead to place your order and skip the wait. 7100 S Michigan Ave, (773) 873-0676 NOTE: Babas on 71st and Michigan is not to be confused with Bubba’s on 71st and Clyde. Despite its continued presence on Google Maps, the latter was closed down a few years ago and was replaced by a health clinic in the strip mall at that intersection.

However, if you do find yourself near the now-defunct Bubba’s with a sudden craving for cheese and steak, there’s a shop called Hungry Hoagie’s nearby on 71st and Exchange that serves up an “authentic” Philly cheesesteak. No lemonade, though.

Firehouse Steak & Lemonade [87th and State]

This particular iteration of Firehouse is probably the most expensive (relatively speaking) of the steak and lemonade joints on the South Side, but it’s worth the money. It’s buried in a plaza in the shadow of a fairly large Staples, but they’ve got a phone number you can call to arrange a delivery (alternatively, you can use Grubhub). Here, as in some other steak and lemonade joints, it’s actually the chicken that’s the best item on the menu. (Why, then, are these restaurants all called “Steak & Lemonade?”)

Firehouse’s classic Philly, however, also hits the spot. Really, though, it’s the fresh-

squeezed lemonade that makes this particular place worth a stop on a hot day: the pulpy goodness and huge portions put most other steak and lemonade restaurants to shame. Make a delivery order by calling 100 W 87th St, (773) 874-3732.

Chicago Steak and Lemonade [Roosevelt and Pulaski]

Chicago Steak and Lemonade in Lawndale shares a corner with a gas station and its accompanying food mart, and is about half the width and length of one car of the Pink Line train that will take you there.

It is utterly free of furniture—a deliberate choice on the part of the restaurant owners, says Wally, the manager. Their menu is slightly more modest than most, which relieves customers of some of the mental gridlock that can be brought on by the incredible variety at places like Firehouse.

Like Firehouse, however, they offer a curious and somewhat inexplicable selection of seafood, in addition to the standard Philly sandwiches and multi-colored, plastic-wrapped lemonade slushies. For Wally, the crowning achievement of Chicago steak and lemonade, despite the “steak” in its name, is not a bovine product at all: “The best sandwich is the one I marinated since 1992, the garlic chicken sandwich, it’s a very good sandwich, an extremely delicious sandwich.” 4000 W. Roosevelt Road, (773) 638-6400 ¬

CONTACT

SUMMER HOURS

3201 S. Halsted St. 312.225.3780

MON-THU FRI SAT SUN

bluecitycycles.com

11am–7pm 11am–6pm 10am–6pm 12pm–5pm

nicholas cassleman

JUNE 4, 2014 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 27

Logan Center Exhibitions BA Honors Exhibition: 33% more free Through Jun 15

Cabaret Series Fri, Jun 6, 8 pm

Second Tuesday Jazz Series Trumpeter and Composer Marquis Hill and his Quintet Tue, Jun 10, 7 pm

Family Saturdays Free interactive art workshops and a special matinee: Clinard Dance Theatre’s Chicago’s Watershed: A 156-mile Choreography Sat, Jun 28, 2–4:30 pm

FREE PARKING Available all weekend and Mon–Fri after 4 pm. Visit arts.uchicago.edu/logan/visit for more information

773.702.ARTS

LoganUChicago

LOGAN CENTER 915 E 60TH ST AT DREXEL AVE

logan.uchicago.edu 28 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

¬ JUNE 4, 2014