CHICAGO’S FREE WEEKLY | THIS ISSUE IN FOUR SECTIO NS | FRIDAY, JULY 14, 2006 | VOL 35, NO 42 DETheLifADeand DeLIatEShoftheT MANALIVE

Will Chicagolet another Adler andSullivan building bite thedust? p12 Thefirst black womanon Everest p18 Theconspiracy againstJay Mariotti P4

Cexonsex,Bruce Norris’s ugly AmericansgotoAfrica, property taxhellinAndersonville,the world’sbesthugger, andmore Section One Letters 3 Our Town 18 The first black woman to conquer Everest; Columns the last bait shop on the lakefront Hot Type 4 Reviews A plot against Mariotti? Music 26 The Straight Dope 5 Cex, Actual Fucking Boob-enhancing supplements Theater 28 The Works 8 Bruce Norris’s The Unmentionables Skyrocketing property taxes in Andersonville at Steppenwolf Chicago Antisocial 10 Plus Boutique of the Week 19 Hugged by Amma Michelle Tan does retail July 14, 2006 Architecture 12 Free Shit 21 Adler and Sullivan’s diminishing legacy; Classical music at Saint James Cathedral the lake house from The Lake House Ink Well 31 This week’s crossword: World Figures The Life and Death of the Deadliest Man Alive How a south-side Irish boy came to be Chicago’s most notorious martial-arts master OR) OL A (C UT RD IK WA ED John Keehan, aka Count Dante, and students as pictured in a 1976 issue of Black Belt magazine; the count in cosmetologist mode circa 1967

By Dan Kelly

n the 60s and 70s John Keehan was one of the most best as Count Dante, the persona Keehan used to sell Keehan, The Search for Count Dante, inspired by his own notorious figures in American martial arts. He ran dojos membership in his Black Dragon Fighting Society, as well experience in martial arts, as well as his brief acquaintance I and had sidelines in salons and porn shops. He took a as a pamphlet, World’s Deadliest Fighting Secrets, that with Keehan. Growing up in the Harold Ickes Homes pet lion cub for strolls by Lake Michigan. He trained promised to teach readers how to maim, disfigure, and kill. near Chinatown, Webb raised pocket money by collecting minorities and caught flack for it, and after one fight—part Ever since his death in 1975, Keehan’s life has been deposit bottles, scrubbing out Chinatown trash cans, and of Chicago’s “dojo wars” of the 60s and 70s—he was impli- wrapped in rumor and parody, but Oak Park filmmaker taking other odd jobs, and on September 4, 1964, he cated in the death of one of his students. He was also a Floyd Webb is striving to untangle truth from fiction. For spent part of that hard-earned income to attend the fierce self-promoter: comic-book readers might know him the past year he’s been working on a documentary about Second World Karate Championship continued on page 22 2CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE 3

m Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago, IL 60611 312-828-9926 JULY 14, 2006 f VOL 35 | NO 42 Letters @ [email protected]

Publisher Michael Crystal Technology, IIT) was designed duct some focus groups to Editor Alison True by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. determine that sports-section Managing Editor Kiki Yablon Gross That is incorrect; Hermann readers wanted columnists to Senior Editors Michael Miner |Laura Molzahn | Kitry Krause Hall, like the library building insult, rip, and deride the Associate Editors Martha Bayne | Anaheed Alani and Selfish directly to its south, was teams, athletes, and events they Philip Montoro | Kate Schmidt designed in 1962 by Walter were covering? At least Assistant Editors Jim Shapiro | Mark Athitakis | David Wilcox Small communities that—feel- Netsch of Skidmore, Owings & Lincicome was/is a very talent- Web Editor Whet Moser ing they have no better alterna- Merrill when SOM was the ed, clever writer, and he eventu- Staff Writers Liz Armstrong | Martha Bayne | Steve Bogira John Conroy | Jeffrey Felshman | Harold Henderson tive claim to fame—host master architect for the cam- “Will his ally toned down the nastiness Deanna Isaacs | J.R. Jones | Ben Joravsky | Monica Kendrick overeaters’ competitions pus. Walter does not at all con- stomach stay (e.g., the Doug Flutie columns). Peter Margasak | Tori Marlan | Bob Mehr |Jonathan Rosenbaum [“Overeating for Fun and sider himself to be a “Miesian” stretched out, But Mariotti is just awful. Mike Sula | Albert Williams Profit,” June 30] are truly disciple. And the true die-hard and if so, who Michael Miner, what exactly Copy Chief Brian Nemtusak pitiful. The man in the crowd Miesian disciples/devotees do would want happened several years ago Editorial Assistants Pat Graham | Renaldo Migaldi | Mario Kladis Michael Marsh | Tom Porter | Jerome Ludwig | Tamara Faulkner decrying the prize money Pat not consider the building to be to be his life when Mariotti was out the Patrick Daily | Stephanie Manis | Robert Cass | Kerry Reid Bertoletti wouldn’t get when truly Miesian, although on the partner and door at the Sun-Times and Todd Dills | Katherine Young | Ryan Hubbard | Miles Raymer he vomited up those dozens surface to many it certainly try to feed then was back as the principal Tasneem Paghdiwala of tamales (“That’s $2,500 he does look like part of the Mies him?” columnist? Were there Typesetters Vera Videnovich | Kabir Hamid just put in the trash”), like the genre—“black is beautiful.” Polaroids with farm animals Archivist Eben English many spectators and contest- Though the roof is hung from involved? Please bring in Ed ants, seems not to care about massive transverse girders Gold to do a weekly skewering. Advertising Director Don Humbertson the value of the food itself. above the roof, like Crown Hall, George Kovacs Display Advertising Manager Katie Falbo While not organic or free- the east and west facades of the Ukrainian Village Online Advertising Coordinator Renate Durnbaugh range, the tamales he spewed building are cantilevered from Display Representatives Sandra Goplin | Christine Thiel forth and those his fellow the internal columns, which Brad Winckler overeaters glommed on could cannot be seen from the out- Senior Account Executives Denice Barndt | Evangeline Miller Geary Yonker have been many meals to a side. And that, the “purists” Her Daily Account Executives David Dincolo | Nichole Flores | Jeff Martin homeless man. But feeding say, is sacrilege. Greg Saint-Victor | Tim Sullivan | Laura Swisher | Dan VanKirk the poor, that would be good Harold Melvyn A. Skvarla Advertising Assistants T.J. Annerino | Kieran Kelley news, and good news is unfor- Urbana Sarah Nishiura tunately still no news. Hey, this [Harold Henderson’s Competitive eaters squander Fred Camper replies: new blog, Daily Harold, at Art Director Sheila Sachs considerable resources and Thanks very much for the chicagoreader.com] is a discov- Associate Art Director Godfrey Carmona effort to get to competitions correction. ery! I always enjoy Harold Art Coordinator Elizabeth Tamny and to stretch their stomachs Henderson in the Reader, Production Director Sean Phelan and not throw up (publicly). wherever he is squeezed, and Production Manager Bob Cooper There’s nothing remotely “ath- he’s in some pretty tight corners Associate Production Manager Nickie Sage letic” about competitive eaters, Who Needs sometimes. Now he can expand Production Artists Jeff Marlin | Jennifer McLaughlin |Mark Blade Benjamin Utley | John Cross | Andrea Bauer | Dustin Kimmel so Bertoletti ought to come up a little. He’s an excellent blogger. Josh Honn | Mike Browarski | Nadine Nakanishi with a more realistic assess- Ed Gold? I like his style. It has a begin- Editorial Design Jardí + Utensil ment than “Even though I’ve ning, middle, and end; it’s witty; been kicking ass no one’s look- A rousing “hear hear” for letter and it’s eclectic. I’ll come back Operations & Classifieds Director Mary Jo Madden ing for me to be a real threat to writer Mike Koskiewicz’s com- and visit regularly! anybody.” Martial artists are ments [July 7] on Michael Controller Karl David Wilt Kristin Lems athletic and kick-ass, and Miner’s Hot Type column on Classifieds Manager Brett Murphy Evanston Classified Representatives Sara Bassick | Danette Chavez overeaters aren’t, not by any Ozzie versus Mariotti [June Bill Daniel | Kris Dodd | Chip Dudley | Janet Lukasiewicz stretch of the imagination. 30]. “Two-bit hack” is a bit Jeff McMurray | Amy O’Connor | Scott Shehan | Kristal Snow He doesn’t know if, once he kind. Miner writes that he’s Bob Tilendis | Stephen Walker graduates and has to get a “been writing about Mariotti Correction Matches Coordinator Jane Hanna restaurant job, he’ll be able to since he arrived in Chicago 15 Operations Assistants Patrick O’Neil | Alicia Daniel Receptionists Monica Brown-Fielding | Dorie T. Greer give this waste of time as much years ago.” Well, perhaps he In my article on bike messengers, Robert Jacobs |Dave Thomas | Bob Tilendis time as he does now. Will his has, but it sure seems as though “Fresh Air! Speed! Poverty! Bookkeeper Marqueal Jordan stomach stay stretched out, and Mariotti has gotten a free ride Servitude!” [June 23], I referred Circulation Manager Perry A. Kim if so, who would want to be his from media critics ever since he to the International Workers of Circulation Fred Adams | Sadar Bahar | Neil Bagwell life partner and try to feed him? joined the Sun-Times as their the World, which, as a union Kriss Bataille | Mark Blade | Michael Boltz | Jeff Boyd Will a normal meal ever give answer to Bernie Lincicome, member pointed out to me, is Michael Bulington |Bill Daniel | Tom Frederick Kennedy Greenrod | Nathan Greer |Scott Harris |John Holland him the satisfaction winning at then the Tribune’s resident both wrong and redundant. The Josh Hudson | Sasha Kadukov |Thomas Kolinski overeating does now? basher. Back then the two correct name is the Industrial Dave Leoschke | James McArdle | Shane McDougall His parents are correct in papers had the “Sports With an Workers of the World. John Merton | Dave Miedzianski | Terry Nelson |Gerald Perdue calling his preoccupation gross: Attitude” versus “In Your Face Doug Scharin | Phil Schuster |Dorian Tajbakhsh |David Thomas Scott Eden Stephen Walker |Dan Worland this so-called sport is gross, but Sports” BS going. Did they con- beyond that, their son and his ilk are selfish and gross. Information Systems Director Jerry Davis Information Systems Project Manager Conrad Hunter Maja Ramirez Information Systems James Crandall | John Dunlevy | Doug Fawley W. Willow Special Projects Coordinator Lisa Martain Hoffer Web Developer Brantley Harris Miesidentified National Advertising The Ruxton Group, 1-888-2-RUXTON New York |Chicago|Phoenix |San Francisco Fred Camper, Two weeks ago in the Reader you wrote an art review [Now CHICAGO READER 11 E. Illinois, Chicago, IL 60611 Showing, June 23] that the 312-828-0350 Hermann Hall (student union www.chicagoreader.com at the Illinois Institute of For recorded information on placing classified ads, call 312-828-1140 (24 hours).

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CHICAGO READER, INC. President Robert A. Roth Vice President Robert E. McCamant Treasurer Thomas K. Yoder Executive Editor Michael Lenehan 4CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE

[email protected] Hot Type www.chicagoreader.com/hottype

The Plot to Get Mariotti Just because everybody’s firing at once doesn’t mean it’s a conspiracy.

By Michael Miner erry Reinsdorf said this emerged. Danny Sternfeld, true over the years when about Jay Mariotti on writing in the Chicago Sports Mariotti has written about J WBBM radio on June 22: Review, pointed out that the reigning Sports Lords from “The best thing to do is for peo- Mariotti was doing his job: the within the ranks of the various ple to bring to the public’s column that made Guillen so ownership regimes. None attention the things that he angry was the one where more effectively, by the way, does that are inappropriate. Mariotti ripped Guillen for than when he’s written about And I think you’ll see more of ordering rookie pitcher Sean Major League Baseball’s. And that happen going forward.” Oh, Tracey to throw at an enemy Jerry Reinsdorf.” and Reinsdorf, the White Sox batter and punishing him In Peterson’s view, Guillen’s chairman, also called him a when he didn’t. “He expressed “fag” comment was insignifi- “piece of garbage.” This was a an opinion and supported that cant, “because Guillen’s opin- couple days after Ozzie Guillen, opinion,” wrote Sternfeld, who ions about the world beyond the White Sox manager, called called Mariotti the best and Baseball are both ignorant him a “fucking fag.” most influential sports colum- and trivial. But this was not Columnists such as Rick nist in the city. In Hot Type I’d how the rest of the Chicago and Morrissey of the Tribune and shown some sympathy for the national sports media treated it. Rick Telander of Mariotti’s be-true-to-the-code school More important, other sports- writers began to attack David Peterson, a political analyst of the Mariotti.” To Peterson, this attack wasn’t “beautiful”—it was Noam Chomsky school, has a hunch that suspect. Only a handful of behind the Web site Jay the Joke there’s columnists had written about the Sean Tracey incident, he a PR firm hired to destroy Mariotti. observed, “Mariotti the most intelligently.” Mariotti’s reward own Sun-Times soon weighed of thought, which disgusted was a “smear campaign.” in to regret Guillen’s language Mariotti; he sent me Sternfeld’s Peterson believes Reinsdorf but endorse his larger point: column in an e-mail labeled all but acknowledged such a that Mariotti’s way of ripping READ, LEARN. campaign with his “I think athletes in his column without Then along came David you’ll see more of that happen showing his face in the club- Peterson. A political analyst of going forward” remark. He house betrayed the sports- the Noam Chomsky school, points to Jay the Joke—teeming writer’s code. Under withering Peterson can put two and two with mockery and enjoying fire, Mariotti mysteriously dis- together even if he has to drag some 800 visitors a day since it appeared from the Sun-Times, them across the dance floor to was touted on June 27 by and on July 5 the Web site Jay make the introduction. In a series Tribune sports media columnist the Joke (jaythejoke.com) car- of e-mails he told me to wake up. Teddy Greenstein. Peterson ried this posting: “There’s a Like Guillen and Reinsdorf, has a hunch that behind the Selig and steroids. How could Morrissey or Teddy Greenstein little spring to my step these Peterson dismisses a lot of site there’s a PR firm hired to Jay the Joke get that letter, (times literally dozens of others) days. . . . I think you know why: Mariotti’s output as “nothing destroy Mariotti. He notes that Peterson wondered, unless actually wrote one critical word Mariotti has been missing from more than a trashing of his Jay the Joke posted a letter there was collusion? about the ownership regimes the Sun-Times for 9 days! subjects.” But, he adds, “this is Reinsdorf and Cubs president He told me, “I regard this ‘If around Chicago that was any- That’s right, folks. Ozzie Guillen far from true of everything that Andy MacPhail jointly sent on you’re a sports columnist, you thing more than trivial?” called Mariotti a ‘fag,’ and Mariotti writes. Particularly March 28 to Sun-Times pub- show up in the clubhouse to face This week Peterson defiantly who got in the most trouble? when he writes about sports as lisher John Cruickshank the music’ to be a canard—a false came to Mariotti’s defense on Mariotti! Life can be beautiful.” a business enterprise. . . . And protesting a Mariotti column issue. When was the last time Jay the Joke, quoting a Mariotti A couple sympathizers it most assuredly has not been on baseball commissioner Bud our brave heroes such as Rick column written just before CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE 5

® The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams

I’ve searched your archive in vain—how is it that the vital field of phytoestrogen research has escaped your scrutiny? The straight dope, please: Can herbal supplements containing phytoestrogen truly last year’s World Series: “You him anonymously was shame- increase a woman’s breast size significantly? Is this method safe, or say Jerry Reinsdorf, because less and hypocritical. “That is a his ballclub won the pennant, valid point,” said the son. So are there negative side effects (sure they’re bigger, but they feel like finally is becoming a prince come out, I said. “I don’t think baseballs)? You know you’re the only source I trust. —Impatient, via e-mail of a human being. I cannot I’m personally ready to right agree. He’s still the power bro- now,” he replied. ker who squeezed the state for As for the Reinsdorf-MacPhail ou don’t need me to help you fig- phytoestrogens may a stadium, built the only letter to Cruickshank—which ure this one out, Imp. You need reduce a woman’s dud ballpark of the ’90s, asserted that, contrary to a Y about as much brains as you’d chance of developing helped orchestrate the strike Mariotti column a few days ear- find in the average fish tank. breast cancer. But Obviously if the stuff worked as advertised here’s the thing: if that almost sunk baseball and lier, “baseball, under Commis- it’d be the hottest thing since Viagra and so, they’d likely make harmed his franchise with pub- sioner Selig’s leadership, has half the women on the planet by now breasts smaller, lic-relations gaffes.” The only made tremendous strides on would look like Salma Hayek. Don’t get me not larger. sportswriter willing to “fry” the issue of steroids”—the Sox wrong; I’m not saying phytoestrogens In short, whatever Chicago’s sports bosses, posted it on their Web site, giv- don’t have their advantages—just not the uses phytoestrogens Peterson asserted, “happens to ing Jay the Joke easy access to one most purchasers are looking for. may have, increasing For those who don’t know phyto from breast size isn’t one of be the exact same one against it. No collusion there. fiduciary, a little theory: Phytoestrogens them. Many breast- whom the Jay The Joke website But consider the letter itself. are chemicals found in plants that mimic enlargement products exists to carry out its negative Two days after it was written the female sex hormone estrogen. Female contain only small publicity campaign. Go figure.” Selig’s office issued a “fact sheet” sex hormones give rise to female second- amounts of phytoestro- Is Mariotti the butt of a highly touting the commissioner’s ary sex characteristics, e.g., the enlarge- gens anyway, and none ment (sometimes to an impressive has been proven to sophisticated swiftboating cam- record on steroids. Aside from degree) of the milk-producing glands work in double-blind labo- paign? I scratched around for the opening and closing para- whence the class Mammalia derives its ratory tests. UG SIGNORINO an answer. graphs, which referred to name. Ergo, some would reason, phyto- So if they don’t work, why are people SL The facts as I now understand Mariotti, the MacPhail- estrogens = more hormones = bigger tits. allowed to advertise them for breast levels. The logic here is slightly sounder them don’t advance Peterson’s Reinsdorf letter was virtually Elements of said reasoning are not enhancement? Because these products are than that for estrogen, since progesterone conspiracy theory, but they don’t word-for-word the fact sheet. entirely without basis in fact. For one thing, sold as dietary supplements (like vita- can increase breast size by stimulating the some plants undeniably yield significant mins), not as medical treatments. As such, growth of milk-producing cells. (Whether a flatter Mariotti’s enemies either. Either Selig admired the letter so amounts of phytoestrogens when eaten, they don’t require Food and Drug woman would actually want this is a sepa- I’ll begin with jaythejoke.com. much he turned it into a press notably soy, hops, flaxseed, alfalfa, and red Administration approval and thus aren’t rate question.) A few plants are said to So far as I can tell, it was release or, much more likely, clover. Second, phytoestrogens do have a subject to rigorous testing before hitting boost progesterone, including chasteberry launched in April by a couple MacPhail and Reinsdorf got measurable impact on human biochem- the shelves. The government can still go and Mexican yam. But don’t go believing of young goofs, not a PR firm. together to defend Selig in lan- istry—one study showed that men given soy after them, though. The Federal Trade they actually do. Mexican yam, for one, has The founder who allowed guage furnished by Selig’s office. milk daily for two to four weeks experi- Commission and state consumer protec- no proven effect on progesterone levels; enced a 13 to 14 percent decrease in two tion agencies have acted on complaints in yes, it was one of the original sources for himself to be identified by Full disclosure: the evidence key hormones. For those running a signifi- several cases: the company that sold the progesterone used in early contracep- Greenstein is Matt Lynch, a that supports a collusion charge cant estrogen deficit, such as postmeno- Herbal Breast Advantage was sued by the tives, but only after the saponin chemicals Northwestern grad student even implicates me. I share a lake pausal women or male-to-female trans- Washington State attorney general’s office in the yam had been processed industrially. who lives near Wrigley Field. house with a friend who owns a sexuals, it’s not impossible that phyto- for its breast-enhancement claims; the FTC Why do people persist in taking these But Lynch says a buddy of his small piece of the White Sox and estrogens could increase estrogen levels. sued Vital Dynamics over its Isis System things? Because they’re noninvasive and But probably not by much. The main (obtaining a $22 million settlement) and relatively cheap and breast-augmentation had the original idea. The has written the Sun-Times to phytoestrogen in soybeans, genistein, for Wellquest International over its Bloussant surgery isn’t, which by some lights (admit- buddy has a job in the enter- complain about Mariotti. instance, is only 0.1 percent as strong as breast-enhancement product. (An Arizona tedly dim) may compensate for the fact tainment industry on the west Nevertheless, I’m not a part the human-produced variety. For women company, C.P. Direct, was shut down for that surgery produces results while nutri- coast and wouldn’t tell me his of anyone’s conspiracy, and I who do produce enough estrogen of their making claims about its various herbal tional supplements don’t. Self-delusion no name on the record. He said his don’t think Reinsdorf’s com- own, phytoestrogens actually decrease products, which besides a breast enlarger doubt is another big part of it. And let’s father is a major Chicago ments on WBBM are proof that overall estrogen activity by competing with included a penis-growth pill called not lose sight of the larger fact: in the the homegrown estrogen for positions on Longitude and something called Stature three-ring behavioral laboratory known as celebrity (and an occasional he’s engineering one. I asked estrogen receptor sites; when phytoestro- that was supposed to make you taller. And the United States, it’s been proven beyond Mariotti antagonist), and he Scott Reifert, the Sox vice presi- gens latch onto these sites, they push no, Impatient, these didn’t work either.) a doubt that a tissue enlargement of no didn’t want him implicated. So dent for communications, what aside the real estrogen and provide only a Phytoestrogens aren’t the only plant practical benefit from a child-rearing the son’s lying low—where his Reinsdorf meant. Reifert told weaker version. In fact, that could be their product touted as a route to bigger boobs. standpoint (small-breasted women lactate own picture belongs on the Web me that complaining privately real benefit, some experts think—by lower- Some natural breast-enlargement products just fine) can nonetheless help ensure a claim to increase the body’s progesterone site there’s a picture of Mariotti about Mariotti’s “errors and ing the body’s effective estrogen level, woman’s reproductive success. labeled DOUCHEBAG. inaccuracies . . . hasn’t seemed I reminded him that to make much difference,” so the Comments, questions? Take it up with Cecil on the Straight Dope Message Board, www.straightdope.com, Mariotti—mocked on Jay the Sox now intend to go public or write him at the Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611. Cecil’s most recent compendium of knowledge, Joke for avoiding the Sox club- with their beefs. Triumph of the Straight Dope, is available at bookstores everywhere. house—signs his name to every At any rate, if Mariotti thinks column he writes. To attack continued on page 6 6CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Hot Type

continued from page 5 everyone’s conspiring against him, he’s got a lot of evidence to point to. Having dropped hints the size of beach balls that he thinks the Sun-Times hasn’t stuck up for him, he made the tactical decision—with the Cubs-White Sox series at Wrigley Field just ahead, along with the Western Open, the World Cup, and Wimbledon—to take one of his rare vacations. Editor in chief John Barron says the vacation will go on for “weeks and weeks and weeks.” Barron allows that “we’re all prone to a bit of paranoia, Jay more so than others, perhaps,” but he believes the Sox “have got a little bit of explaining to do, in that some of the stuff in the club- house, according to Jay and other witnesses, is perhaps a lit- tle beyond the pale. If you look at it as a 21st-century workplace situation, some of that stuff could be construed as, if not a hostile work environment, not a normal one. So we want to kick that around a little bit.” Barron is pleased that several weeks ago Reifert proposed a meeting with Sun-Times brass. It’s been postponed a couple of times, but both sides seem deter- mined to make it happen. “They’ve extended a little bit of an olive branch,” says Barron. Yet he observes that “since [Reifert] made that overture, Reinsdorf has been quoted as saying Jay is a piece of garbage. I’m not sure how that helps to clear the air.” Reifert says the Sox also invited Mariotti by letter to either “come out and talk to our clubhouse” or sit down with Reifert in the presence of a lawyer (“He frequently leaves e-mails threatening litigation,” Reifert explains). He says Mariotti didn’t respond. Mariotti had nothing to say to me that was on the record. v CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE 7 8CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE

The Works [email protected]

Too Funky for Its Own Good Business is booming in Andersonville, but that’s not enough when you’re staring down a 70 percent property tax increase.

By Ben Joravsky ight years ago Sean Sheridan and his wife, E Trina, opened the Wooden Spoon, a storefront kitchenware shop at 5047 N. Clark. Now they wonder whether they can contin- ue to stay afloat. It’s not that business is bad—“quite the con- trary, it’s bustling,” Sheridan says. But property taxes are killing them. “We’re looking at our taxes going up almost $5,000 next year—that’s almost doubling,” says Sheridan. “We look at these bills and we think, how can anyone make it?” Many businesses owners in Andersonville are asking the same question as they open the reassessment notices they’ve recently received from the Cook County assessor’s office. Marsha Engquist says she may have to close the Lake Shore School, her day care center at 5611 N. Clark, which has been in business for more than 50 years. Ray Pesavento, who owns several buildings in Andersonville, says

he may have to cease renting only T MURPHY to local businesses and bring in ROBER the national chains. And just last Clark Street week Debbie Tunney, who ran the Ann Sather on Clark for just another manifestation of a Shepard fears that rising taxes tomers. It’s not much of a choice.” exemption ($4,500 as of next almost 20 years, closed its doors, major downside to the booming will destroy Andersonville’s At hearings and meetings, year), commercial property own- in part because of property taxes. real estate market. As real estate “ideal” community of diverse and politicians talk about helping the ers are out of luck on that score “It’s a terrible policy to overtax prices rise, so do assessments. locally owned ethnic restaurants, besieged home owner. But mer- as well. Suppose you have two things you want more of—like The city could offset the bite by boutiques, and specialty shops. chants say the rising taxes are pieces of property, a house and a home ownership, entrepreneur- cutting the property tax rate, but Certainly landlords and mer- tougher on them—in most com- storefront, each valued at ship, and local-owned business- there’s little chance of that: it chants are feeling the pressure. mercial buildings, retailers, not $100,000. Of the house’s value, es,” says Ellen Shepard, executive needs the revenue. The problem “There’s not much you can do property owners, pay the proper- $16,000 is taxable. For the store director of the Andersonville is that property tax is tied to a when your property taxes go way ty taxes. The taxable value of it’s $38,000. These figures are Chamber of Commerce. “But wealth that doesn’t really exist. up,” Pesavento says. “You either commercial buildings is set at a multiplied by the “state equaliz- that’s what we’re doing with the Many residents couldn’t even raise the rents, which drives out higher rate (38 percent) than er,” a number determined by the property tax.” afford to buy their property at businesses, or you raise your residential property (16 percent), Illinois Department of Revenue; Andersonville’s troubles are today’s prices. prices, which drives away cus- and while there’s a home owner’s a recent rise has it at 2.7320. CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE 9

Deduct the home owner’s taxes in Andersonville will go up Many of the Andersonville the bookstore next door pays at exemption from the $43,712 you well over 70 percent next year. merchants plan to appeal their 38 percent because it doesn’t get on the house and with a tax Some properties have it worse assessments with the county’s have apartments upstairs,” says rate of 6.21 percent the property than others. For instance, board of review. But this is an one tax-appeal expert. “It doesn’t tax on the house is $2,435. On Thybony Paint Store at 5440 N. aggravating and time-consuming mean the bookstore can afford the store it’s $6,447. Clark is looking at a $40,000 tax process. Most will have to hire to pay more than the bakery. The standard explanation for bill, up from $12,270—a leap of tax-appeal lawyers, who take 33 It’s just that one happens to the different rates is that mer- 226 percent. Engquist’s day care percent of whatever reduction rent in a building with apart- chants can pass the tax hikes on center can expect a hike of they win. And of course there’s ments and the other doesn’t. to their customers. “Commercial $10,000, from $14,482 to no guarantee that they will win. It’s so frickin’ unfair.” owners can increase prices,” says $24,894. Debbie Tunney was A few years ago the Cook The irony is that rising property 44th Ward alderman Tom looking at a tax bill of $43,348, County Board promised relief taxes are threatening the business- Tunney, who as the owner of the up more than $28,000 from her for merchants by adopting a new es and people who made the area Ann Sather chain knows a thing previous bill of $15,244. property tax classification that worth moving to in the first place. or two about commercial proper- “I love this restaurant and I enables certain commercial “We’re sitting on a gold mine of ty taxes. “Residential property love this community,” she says. buildings with no more than six property value,” Engquistsays, owners don’t have that option.” “But no business is able to handle units of apartment housing to be “but that doesn’t do me any good But as Debbie Tunney, Tom’s that kind of hit.” Instead she says taxed at the residential rate of 16 unless I want to sell. I want to run sister, points out, there’s only so that she’s turning it back over to percent. But that change has led an affordable day care center.” much merchants can squeeze her brother and that he plans to to some weird inequities. “You’ve “I can’t afford these kinds of from their customers, and T MURPHY reopen it in August. “I said, ‘Tom, got situations where the bakery taxes,” Sheridan says. “Here’s the

according to a study by the ROBER you’ll have a hard time making a pays at 16 percent because it has future for Andersonville: banks, chamber of commerce, property The Wooden Spoon profit with those taxes.’” a few apartments upstairs while Starbucks, and multinationals.” v 10 CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Chicago Antisocial [email protected]

the morning—sometimes longer. She sleeps one or two hours a night, if that. Twelve years ago in Australia Janani noticed a discol- ored mark on Amma’s cheek—a bruise, she says, from people knocking their heads into hers as they dove in for the embrace. The mark is still there today. Amma, who is 52 years old, was born in a fishing village on the Malabar Coast of southwestern India. According to a biography by Swami Amritaswarupananda, she had darker skin than her sib- lings, and her family treated her like a servant. She was forced to drop out of school at the age of ten because her family decided her punishment for ecstatic, incessant dancing and chanting would be doing all the chores, cooking all the meals, and tend- ing to the farm animals. Still, all her spare time was devoted to praising Krishna. As she grew older, her religious devotion deepened and local people began to follow her, some believing she was a deity. She began her practice of hugging strangers as a teenager. Word of her powers spread, and people started traveling to her village to see the “little godwoman.” Amma built her first ashram on a tenth of an acre of land in 1981 and it has since grown to occupy five acres and houses some 2,000 devotees at any given time. Amma has been touring inter- nationally since the late 80s and doesn’t charge worshipers any- thing. Her followers, who travel on their own dime, says Janani, raise money for her charities (which include earthquake relief, food and shelter for the TO poor and homeless, and a tree- CIER A planting program) by selling any YA number of items from a travel- MIRE At the Oak Brook Marriott, July 6 ing bazaar. On the myriad tables inside the Marriott ballroom were essential oils, Vedic astrol- ogy charts, the aforementioned batiks, dozens of books and pamphlets by or about Amma, photographs of Amma, and many, many items she’d blessed or worn, including plants, crys- tals, jewelry, shoes, and bottles of Hug It Out Escada perfume. You could even buy a strand of her hair for $7. Finally, around 4 AM, it was Taking darshan with Indian holy woman Amma my turn to meet with Amma. I was a little nervous. As I crept By Liz Armstrong toward her on my knees like I’d ast Thursday around 2 AM, was selling loose-fitting clothing room to wait. Some people had hand each person a gift: a piece of seen the others do, I worried folding up batik banners with similar motifs and took some wrapped themselves in blankets fruit, a flower, a Hershey’s Kiss. that she could sense that I had L with gold-printed tantric time to try to orient myself. I’d and fallen asleep. Others were According to her Web site, briefly contemplated stealing diagrams in a hallway leading to been there over an hour, and meditating or reading. Hundreds Amma has hugged more than 25 from her people, and that some- the Oak Brook Marriott’s Grand thought by working behind the of people whose number had million people from around the times I’m a bad person. Ballroom, it occurred to me that scenes I might come to better recently been called stood in a world. Amma’s followers believe I sat in front of her and gazed I could steal them all and no one understand why there were about long, snaking line that ended in that her hugs allow people to feel into her big brown eyes. She would know. I’d volunteered to a thousand people there, their Amma’s arms. Some hung flower pure, unconditional love, and that looked a little tired, but she help clean up after an appear- footwear deposited in endless rows garlands around her neck; some this feeling can heal their spirits. smiled. Someone behind me gen- ance by the revered Indian holy of shelves outside the ballroom. held out jewelry or other objects In an interview following her tly pushed my back down and I woman Mata Amritanandamayi Even as we were packing up, for her to bless. Sometimes whole acceptance of the 2002 Gandhi- laid my head in her lap. She put —better known as Amma, Amma wasn’t finished hugging families would go up at once, and King Award for Nonviolence, her arms around me and I rested Sanskrit for mother—who tours everyone—not even close. She sat Amma would scoop all of them in Amma said that her god is all of mine on the sides of her thighs, the world granting divine bless- on a bench on a stage in the front together, holding them as they humanity and “everything that cautiously holding onto her hips. ings in the form of hugs. But it of the room, inside a sort of wept or laughed. Sometimes can be seen.” She said she “loves Amma leaned down toward my seemed like stealing from an makeshift tent draped with glit- someone would show her a photo everyone and everything and they ear and whispered, “Ma, ma, ma, organization whose mission is to tery pink, purple, and gold fabrics. and Amma would smile, kiss it, or love me as much.” She is so self- ma,” first gently, and then in a spread love might be, I don’t Upon arriving everyone who furrow her brow with compassion. less, says her press liaison, Janani, huskier tone, and then almost know, wrong somehow. wanted to be hugged was handed She’d rub backs, kiss foreheads, that when she tours, she hugs demonlike, as if she were speak- I returned the banners to a a ticket with a group number on it wipe tears, giggle, and no matter everyone who comes to see her, ing to my dark side, telling it woman inside the ballroom who and then took a seat in the ball- what, sprinkle rose petals and continuing into the wee hours of that it was loved too. v CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE 11 12 CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE Architecture

A Legacy Destroyed Will the city let yet another Adler and Sullivan building go down?

By Lynn Becker ne of the few remaining tive director of the Richard buildings by Dankmar Nickel Committee, an organiza- O Adler and Louis Sullivan, tion dedicated to preserving the and probably their last surviving photographer’s work. “Nickel wood-frame structure, may soon was able to gain access and look disappear. The 1888 house, at floor plans the Bayer family designed for insurance tycoon had that were by Adler and George Harvey, is at 600 W. Sullivan. He was able to docu- Stratford Place in Lakeview, less ment the floor plans and con- than a block from Lake vince the Bayers to donate them Michigan, and according to to the Art Institute.” He also advocacy group Preservation photographed the interior of the Chicago, owner Natalie Frank house. recently told Alderman Helen Miller hasn’t been inside the Shiller she was about to apply for house, but he’s peered through a demolition permit. the large window of the front It’s a hot area for development. door. “It still retains its beautiful Just down the street—Stratford staircase,” he says. “You can see is only one block long—another the underside. It’s got the vintage home on a similar lot recessed coffers, small coffers. was recently torn down to make It’s completely intact from what way for a 23-story residential I can tell, with balusters and the high-rise—one unit per floor, handrail and a newel post that’s starting at $1.3 million. The covered in a sort of foliated Harvey House parcel is in a more Sullivan ornament.” restrictive zone, RM5, but that In late June, Miller talked to would still allow it to be replaced the son of the second owner of with a building up to five stories the house. He was born in the high with up to ten units. house in 1917 and grew up there, Adler and Sullivan created so he could describe every room some of the most important in detail. The original porte buildings of the 1880s and ’90s, cochere and a wraparound porch including the Auditorium he spoke of are both long gone, Building and the Carson Pirie but he also described details that Scott store on State Street. differed from those in the Adler Daniel Burnham may have built and Sullivan drawings. Miller more and built bigger, but realized that some of those Sullivan gave the Chicago School details, which he’d assumed were of Architecture its soul. He’s the result of remodeling, might credited with coining the phrase actually have been changes the “form follows function,” a seem- architects made when the house ingly dry injunction that he was built. For example, the son made sing by taking the new idea didn’t remember the series of of a skyscraper—“this sterile pile, arches on the east porch, though this harsh, brutal agglomeration, they’re clear in the drawings. The this stark, staring exclamation of house he described was more eternal strife”—and making it streamlined than the one in the

“every inch a proud and soaring drawings, which Miller thinks UEPRINT) thing, rising in sheer exultation.” might reflect Frank Lloyd Like most architects of their Wright’s input. TEE (BL time, Adler and Sullivan also The Harvey House is in danger OMMIT designed numerous homes— because it isn’t an official especially after Frank Lloyd Chicago landmark. On the Wright joined the firm in 1888— Chicago Historic Resources including Charnley House on Survey, a listing of more than

North Astor. Few survive. Last 17,000 distinctive properties Y OF THE RICHARD NICKEL C

August Hurricane Katrina flat- completed in 1995, it has an TES tened two cottages Sullivan orange rating, the second- OUR ); C designed in Ocean Springs, highest category. In the highest AY Mississippi, one of them his own are 300 “red” rated buildings, OD vacation retreat. So few of any of defined by the survey as “poten-

Adler and Sullivan’s structures tially significant in the broader T MURPHY (T survive that every loss is painful. context of the City of Chicago.” ROBER In January a fire reportedly The broader orange rating covers The Harvey House today; a blueprint photographed by Richard Nickel showing arches that may never have been built on the east porch started by a worker’s blowtorch 9,600 structures that are “poten- gutted their Pilgrim Baptist tially significant in the context of or even razed before the commis- been accidentally issued, despite knocked down large chunks of Church in Bronzeville, built in the surrounding community.” By sion can review the application. A my repeated calls. Rather than the back of the building. The 1891 as the Kehilath Anshe law, if someone applies for a permit was issued to demolish using the [official] Logan developer sued the Landmarks Ma’ariv synagogue. demolition permit for an orange the south side’s Saint Gelasius Boulevard address, they used Commission, and at the July 12 In 1962 the great Chicago rated building, a 90-day hold is when the application was sup- Elston. It was election day. I had commission meeting the staff is architectural photographer automatically placed on it while posedly on hold (the church was taken the day off, and fortunately scheduled to present a recom- Richard Nickel got a tip that the the Commission on Chicago later designated an official land- I came down Elston Avenue— mendation to withdraw the pro- Harvey House was designed by Landmarks, a body appointed by mark). The application for a per- and there was the crane behind posal to landmark the building. Adler and Sullivan and went to the mayor, reviews the applica- mit to demolish the orange rated it. They were nice enough down It’s apparently part of a deal in photograph its exterior. tion and decides whether the Chicago Printed String Building, at City Hall to revoke the permit, which the developer gets to gut “Eventually he was able to con- building deserves to be saved. a 1920s art deco structure at but I couldn’t get an inspector to half the building and remove nect with the owner—the Bayer But the city has a record of let- Elston and Logan designed by stop the demolition. I knew the the lowest band of distinctive family, which had a famous linen ting orange rated buildings slip Alfred S. Alschuler, was also sup- owner of National Wrecking green Teco tiles in exchange for shop in the Women’s Athletic through the cracks, issuing per- posed to be on hold. “I actually Company, and I called to ask him preserving the rest of the two Club on North Michigan for mits before 90 days are up and had to pull the wrecker off that to call these guys off.” But by the street facades—and dropping years,” says Ward Miller, execu- allowing buildings to be damaged one,” says Miller. “The permit had time the workers left they’d already the lawsuit. CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE 13

Saving the Harvey House sioner of the Landmarks lots of money. Why the big dif- They communicate by could be a long shot. The city Commission, says that even if a ference in streets just a block The Lake House exchanging letters through a stood on the sidelines while a building meets all seven criteria, apart? Hawthorne Place is an From The magical mailbox at the glass developer leveled Adler and that won’t matter if it doesn’t official landmark district. The house. (I know, I know—either Sullivan buildings that were meet another, overriding criteri- existing buildings are protected, Lake House you buy it or you don’t.) Built by among their greatest works and on—that it have architectural and any new construction is held Reeves’s architect father on an among the most important integrity. This issue will probably to a high standard, one example The Lake House, the new film by idyllic lake far from the city cen- buildings in the history of archi- be at the center of the argument being Weese Langley Weese’s Chicago-born playwright and ter, it’s an idealized vision of tecture. In the 60s the outrage over the house, which Goeken gracefully proportioned addi- architecture buff David Auburn, serenity and retreat. over the demolition of their says has been significantly tions to the Chicago City Day makes rich use of city locations, The 2,000-square-foot struc- Schiller Building was the event altered. The discrepancies School. At some point the pro- including the Daley Center and ture was built for the film on the that started the architectural between the original drawings posal to landmark the block interiors of the Auditorium banks of 55-acre, man-made preservation movement in and the memories of the second encompassed three homes on Building and Prairie Avenue Maple Lake in the Palos Forest Chicago. It couldn’t prevent owner’s son may prove critical to Stratford, including the Harvey Bookshop. But unlike those Preserve, at 95th near Archer. To another Adler and Sullivan the debate. House. That further complicates durable landmarks, the movie’s avoid interfering with the ice masterwork, the 1894 Chicago The case for the house isn’t the case for preserving it, title edifice and principal set was fishing that’s one of the lake’s Stock Exchange, from being helped by its surroundings. It’s because a structure that’s been 20 miles from the Loop—a cus- major winter attractions, con- torn down in 1972. Richard one of only a handful of surviv- denied protection once has to tom-built, quarter-million-dollar struction didn’t start until Nickel died taking pictures in ing vintage homes on Stratford, meet a higher standard the sec- glass house that has since van- February 2005. The local engi- the rubble. and the rest of the block is a ond time around. ished into thin air. neering firm of McDonough The Harvey House isn’t in the museum of dreck—four-plus- Given its proximity to the lake The film’s driving conceit is Associates and the film’s produc- same league as these two lost ones, ugly apartment buildings, and the short supply of single- that stars Keanu Reeves and tion designer, Nathan Crowley, masterworks, but it still might and the service entrance of a family homes of its size and Sandra Bullock are sharing the had to design the project so it meet as many as four of the land- generic condo tower on Cornelia quality, not to mention its pedi- house but never meet because, could be completed in just ten mark ordinance’s seven possible that treats Stratford as if it were gree, a restored Harvey House somehow, they’re living two weeks. Nearly 100 carpenters, criteria for designation as a land- a back alley. The east side of the would undoubtedly provide years apart. When Reeves looks welders, and painters were mark. Jonathan Fine, president house is also smack up against a Frank a handsome profit if she up Bullock by visiting the return required to meet the deadline. of Preservation Chicago, says, 60s apartment building. decided to sell, though not as address on her letters, it’s still a To accommodate the film crew “Without question it qualifies for By contrast, the next street much as another stack of ugly construction site. When Bullock and its equipment, the house had two—important architect and south, Hawthorne Place, has a condos. If she files an application is working as a doctor at a local to support up to 100 pounds per important architecture.” He handsome terra-cotta-clad for a demolition permit, the ball hospital, Reeves’s character is square foot, about double the thinks it might also meet a third apartment building at the Lake will be in the city’s court. It somewhere out in the burbs, standard for a typical residence. criterion, that a building reflect a Shore Drive end, and the rest of would be ironic if during this, overseeing the construction of a Thirty-five tons of steel were used key aspect of the city’s heritage, the block is filled with pictur- the 150th anniversary of housing development that’s in its frame, which had to be engi- because it was built when esque large old houses, most in Sullivan’s birth, the city let yet depicted as a severe compromise neered to resist movement under Lakeview was still a suburb. But the kind of pristine condition another of his irreplaceable of his potential as a promising strong spring winds that could Brian Goeken, deputy commis- that speaks of loving care and buildings slip through its fingers. young architect. continued on page 14 14 CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Architecture

continued from page 13 House’s exceptional engineering crack the large panes of glass. got it named a finalist in the And it had to be done without small-project category of awards diagonal bracing, rejected by handed out last month by the Crowley because it would have Structural Engineers Association obstructed camera angles. of Illinois. (I served on the jury.) To speed things up the house— But if you’re tempted to run out ostensibly built in the lake, on to Maple Lake to check it out for stilts—was actually built beside the yourself, think again. lake, on land. A temporary dam To gain approval for construc- was constructed, and behind it tion, the production team had to nearly 1,200 cubic feet of soil exca- deal with EPA guidelines, build- vated, to a depth of 20 feet. A steel ing and zoning regulations, and foundation was put in place, then interested third parties such as concrete footing was poured for the Audubon Society and Friends ten-foot-high steel supports, and of the Forest Preserve. Though the building was fabricated on top. the house quickly became some- When it was finished, the dam was thing of a tourist attraction, when removed, water flooded in, and the filming wrapped after three lake was brought to the house. months it was quickly, unsenti- A year later, about the time of mentally dismantled. A new fish- the film’s release, the Lake The Lake House ing pier now marks the site. v

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[snip] Shall we overcome? “Black Chicagoans are more 90 percent black tripled between 1960 and 2000,” accord- concentrated in heavily populated black areas now than ing to census data. “And the percentage of the city’s black they were in the years leading up to King’s [1966] Chicago residents living in those communities grew from 41 per- Our Town campaign,” writes Jeff Kelly Lowenstein in the Chicago cent to55 percent.” —Harold Henderson | Reporter. “The number of communities that were at least [email protected]

Adventure Up Everest, Quietly Sophia Danenberg was the first black woman to sit on top of the world and nobody noticed. By Jeffrey Felshman t 7 AM on May 19 Sophia Danenberg reached the sum- A mit of Mount Everest, making her the first African-American—and the first black woman from any- where—to stand at the top of the world. Bad weather during the night had delayed other climbers, so Danenberg and the Sherpas she’d hired, Pa Nuru Sherpa and his broth- er Mingma Tshiring, were the only people there. She wasn’t as elated as you might expect: she had bronchi- tis, a stuffed nose, and frostbite on

her cheeks, and her oxygen mask was A clogged with snow and ice. “So I was like, cool, I made it,” she says. “I have U SHERP to get this oxygen mask fixed and get NUR PA off this mountain.” Danenberg at the summit Three weeks later Danenberg, who’s 34, was at Disney World with from Connecticut who’d made the haven’t either. She says climbers are peaks, two of them without David: her sister, niece, and nephew, headed summit while she was still in Nepal. pretty much oblivious to race, though Mount Tasman in New Zealand and for Expedition Everest, the park’s But then she kept a low profile not gender: “They won’t really notice Ama Dablam in Nepal. newest ride, though the threat of a before, during, and after her climb. that I’m a black woman, but with a Danenberg wasn’t looking to be hurricane had kept plenty of people She wasn’t sponsored and didn’t bunch of guys isolated somewhere, the first anything when she began away. “On the real Mount Everest send satellite photos or dispatches to and there’s only 15 women, yeah, planning a spring climb this past and on the Expedition Everest ride news organizations, as many they’ll notice you.” January. She wasn’t even considering everybody always talks about the climbers do. The only people she Danenberg got into mountaineer- Everest, though she did want to go lines and the crowds,” she says, kept in touch with, by e-mail, were ing in 1999 after a childhood friend higher than she’d gone before. She’d laughing. “I was on both without the her sister, her husband, and a col- encouraged her to try rock climbing. signed up for a three-month leave lines and the crowds.” Afterward she league at work. For two years she did technical from work and was contemplating flew to Chicago to visit her father in Danenberg, whose father is black climbs, meeting her husband, David, the sixth-highest mountain in the Homewood, where she grew up, then and mother Japanese, says most peo- on one of them. “He was near the world, Cho Oyu, which straddles the home to Connecticut and her job ple are surprised to hear she was the top of a cliff,” she says. “He noticed border of Nepal and Tibet. She was troubleshooting and tracking envi- first African-American to scale me walking in below.” When the comparing prices of tours with ronmental regulations for a jet- Everest, but not other climbers. friend took her up Mount Rainier in mountaineering companies when a engine manufacturer. “There aren’t a lot of African- 2002, she decided she liked the guide recommended she try Everest. Since 1953 some 2,500 people Americans—or black people from challenges of a wide variety of ter- “He said, ‘Given your experience, I have stood atop 29,035-foot Everest, anywhere, American or otherwise— rains even better, and over the next don’t think you’d have a hard time, though the first black man, South in high-altitude mountaineering,” couple years she and David scaled and you’d probably end up getting at Africa’s Sibusiso Vilane, didn’t get she says. She’s never met another every mountain they could together, least as high on Everest as you would there until 2003. Vilane made news black person on any big mountain in including Mount Baker, Mount on Cho Oyu,’” she says. around the world, but no one noticed the world, and when the subject Kenya, Kilimanjaro, Mount Rainier, Some people spend years planning Danenberg’s ascent—not even her comes up with other climbers, most Grand Teton, and Mount McKinley, their Everest expedition. Danenberg local paper, though it listed people of them white males, they usually or Denali. In 2005 she scaled five thought about it for a week and was CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE 19

[snip] “Nature is astonishingly cruel. Science, by contrast, has the power of mercy.” That’s the response of Minette Marin at timesonline.co.uk to the news that a procedure called preimplantation genetic haplotyping can now Boutique of the Week be used to screen embryos for 6,000 diseases and conditions, including really nasty ones like Huntington’s disease and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. —HH

on her way five weeks later, flying out would have to decide what route to of Hartford alone on March 19. take, when to try for the summit, David couldn’t get off work, but she when to turn back. says he wasn’t that interested any- Getting acclimated on Everest way. “And he’s technically a better requires climbing up to the first of climber than me,” she says, adding the four camps, staying there that he looks for mountains that are briefly, going back down to the “more challenging, not in terms of base camp, then back to Camp I endurance, but in terms of skill— and on to Camp II. Then down more challenging, less dangerous.” again, back up, and on to Camp III. An ascent of Everest is still one of During the climbs other Sherpas the more hazardous undertakings in would stop Pa Nuru and marvel at the world, even though the experience his companion, who was setting an has been cheapened by all the compa- average pace for a man but a good nies offering guided tours for rich one for a woman. Danenberg people who aren’t terribly skilled remembers one saying, “Hey, this ON

climbers. In 1986 four people made it woman is really strong.” They also KS AC to the summit during the three-week said she looked a little like them, J A. climbing season, which usually runs because at five-foot-two she’s short from mid-May to early June; this year and she has dark skin. One Sherpa around 300 did. By 2005, 192 people told her, “You look Nepalese, only had died on the mountain, and this with better hair.” Michelle Tan season there were 11 more. David When she got to Camp II the third Sharp, an experienced 34-year-old time she decided she wanted to try British climber, died while Danenberg for the top. “I actually waited one long crack runs across the concrete floor in Michelle says she likes to limit the numbers of each design (though A Tan’s new boutique, but she doesn’t mind. “Life is not she will do special orders) and is always adding new ones. was on the mountain; he was on the day,” she says. “For me that was the Really ornate pieces can run as high as $1,000, but most north side and was passed by several biggest struggle, because you really perfect,” says the 29-year-old designer, and neither are her garments, which she generally likes to leave with a few come in the $200-$300 range. The store also stocks a few people who might well have been able only get one chance at the summit. unfinished seams. Because Tan sticks with basic colors like other designers’ items, including sweaters made from bright to save him but kept climbing. On the When you leave Camp III you’ve black, white, cream, and beige, she lets herself go crazy recycled cashmere by Mothballs and a southern or Nepal side, which committed to summit on a certain with texture—sewing a couple dozen folded squares of mate- small selection of jewelry and hand- 1872 N. Damen bags. By September, Tan also plans to Danenberg had chosen, three Sherpas day. You can’t really delay at those rial cut out with pinking shears to the hem of a skirt, say, or 773-252-1888 have a section devoted to brand-new were killed when a tower of ice five high altitudes and come back down.” constructing a jacket out of fabric made from clumps of pale wool and bits of cashmere. Simpler pieces always have a designers. She started holding fashion stories high fell on them. Many who die on Everest do so on twist: a classic little black dress comes with a bib that the shows and shopping her collections right out of school and In some ways Everest wasn’t as dif- the descent, exhausted from the wearer can tie up, down, or over one shoulder, and an A-line spent several years sinking money into her work before ficult technically as some of the other effort of going up. She asked Pa skirt has a panel of pleats in front. Tan’s stark all-white seeing any returns; now she wants to help other talented peaks Danenberg had scaled, which Nuru whether he thought the weath- space emphasizes the small size of her collection, but Tan youngsters get a leg up. —Heather Kenny she knew was a good thing. “In my er would hold, whether she should opinion, you should be technically a go for it. She says he just looked at lot more competent than the level of her and said, “It’s your decision.” the mountain,” she says. “A lot of peo- She wanted to leave Camp IV at ple go there and they can just barely night, but it was cloudy, snowing, climb that. I would be terrified if that’s and windy. But by 10 PM the weath- just before her, and eventually the her mask, took photos, and watched all I could climb.” The great difficulty er above the camp seemed to be man who’d left at the same time she the Sherpas take pictures of each of Everest is the altitude, which mag- clearing, and a few people from her did decided to go back down. As she other. She says they joked about hop- nifies every problem. Most people outfitter started up. Shortly before 11 kept climbing in the dark she couldn’t ping from Nepal to Tibet—the bor- wind up sick, and getting stuck away PM she and a man from her group see any other headlamps. “I thought der runs across the summit—but from camp overnight can mean death. decided to go up, and they knew peo- everyone except us had turned they were all too tired. A quarter As she explains, “You just can’t survive ple from other outfitters were con- around,” she says. “I thought we were hour later they headed back down. at that altitude for very long.” sidering that as well. the only people on the mountain.” Danenberg has enough time off this Danenberg, along with eight peo- The weather was still bad lower on But she and the Sherpas felt strong, year to make one more climb, but she ple she didn’t know, signed up for the mountain. At one point so they kept going. “It never crossed hasn’t decided where she wants to go. an “unguided” climb with an outfit- Danenberg heard thunder below her my mind that we could be going so “Most of the mountains I want to ter. For the $36,000 fee she would and looked down. “I could see this much faster that they could be that climb are very pretty,” she says. “The get a tent site at the base camp and floor of clouds, you know, because the far behind us.” When she made the whole time I was checking up and each of the four camps along the mountains are up above it, and I summit at 7 AM she saw that no one looking at Everest I was thinking, southern route up the mountain, could see forever because I’m really had come up the north side, though ‘Why am I climbing this mountain?’ the help of two Sherpas, weather high up,” she says. “I could see the she could now see people coming up Because I don’t look at it as a very reports, food, and oxygen. But she lightning coming out of the clouds behind her. “I was two hours ahead pretty mountain.” She pauses. “It’s would carry her own gear and pitch below me—going down. It was the of everybody on the south side,” she really very pretty at the top part of the her own tent, and there would be no most amazing sight.” says. “So I was completely by myself.” mountain. But you can’t see that from guide making decisions for her—she She passed the climbers who’d left She cleared the snow and ice from way down.” v 20 CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE

[snip] “Democrats are lame, feckless, timid, the Democrats can be ‘hopelessly divided’ while ineffective’ while dealing a humiliating defeat to and hopelessly divided. ... You’ll never fall voting together 88 percent of the time, accord- the president’s biggest domestic policy effort flat at a Washington party by repeating this ing to Congressional Quarterly, just one percent- [Social Security reform]. They can be deemed bit of conventional wisdom,” writes Amy age point lower than the vaunted lock-step ‘weak’ and ‘timid’ while setting the terms of the Our Town Sullivan in the Washington Monthly. “So it is that Republican caucus. They can be ‘pathetically debate for pulling troops out of Iraq.” —HH

day-to-day business, he’s still hale and crusty enough to putter around. “Give Living History me half-a-dozen Montrose fishermen, put ’em anywhere in the world, and they can catch anything,” he likes to say. The Last Bait With his bait they’ve caught perch, smallmouth bass, rock bass, salmon, Shop on the smelt, and “nice-sized crappies.” On sunny days the line at the counter is full Lakefront of Bosnians, Mexicans, and old retired farts hoping to talk shop with Greene. Willie Green remembers If you want his undivided attention, when the shores of Lake you have to stop in when it rains. Greene caught the fishing bug early. Michigan were chockablock When he was a student at Graeme with fishermen and a Stewart Elementary he spent his giant minnow tank was mornings on the pier. “I knew there wasn’t gonna be anything special until a great investment. one or two in the afternoon, so I By Edward McClelland slipped out,” he says. The Depression was still on then, and the harbor was he front door of the Park Bait crowded with men fishing for their Shop at Montrose Harbor opens supper. The regulars had nicknames T toward the water, away from the out of Cannery Row: Harry the Jap, GRANE high-rises that line Marine Drive. Diversey Shorty, Coffee George, Uncle D E

White letters nailed to the rust-colored Henry. They adopted Greene as a mas- OY LL wood spell out everything needed for a cot, and warned him when his mother Willie Green day of fishing: NIGHTCRAWLERS, RED - came looking for her truant son. “This WORMS, MINNOWS, COHO BAIT, TACK- Uncle Henry, he sort of took me under Back then Montrose Avenue was the Senn High School during World War LE, COFFEE. Inside there’s a doughnut his wing,” Greene says. “He used to say, Great White Way for worms, with a II to join the navy; when he came tray for early risers and glass cases full ‘Willie live or Willie die?’ Before the half-dozen shops dotting the road to home, in 1949, he seined for minnows of safety-orange bobbers and sinkers Depression set in he’d been an execu- the lake. Greene got started in the and crawfish in the Illinois River, car- that look like Civil War bullets. tive of a food chain on the east coast. business when he was 11, digging night rying his catch back to Chicago in a ’37 Willie Greene has owned the shop He ended up out here with the other crawlers out of freshly watered yards Pontiac with the backseat torn out. since the 1950s. He’s 78 now, and guys. Didn’t give a shit whether he in Uptown and selling them to stores Eight years later he took over the lease though his daughter Stacey handles the worked or not.” for $3 a gallon. He dropped out of on the Park Bait Shop. It was just a CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE 21

[snip] Defining the threat. David erosexual families. Honestly, which has who love each other to make their life- Batstone writes at sojo.net, “I simply ruined more marriages: The extramari- long commitment public?” —HH cannot understand why so many evan- tal affairs that are so brazenly cele- Free Shit gelicals consider same-sex marriage as brated on Desperate Housewives or Read Harold Henderson’s blog, the prime threat to the virtue of het- the decision of two men or two women Daily Harold, at chicagoreader.com Classical Music and Snacks

ree concerts aren’t hard to find in the summer concession stand then, but Greene smelt ran on local TV, and at night, ing.” There’s no longer a beach bus F months, but they can be a hard sell if they added on a shed in the back with Greene says, “the whole lakefront either, and with all the soccer players compete with dinner. Perhaps recognizing this, the six-year-old Rush Hour Concert Series at 10,000- and 5,000-gallon minnow was lit up with Coleman lanterns.” and rollerbladers crowding the lake- Saint James tanks. Then in the mid-60s he opened But all the old lakefront bait shops front, the fishermen can’t find a place Saint James Cathedral starts another shop, at 63rd and Stony are gone. Only Greene remains, to park. “They’re trying to put ten Cathedral its weekly cham- Island. “That was a gold mine,” he and he’s not doing nearly as much pounds of shit in a five-pound bag,” 65 E. Huron ber-music says. “On Friday night they’d be lined business as he used to. The people Greene says. “There’s more people www.saint concerts with up—‘give me four dozen crawlers and who live near Montrose Harbor, he involved with the park than the lake, jamescathedral.org snacks and wine at 5:15 PM. tollway change.’” But after a couple says, are the people least likely to fish because the people that want to do After half an hour of noshing, years the city shut it down, telling in it. “A guy, if he doesn’t have a job, the fishing, they can’t park.” members of the Chicago Greene they planned to build a court- he can spend a day fishing and not On the way out of Greene’s wood- Chamber Musicians, the house. It never did. spend any money. It’s a depression paneled office visitors pass a photo of Chicago Symphony When Greene took over the Park business. This neighborhood don’t do an era gone by: a crowded pier with so Orchestra, and other top- notch organizations pro- Bait Shop, Lakeview was a neighbor- me any good for that reason. In the many men dipping bamboo poles into vide the music. The July 18 hood of first- and second-generation 90s I was starving to death. Marine the lake it looks like a fishing derby. concert features Debussy vio- Chicagoans, people still in touch Drive, Lake Shore Drive, big buildings On the other side of the doorjamb is a lin and cello sonatas; the with rural or old-world traditions. like that—they don’t produce the peo- sign printed with Greene’s motto: THE series runs Tuesdays through They’d grown up fishing in ple who fish. They don’t have the TIME AMAN TAKES OFF TO GO FISH- August 29. —Megan Roberts Mississippi or Poland and wanted a time. They have the money and ING IS NOT CHARGED AGAINST HIS honey hole they could reach by resources to do other things. They ALLOTTED TIME ON EARTH. If that’s streetcar. Fishing was such a popular may own a place at Lake Geneva, but true, Willie Greene should last anoth- [email protected] activity that features on the spring they’re not the ones that do the fish- er 50 years. v 22 CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Count Dante

continued from page 1 at the Chicago Coliseum. Numerous feats of martial-arts prowess were on display—board breaking, kata (patterns of tech- niques), sparring—and Webb recalls Keehan, the event’s organizer, stalking the sidelines. Keehan took a moment to chat with Webb and his friends— which impressed Webb not just because they were kids but also because they were black. Keehan became “Steve McQueen cool” to Webb after that. “He was a snappy dresser,” Webb says. “He had a school on Rush Street. We used to go downtown with our various hustles when we ditched school, and we would always run into him.” Chicago had 13 dojos in 1964, and Keehan owned two of them: the Imperial Academy of Fighting Arts at 1020 N. Rush and Chicago Judo and Karate Center at 7902 S. Ashland. They were too far away and too expensive for Webb to attend, but he still pursued martial arts, checking out karate manuals from the bookmobile, studying untranslated pamphlets from Chinatown bookshops, and taking lessons from war veterans and immigrants from Hong S)

Kong. He briefly competed in TRAIT tournaments but eventually pur- OR POR sued a career in film: he studied OL photojournalism at NIU, founded Y (C the Blacklight Film Festival (a showcase for black filmmakers), JIM NEWBERR and later worked as a producer on Floyd Webb, who’s making a documentary about Keehan (top left); Keehan’s former student James Jones (bottom left); Keehan in action (top right) the films Daughters of the Dust and posing in the program for his first event, in 1963 (bottom right) and The World of Nat King Cole. Webb revisited several old appeared on the Tribune’s society USKA’s midwest representative. Bruce Lee—as well as new stu- ‘What can I do for myself instead neighborhoods while working on pages. He also had an older sister, In the early 60s dojos were dents. James Jones, a 66-year-old of the art?’” Arthur D. Rapkin, a the Cole documentary and ran Diane. They’re all dead too, rough, bare-bones joints largely retiree now living in Hazel Crest, Milwaukee-area acupuncturist into some friends from his karate according to a cousin of Keehan’s inhabited by cops, ex-soldiers, signed on at Keehan’s Rush Street who studied under Keehan from days. One said he’d recently seen contacted by Webb. (The cousin and assorted other tough guys. school the day after he attended 1965 to 1971, recalls Keehan’s Count Dante on the street. So did not respond to requests to be (Trias, who died in 1989, was an the U. of C. event. He studied “chronic” arguing with other did another. A third said he’d interviewed for this story.) In his Arizona highway patrolman with Keehan for three years and karate schools. His ideas for actually talked to Keehan and teens Keehan attended Mount who’d studied karate while sta- remembers him as an ideal tournaments were the biggest claimed he was now living on the Carmel High School and boxed at tioned in the Pacific during instructor. “John was a person problem. Unlike most other southwest side. “I said, ‘You’re Johnny Coulon’s 63rd Street gym, World War II.) But Keehan, who focused on basics and fun- teachers, Keehan advocated full- hallucinating!’” Webb says. and after graduating from high wanting a bigger audience, damentals,” he says. “He had contact matches—no safety He was sure Keehan was dead, school he joined the marine began to organize tournaments excellent form and techniques.” equipment, no pulled punches. but to make certain he pulled reserves and later the army, where that emphasized the flashier He also says that Keehan was “John was six-foot, well built, Keehan’s death certificate. The he learned hand-to-hand combat aspects of the martial arts; he one of the few men who could and looked like a bodybuilder,” self-proclaimed deadliest man and jujitsu techniques. appears on the cover of one tour- side kick or punch a brick in half, says Michael Felkoff, a friend of alive, it explained, had died in By 1962, after the service, nament program smashing eight though at one event it took three Keehan’s now living in Las his Edgewater condo from a Keehan was teaching at Gene rows of bricks with his elbow. He strikes and Keehan wound up Vegas. “If you fucked with him, bleeding peptic ulcer, probably Wyka’s Judo and Karate Center in was a savvy publicist, making breaking five bones in his hand. he was liable to hurt you.” brought on by years of stress and Brighton Park and made occa- sure the first event he organized, Still, he showed up at the dojo Keehan charged students $20 hard living. He was all of 36. sional trips to Phoenix, Arizona, at the University of Chicago field the next day, his hand in a cast. a month—pricey for dojos at the to study under Robert Trias, who house on July 28, 1963, got men- But Keehan also had an arro- time—and he gained a reputa- ohn Keehan was born in had opened the first karate school tioned in the Tribune’s “In the gant streak. “John was the type tion for being one of the first J Beverly on February 2, 1939, in the U.S. and was head of the Wake of the News” column. of person who enjoyed attention white sensei in the country to to an affluent family: his father, United States Karate Association. Keehan’s early tournaments and being in the limelight,” Jones accept nonwhite students. “Race Jack, was a physician and director Training full-time, Keehan quickly attracted a host of martial-arts says. “‘If you’re talking about me, never played a part in John’s of the Ashland State Bank, and earned his second-degree black luminaries—like Ed Parker, Jhoon then you know about me.’ I teaching,” says Jones, who is his mother, Dorothy, occasionally belt and was appointed the Rhee, and a pre-Enter the Dragon thought that was a weakness: black. Ken Knudson, a white CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE 23 ERS) OV Y (PROGRAM C JIM NEWBERR One of Keehan’s comic book come-ons; programs from early tournaments; Keehan with diverse student body and pet lion circa 1965 and demonstrating “Monkey Stealing a Peach” in World’s Deadliest Fighting Secrets student of Jones’s who later with race. Whatever the reason, Act—which he kept at his dojo on truck on State Street, if neces- stage presence. At a 1967 tourna- founded the Sybaris couples’ Trias expelled Keehan from the Ashland and walked around town sary.” But after the seats were ment held at Lane Tech, he resort chain, was interviewed by USKA in December 1964. like a dog. (He later sold it to the filled Keehan announced that the arrived wearing a flowing cape Webb a week before he died in a Keehan was on his own. Lions Club of Quincy, Illinois.) event had been shut down by the and brandishing a cane capped by plane crash last January. “John In the summer of 1967 he pro- Chicago SPCA. In hindsight, a lion’s head; he’d dyed his hair loved the martial arts,” Knudson rias later said that Keehan moted an audacious exhibition in Rapkin says, he believes Keehan jet-black and had a neatly told Webb. “He loved it, he ate it, T “was given too much power which, as part of a tournament at and his associates never seriously trimmed beard, reflecting his new he breathed it. He was blind to too young and too fast,” and in his Medinah Temple, a bull would be considered staging the event. side gig in cosmetology. Also in race. It didn’t matter.” mid-20s the future Count Dante killed with a single blow. Keehan “They were probably just howling 1967 he opened a salon, the House Keehan claimed that race did seem to start drifting off purchased a bull from the stock- at this little Jewish kid from of Dante, at 2558 W. Superior in strained his relationship with course. On July 22, 1965, Keehan yards and drove it around town on Milwaukee they were going to West Town. Rapkin recalls that Trias. In 1969 he told Black Belt and Doug Dwyer, a longtime the back of a flatbed truck fes- put up against this bull,” he says. Keehan recommended hair- magazine that in 1964 “the USKA friend and fellow instructor, were tooned with signs announcing the That year Keehan legally dressing to him as a profession; didn’t have any Negroes in the arrested after a drunken attempt event. He wouldn’t perform the changed his name to Juan the flexible hours would let him organization, except for mine, to blow out a window at Gene deed himself: he’d picked Arthur Raphael Dante, telling people that pursue martial-arts training, and and Trias didn’t like it one bit. ... Wyka’s school with a dynamite Rapkin, then a 19-year-old he wanted to reclaim the royal it wasn’t a bad way to meet girls. It’s the truth. Of course, now he cap. After they were appre- student, for the task. title he lost after his parents immi- Suited up in his new persona, has no qualms about it, but at the hended, Dwyer was charged with Bull killing was the signature grated to the U.S. in 1936, during Keehan decided to make a play for time, that’s the way it was.” Trias, four traffic violations; Keehan stunt of karate legend Mas the Spanish civil war. It’s never national recognition. Inspired by in a 1975 article, dismissed this as was charged with attempted Oyama, and Rapkin initially been clear why a south-side Irish kung fu dim mak, or “poison “nonsense.” Jones, who trained arson, possession of explosives, seemed game: in a Tribune guy like Keehan decided he must hand,” strikes—which emphasize under both men, believes that and resisting arrest. He got two article about the event (headlined be a Spanish count, or how he thumbing out eyes, flaying skin, there probably was a de facto ban years’ probation. “Karate Expert Thwarted as Bull chose his new name (though fish-hooking lips, and suchlike— on minorities in the early days of Around the same time Keehan Hitter”), he’s quoted as saying Mount Carmel High School is Keehan assembled the World’s the USKA but that the battle bought a lion cub—a legal, if that if the police prevented him located on Dante Avenue). Deadliest Fighting Secrets pam- between Trias and Keehan likely uncommon, practice before the from attacking the bull in the Regardless, his new name and phlet, which promised to teach had as much to do with control as 1969 Illinois Dangerous Animals building, he would “kill it in the background came with a flashier continued on page 24

24 CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Count Dante

continued from page 23 bucks for a copy of the pamphlet, investigators in Operation readers his “dance of death,” a but Keehan’s fortunes clearly Bob Cooley, Keehan’s lawyer and Gambat. A mutual friend recom- rapid combination of attacks grew—by 1969 he had opened mended him to Keehan; in his designed to leave your opponent three new Imperial Academies of later an attorney for the Outfit, 2004 memoir, When Corruption in a writhing, bloody heap. Fighting Arts in the city. He also Was King, Cooley recalls his first Keehan advertised heavily in continued to hold full-contact recalls him beating up two men meeting with Keehan by comic books, doing his damnedest tournaments, and his bad-boy rep describing his client as a tall, to separate a generation of kids began rubbing off on the larger in a liquor store parking lot wild-bearded man wearing a from their paper-route money: Chicago martial-arts scene. Black yellow fishnet leotard and a Yes, this is the DEADLIEST Belt refused to cover Keehan’s after they laughed at the bogus purple cape. As for the trial itself, and most TERRIFYING fighting tournaments, and in 1969 it pub- Cooley wasn’t too worried. The art known to man—and WITH- lished a roundtable conversation Spanish coat of arms on the state built its case against Keehan OUT EQUAL. Its MAIMING, in which several Chicago instruc- around the accountability statute, MUTILATING, DISFIGURING, tors laid into Keehan’s tactics. door of his brown Caddy. arguing that he bore responsi- PARALYZING and CRIPPLING Keehan claimed to have taught 60 bility for Koncevic’s death. Cooley techniques are known by only a percent of Chicago’s karate was prepared to assert that there few people in the world. An instructors, to which Black Belt Keehan did call the Green Times article says that Keehan was no way Keehan could have expert at DIM MAK could easily managing editor D. David Dreis Dragons’ dojo earlier that evening. himself attacked the instructor, anticipated the swordplay that kill many Judo, Karate, Kung replied, “Which is one reason why In an article published a year later lacerating his right eye badly ensued at Black Cobra Hall. Fu, Aikido, and Gung Fu experts Black Belt didn’t cover Chicago.” in Official Karate, he claimed that enough that it required surgery at In 1971 the judge in the case at one time with only finger-tip One instructor described a Dante he and his students had received Belmont Community Hospital. dismissed all charges but not pressure using his murderous tournament he judged as an “ama- death threats and that he’d In every version of the story, before upbraiding both sides: POISON HAND WEAPONS. teur boxing match” and said he’d planned to “level their entire Koncevic was ready to dance. “You’re each as guilty as the other,” Instructing you step by step thru never judge another. Dreis wrote instructor force.” To do it he called According to the Tribune he Cooley recalls him bellowing. each move in this manual is that Keehan’s spectators “come to another friend, Michael Felkoff, struck one Green Dragon, Though Keehan was acquitted, none other than COUNT [his tournaments] to see plenty of and Koncevic; he described the Jerome Greenwald, from behind his name was blackened; inter- DANTE—“THE DEADLIEST blood spilled. Ofttimes they are latter in the article as an “animal and began punching him. school rivalries and after-hours MAN WHO EVER LIVED.” (THE disappointed; all too often, they as a fighter with a killer instinct.” Greenwald grabbed a sword from grudge matches were common, CROWN PRINCE OF DEATH.) get their money’s worth.” Today Felkoff says he was only the wall and stabbed Koncevic but this was the first time anyone World’s Deadliest Fighting called in to act as a mediator. while trying to block a blow. had died. Keehan offered a mea Secrets was very much a Keehan n April 24, 1970, Ken When Keehan arrived at “All I saw was Jim in a big pool culpa in an Official Karate article. vanity project. The pamphlet’s O Knudson got a call from a Koncevic’s dojo, he was dismayed of blood,” Felkoff says. “He was “I blame myself to a great extent first two inside pages were a sus- friend, Jim Koncevic. Koncevic to see that Koncevic had called in using his judo, trying to grab them, for being responsible for us going tained brag about the martial arts explained that Keehan wanted to three of his younger students to and he ended up getting stabbed.” over to the Black Cobra Hall in he’d mastered, his “Strikingly visit a rival dojo, the Green join them. Keehan later described Keehan shouted for everybody the first place and have gone Handsome” looks, and his devo- Dragon Society’s Black Cobra Hall them dismissively: “Two . .. were to stop fighting or he’d call the through living hell because of it,” tion to classical singing. Those of Gun-Fu and Kenpo at 3561 W. only skinny kids who worked a cops. Koncevic had enough life he wrote. “My days of fighting at were followed by photos of Fullerton, to settle a beef with a whippy, snappy, and ineffective left to yell at everyone to “get the the drop of a hat have come to an Keehan in a black silk gi, demon- member. Knudson asked what the karate,” and a third was a “short, fuck out.” He ran out the door and end and challenges I will accept strating techniques like “Groin dispute was about. “Oh, you know pudgy clod.” Still, he led the stumbled a few feet before falling. no more unless first attacked.” Slap or Grab and Tear Off (often John,” Koncevic said. “Over a group to Black Cobra Hall. His three students had bolted and His vow was short-lived, called ‘Monkey Stealing a Peach’)” broad or something.” Knudson According to a Tribune article, called the police. According to the though: Cooley recalls him on an uncomfortable-looking was still competing and training, Keehan broke down the front door Tribune, Greenwald, 20, was beating up two men in a liquor Doug Dwyer. It wasn’t entirely but he took a pass, declaring a and found six Green Dragons arrested and charged with store parking lot after they hooey. “The ‘dance of death’ was potential rumble “kids stuff.” inside. Felkoff, who arrived late, murder; Keehan, 31, was charged laughed at the bogus Spanish coat overkill,” says Massad Ayoob, a The three men had been friends recalls that the Green Dragons with aggravated battery and of arms on the door of his brown security expert who interviewed since the early 60s; Koncevic, were armed with Chinese impersonating a police officer. Caddy and assaulting another guy Keehan for Black Belt magazine in Keehan’s top student, ran his own weapons. Somebody—it’s unclear (No explanation was given for the who called him a “fruit” in a bar. the 1970s, in an e-mail. “But it also dojo on the west side, the Tai- who—made the first move, and latter charge.) Koncevic, 26, died One night Cooley and Keehan taught that a single blow or attack Jutsu School of Judo and Karate. accounts disagree about what on the sidewalk. had an argument, during which could fail, thus inculcating the stu- “Jimmy was a battler,” Knudson happened next. According to Keehan took a grazing swipe at dent with the principle of contin- said. “He was notorious. He was Black Belt one of Keehan’s men eehan’s attorney was Bob his chin that put Cooley in such uing to fight until he had won.” legendary for getting into street struck a Green Dragon member, K Cooley, who later worked for pain he felt his skin was “ripped It’s not known how many fights, just mauling people.” Jose Gonzalez, in the eye with a the Outfit until the late 80s, off.” Keehan immediately apolo- comic-book readers ponied up five Most accounts agree that nunchaku, while a Black Belt when he wore a wire for federal gized and promised to make CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE 25

amends by showing him a trick: if test about his possible role in the event, titled “Sunday, Bloody him his successor as Supreme Otherwise the person most Cooley got his pistol and fired at heist of more than $4 million Sunday,” characterized Keehan Grand Master of the Black interested in Count Dante seems him, he’d catch the bullet. from the headquarters of as looking bored and concluded Dragon Fighting Society. Aguiar to be Webb, who plans to finish Cooley kept his distance Purolator Security. A Tribune that “whatever the reasons for died in January of last year, the film next year and then shop from Keehan after that, but he item from November says he was this ‘expo,’ the resulting manifes- leaving his son William Aguiar it to festivals. He’s logging his couldn’t shake Count Dante slated to appear before a grand tation was trash.” III in charge. In San Francisco, progress on a Web site for the film, entirely. By 1974 Keehan had a jury with Catuara; it describes In an interview with the Bob Calhoun leads a band called thesearchforcountdante.com, financial interest in a chain of Keehan as “a former hairdresser Attleboro, Massachusetts, Sun Count Dante & the Black Dragon which has attracted bits of adult bookstores and a car deal- who wears a cloak and calls him- Chronicle to promote the event, Fighting Society. Originally archival material, including rare ership. He eventually ran afoul of self Count Dante.” Keehan sounded resigned. “I knowing little about Keehan out- footage of Keehan in action. south-side boss Jimmy “the The experience seemed to want people to forget me,” he told side of the comic-book ads, he Webb imagines the film will Bomber” Catuara, and Cooley shake Keehan, and by 1975 he reporter Ned Bristol. He died two invented an outsize stage persona reflect Keehan’s era as much as was called in to intercede. was clearly unwell—Ayoob recalls months later, on May 25, 1975. that’s part punk, part karateist, the man himself. “It’s the times,” Keehan, Cooley writes, paid 25 him stumbling through one con- part motivational speaker, and Webb says. “His story embodies grand to Catuara and emerged versation before admitting that he eehan was buried in an wears leopard-print kimonos every kind of macho popular cul- unscathed, but the situation was mixing booze and painkillers. K unmarked grave in Saint onstage. “What was funny was ture bull crap. It’s got discos and apparently gave him the connec- He made a last attempt to revive Joseph’s cemetery in River Grove. how much my portrayal turned Rush Street and pet lions. ... You tion with organized crime he’d his martial-arts career by hosting His legacy is modest. Shortly out to be like the real Keehan in can’t write shit this good.” been seeking for some time. a tournament in Taunton, before he died he helped his the first place,” he says. The “He’s dead and we’re still In the fall of 1974, Keehan was Massachusetts, on March 16. The friend and protege William Aguiar Aguiars have sent cease and desist talking about him,” says James subpoenaed by the state’s karate world was unimpressed: a set up a school in Fall River, orders to Calhoun, but nothing Jones. “He did what he set out attorney and given a lie detector piece in Official Karate on the Massachusetts, and appointed has been settled or gone to court. to accomplish.” v 26 CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE Reviews Music Theater The new Cex Bruce Norris’s The Unmentionables Actual Fucking at Steppenwolf REVIEW BY MAIREAD CASE REVIEW BY KERRYREID a 26 a 28

Music

CEX ACTUAL FUCKING (AUTOMATION) Presumptuous Fucker It’s not enough for Cex to enjoy sex. He wants you to enjoy it the way he enjoys it. By Mairead Case fter his last encore, Rjyan Kidwell spent much of the next Kidwell usually remem- several years on the road, touring A bers to take care of intro- with Tigerbeat6 labelmates and ductions. His hair stringy with big-name headliners like Death sweat, his bare chest shining, he Cab for Cutie and the Roots. gestures toward his band—singer He’d released five more full- Roby Newton, who’s also his lengths by 2004, when he moved wife, and drummer Cale Parks. to Chicago and met Newton, “Thanks,” he says. “We’re Cex.” then a member of Milemarker, at It sounds like a joke—Cex is a Valentine’s Day party. One year pronounced with a soft C, like and a matching set of tiger-stripe sex—but what Kidwell really tattoos later, they were married. means is that he is sex. He views Since then they’ve relocated to himself as a missionary, and his Kidwell’s hometown of message is that shaking off the Baltimore, started a band called “squares” and their straitjacketed Sand Cats, and collaborated on ideas about sex is a crucial part of Cex’s new Actual Fucking. becoming a supremely evolved Actual Fucking is Kidwell’s sev- person. When audiences enth full-length and his first since applaud, then, they’re essentially 2003’s Maryland Mansions. Cex applauding two things: the songs hasn’t been one dude and a lap- and the promise of their own sex- top for a while now—the new ual liberation. If you’re a straight disc includes contributions from white guy like Kidwell, you may eight other musicians, including see that promise as one he’s per- Newton, Cale Parks (who also fectly capable of keeping. But I’m drums in Aloha), and members of not, and I couldn’t swallow his Joan of Arc and Make Believe. message if he dragged Christ The album’s concept is simple, Himself onstage for the encore. direct, and a little disappointing, Kidwell has been Cex since especially from a newlywed: fol- high school, when he spent his low your boner and you will be evenings dinking around on his free. In a press release Kidwell parents’ computer. One thing rather grandly calls the album led to another, and his interest “the beginning of a real stand the in ASCII art (“fantasy graffiti younger generations of this for super-introverted computer country need urgently to make kids,” as he describes it) turned against the repressive morality of into an obsession with freeware the Baby Boomers.” Strangely music applications. In 1998 he enough in light of rhetoric like Cale Parks, Rjyan Kidwell, and Roby Newton self-released Cells, a CD-R of this, the eight one-handed reads mechanized music for laptops that Kidwell’s friends wrote for full throttle and discovering your the soaring “Covington,” with its feels more like a distracted quick- and their geeks. It impressed the liner notes are all signed True Self while you’re at it. But shaky synth, pell-mell drum solo, ie in the ladies’ room, tampon dis- the equally green Miguel “name withheld.” does Kidwell really think he’s and lines about lettuce and penser squared to your lower Depedro, aka Kid606, and Each of the album’s eight found his True Self in his 20s? sneeze guards. It’s especially sat- back. “Ybor City” has a lovely gui- together they founded tracks is named after an What’s he going to do with the isfying when Newton sings—her tar solo, but it’s abandoned unrea- Tigerbeat6, a label specializing American city, but “Chicago” rest of his life? voice, somewhere between a sonably and abruptly. (Ow!) And in off-center versions of what’s (with its deft guitar hook from Sometimes the music’s solid yowl and a purr, is one of the Kidwell includes some unneces- usually called Intelligent Dance Tim Kinsella) is the only song enough that you can forgive the best instruments on the album, sarily long answering-machine Music—if the IDM world were a with lyrics that have anything to naive posturing. Highlights even when Kidwell’s lyrics don’t samples, which I guess is sup- plain Oreo cookie, the do with a geographic place. To include the lullabyesque do it justice (“You’re the mirage / posed to seem experimental but Tigerbeat6 roster would be one degree or another, the other “Tucumcari,” the rousing, tribal- But you’ve got a body to touch”). really only forces you to wait mint, mocha, and Double Stuf. seven all celebrate getting it on cum-industrial “Baltimore,” and Other times, though, a song longer between the good parts. CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE 27

When Cex played Seattle’s Dude isn’t kidding about the When I ask if he’s still a prac- wearing nothing but Kidwell’s wouldn’t you be angry or afraid if Chop Suey in June, Newton and messiah thing either. Those shorts ticing Catholic, Kidwell says tattoos stands behind a perky- he went on to suggest it’d Kidwell spent most of the set he wears at every concert? He that he’s returned to the faith assed pink lady, spraying come inevitably take you to one of two bent over podiumlike laptop found them at a Houston thrift after logging time in the respec- all over her back. It’s hard to tell places, a chick or a nameless guy stands tall and narrow enough store and liked the “St. John’s” tive churches of Cobain and which is longer, his forearm or in a men’s room? that they wouldn’t have looked printed on the left leg—it remind- Bowie. “Nirvana was like a reli- his dick. Elsewhere in the album “But I am a straight white out of place propping up Bibles ed him of his childhood parish and gion to me,” he says, “but I’m art there are disembodied dude,” says Kidwell. “I just talked at the front of a church. They of two literal saints, Christ’s right- back to Catholicism. You just mouths and winking vulvae—if to people that I knew, and for danced in place there, picking hand man and John Chrysostom, have to look at it with two eyes. we’re supposed to fuck to become people to be angry about it is their knees up high and punch- the “golden-mouthed” preacher of It’s great when a religion teach- whole, why the fixation on parts? counterproductive. You have to ing the air, and Newton ended the early church. “I see myself as a es that magic is real, but it’s Worse, the liner-note stories speak up for yourself.” up wrapping her mike cord sort of evangelist,” he says. hard when they say that your are all dude-centric, and seven of Point taken, and that’s exactly around her neck. The gel lights In interview after interview as penis is bad too.” the eight are geared to straight what I’m doing. I don’t have turned both their shaggy heads well as on his blog I can’t disagree, but unfortu- men—the only exception is about much use for a narrow and unso- an identical dirty blond. (blumpy.org/rjyan), Kidwell nately his analyses don’t get a 15-year-old boy who rejects phisticated definition of sexuali- After his laptop stand fell insists that the world needs Cex much deeper than that—he’s a Baudelaire for an anonymous ty—if I were to buy into it, I’d apart, Kidwell tossed it onto his now, and that we won’t be happy lot better at pointing fingers than blow job in a park bathroom. Say end up dissatisfied or guilty, back, where the pieces stuck out until we’re freed from repression. explaining himself. And there’s a for the sake of argument that whether I followed the rules or like wings. “I am your messiah,” “Repression” seems to be one of big difference between the you’re a 15-year-old boy ques- broke them. As much as I dig he stage-whispered to my front- his favorite words—he uses it to humility of Chrysostom and the tioning his sexuality—if some- Cale Parks’s drum solos, I won’t row friend. “They should quaran- shame everyone from boomers to content of Actual Fucking’s cover body were to tell you to follow be calling off my search for a sav- tine me.” mindless consumers. illustration—a masked man your boner wherever it may lead, ior just yet. v 28 CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE Theater

THE UNMENTIONABLES STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY Humans Behaving Badly In The Unmentionables, making its world premiere at Steppenwolf, Bruce Norris’s ugly Americans go to West Africa.

By Kerry Reid nyone who was made uncomfortable by the com- A bination of moppet actors and soft-core porn in Bruce Norris’s play for Steppenwolf last summer, The Pain and the Itch, can save their outrage this time around. His new play, The Unmentionables, tackles themes far less cringe inducing for Americans than sex: state-sanc- tioned torture and the West’s eco- nomic rape of the third world. The tempest in a designer teapot over the children cast in The Pain and the Itch tended to overshadow discussions of its merits—though eventually it did win a Jeff Award for best new play. Unlike Tony Kushner in his Old Testament-prophet mode, Norris seldom courts serious consideration. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve it. The Pain and the Itch and 2002’s Purple Heart are both terribly funny and relentlessly, unflinch- ingly ugly. The stranger who vis- its the grieving Vietnam war widow in Purple Heart isn’t a source of comfort or healing but another nail in the coffin of her

sanity. In The Pain and the Itch, OW the disease that afflicts a family of self-absorbed, hypocritical lib- erals began with a brutal assault MICHAEL BROSIL in an eastern European country, The Unmentionables brought to light only by a banal extramarital affair. and tend to behave badly in times in postcolonial Africa. He’s finally living in equatorial West Africa we’re spared long monologues But The Pain and the Itch is of crisis, carries more weight in willing to take all of us—his char- focuses on people who either explaining Western culpability in more drawing-room farce than The Unmentionables, which hints acters, the audience, and presum- have misguided notions of African genocides, and we’re social satire. Norris’s worldview, at a rough-hewn George Bernard ably himself—out of our comfort African life or little interest in the spared twinkly-eyed natives who that people are essentially selfish Shaw—it’s like Heartbreak House zone. This play about Americans world beyond their villa. But continued on page 30 CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE 29 30 CHICAGO READER | JULY 14, 2006 | SECTION ONE

Theater

continued from page 28 Dave and Jane. “Father Dave’s” missteps.) When Dave and Jane Etienne to the house for ques- allows the cast to oversell either serve as beacons of folksy wisdom school was burned down, and get into a spat, he storms off. tioning, and in the harrowing the play’s comedy or the latent for the bourgeois abroad. Instead one of the boys suspected of set- When he doesn’t come back, the penultimate scene Jane must horror of its final moments. Amy Norris simply dumps us into a ting the fire, Etienne, has others—especially black politi- decide whether concern for her Morton gives Nancy a faint world that’s accused Dave of making cian and power broker Aunty fiance overrides her principled undercurrent of genuine (if mis- WHEN Through familiar in improper advances toward him. directed) humanitarian concern. 8/27: Tue-Fri 7:30 its creature Jane, a successful television Rick Snyder conveys both Don’s PM, Sat-Sun 3 comforts but actress in the States, walked Norris has progressed annoying air of entitled bon- and 7:30 PM otherwise away from a hit drama to pursue homie and its underlying empti- WHERE Steppenwolf strange and more meaningful work in from merely pointing at ness and ill-defined longing. Theatre Company, utterly men- Africa—though in much of the Shannon Cochran as Jane moves 1650 N. Halsted acing so first scene she’s laid up, mewling his characters’ pain from a near hysteric to a woman PRICE $20-$60 that, like the and weak, by fibromyalgia. Still, in authentic turmoil. And Lea INFO 312-335-1650 characters, she’s happy to be free of creating to implicating us in the Coco is excellent as the stiff- we begin “mindless moronic shit for the necked Dave, often an object of to fear whatever lies beyond the consumption of an audience of exploitation of other nations. ridicule—though his stubborn wire-topped walls. shitheads”—something she uprightness, tempered by The Unmentionables focuses thoughtlessly declares just Mimi—fear he’s been kidnapped. stand against torture. anguished questioning of his on two white couples: American moments after Don and Nancy There’s good reason to be afraid: Norris is fortunate that own motives, allows a shaft of industrialist Don and his motor- have told her how much they Dave’s predecessor was chopped Steppenwolf has once again light to fall on the play’s bleak mouth wife, Nancy, and the loved the show. (As in Norris’s into bits by locals who decided entrusted his work to director end. Ora Jones roots Aunty Mimi engaged couple they’ve invited other plays, many of the laughs they didn’t like his style of min- Anna D. Shapiro. With her sub- in bitter honesty and flamboyant into their home, missionaries come from his characters’ social istry. Aunty Mimi’s guards bring tlety and intelligence, she never determination, saving her from

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Ink Well by Ben Tausig

41. Oodles World Figures 42.You may take several flights to get there ACROSS 43.Terminal msg. 1. Like an airhead 45.Chicago pie style 6. Puerto Rico, por ejemplo 47.Hostel cartoonishness, and Jon Hill is 10.Fly in the ointment 50.Protectors of QBs 14.How a teacher might mark mistakes defiant and incendiary as 52.Sorry souls 15.Nokia option 53. Potential importance of a Etienne. Norris chooses to book- 17.Tusked rooters German quartet? end the show with Etienne’s ver- 18.Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, e.g. 57.Dunce, once bal assaults on the audience for 19.Show that broke Candy 59.Wal-Mart, to many labor advocates wasting their money on it—a 20.Cesar Chavez y Los Angeles Mayor 60.12-point type choices misstep that both indicts and Antonio Villaraigosa? 61. Piece in the paper exculpates us. If it’s only a play, 21. New York city named for a 62.“Jiminy!” Phoenician colony why get riled up? 63. It hangs in the Prado 23. Big initials in industrial music ______Don and Nancy’s doctor 64.Strong as 24.Common bill 65.Small bay (Kenn E. Head), who’s attending 25.Bar with a polar bear logo Jane, at one point wonders 28.Home of the Braves, on TV DOWN aloud why only Western women 30.Sizable 1. Claimer’s rights get fibromyalgia and answers 31. Prefix for a switch-hitter 2. Infect on purpose the question “Doctor, why 33. She, in Italy 3. Casual Italian joint 37.Plugging away am I in pain?” with a simple 4. Yet another helping of risotto? 38.Noshed on, biblically “Because life is painful.” But 5. They have three feet, briefly 39.Feline feet 6. Former Spanish territory in in The Unmentionables Norris 40.Just around the corner Morocco has progressed from merely 7. Pig pointing at his characters’ LAST WEEK: A SUBSTITUTION 8. Jazz up pain to implicating us in the 9. Liquid appetizer exploitation of other nations. 10.Cartoonist Silverstein 29.French schematic of deadly sins? 47.The Donald’s ex 11. Abstain from And he does it without knee-jerk 32.High-end speaker brand 48.Bear’s NFC rival 12.LaVey or Chekhov screeds or offering knee-jerk 34.Like Billionaires for Bush 49.Cereal box amt. solutions. Though I’ve admired 13.Flying V components 16.Fallback option 35.Like some chocolate and cheese 51. Inheritor Norris in the past for not pro- 20.Chou En-______36. In the Beginning author Sholem 54.Wake up moting easy pieties, here he does 22.String before F 38.Runner in Greek mythology 55.Mower name take bigger chances, allowing 25.Part of KKK 42. Simpsons dad 56.Quartz type characters lost in a fog of self- 26.O.J. trial testifier 44.Silken and firm, e.g. 58.“Hey...over here!” absorption some breathing room 27.Edit 46.Mess up 60.Architect Ieoh Ming ______and a few fumbling attempts at doing actual good. Fluid, dis- turbing, and thoroughly engag- ing, The Unmentionables is a significant step forward for a challenging playwright. v