16 Kerry Cardoza Cardoza Kerry Alberto Aguilar’s art and life art Aguilar’s Alberto By L G Remember resale shops this shops resale Remember Record Record Store Day Store
8 Max Budovitch Budovitch Max How a refugee finds a home in Chicago a refugee finds How
CHICAGO’S FREE WEEKLY SINCE | APRIL 2 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll CHICAGO READER | APRIL | VOLUME NUMBER THIS WEEK
IN THIS ISSUE T R - reconfi gured for the Trump era places to fi nd vinyl that nobody’s @ and a search for a missing gay teen even thought of reissuing yet reveals The Absolute Brightness of 30 Shows of note Electric Wizard Leonard Pelkey Lee Fields & The Expressions Pixel P Grip and more shows this week T B I E C 33 Secret History of Chicago S K K H Music Louis Myers cofounded one D E K S of the great backing bands in the C L SK D P J R blues C E AL FEATURE 35 Early Warnings Bone Thugsn M E P M 12 Photo Celebrating fried fi sh and Harmony Sam Prekop Angie Stone A E J L S W D I CITY LIFE faith on Fridays and more justannounced concerts BJ MS 04 Shop Window A children’s 35 Gossip Wolf Pop insurgents S W M D L G boutique specializes in denim White Ppl play a fundraiser for G D D C S M E B W 05 Public Service Hoist Fest the former Mama M L C Announcement Oop! Ack! It’s tax FILM jammers in Bandy celebrate a new S C -J time baby 22 Review Three short fi lms tape and more F L C P F T A E C S demonstrate the power of puppets C N B D C NEWS & POLITICS 23 Movies of note The Best OPINION D C L C N LC 06 Joravsky | Politics Lori of Enemies is a signifi cant civil 36 Savage Love Dan Savage C C M DL C S F I G A G Lightfoot can negotiate a better rightsera drama High Life is off ers advice on how to make KTH JH J H agreement at Lincoln Yards and beguiles and sometimes moves your fantasies feel real without I H D J M K S and Peterloo makes antiquated catfi shing anyone K M M B M JRN M O L O Y political rhetoric sound rousing P L P K S K R ARTS & CULTURE CLASSIFIEDS BS D S A W 16 Visual Art Alberto Aguilar draws 37 Jobs ------no distinction between art and life 37 Apartments & Spaces D D JD D P E & P 19 Dance The surreal Whipped 37 Marketplace K K Cream comes to the Auditorium O M SN L Theatre COMICS SERIALS ADVERTISING 38 Your fave indie strips return! -- - @ THEATER C @ 20 Review Lottery Day brings S D P F Ike Holter’s Chicago Cycle to a V P S FOOD & DRINK triumphant close A M 14 Restaurant Review A kebab 21 Plays of note Admissions MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE S A R J L crawl from the lake and beyond is a searing indictment of the 26 Galil | Feature Thri and O P G L D SK A R white liberal elite Pinocchio is vintage stores are among the best LM -H C R M TP
N A V M G --- JL SB ------D C [email protected] -- STMREADERLLC B P D RL FEATURE T E R S J S ‘The house is yours’ A- S V C C EB Resettlement agencies say refugees are moving ------to the suburbs in search of cheaper homes and R ISSN- better-paying jobs. STMR LLC SM SC IL B M B 8 --
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A C R R RR T ® ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 3 K K W. th, -- CITY LIFE @koolkidz
Shop Window Cool jeans This south side children’s boutique satisfi es your thirst for denim.
“IWANTALLthe kids to be super cool!” says Aisha Burris, owner of Kool Kidz 2144 in Bev- erly. The 23-year-old opened the children’s clothing store in December 2018. Burris says that after getting pregnant as a teen, she didn’t want to be a statistic. “I wanted bet- Aisha Burris, Kool Kidz 2144 ter for my son, for myself. I wanted the young girls to know that just because you have a baby young, your life is not over.” sellers. The shop also sells a few locally made The shop’s aesthetic—whimsical yet taste- products, such as Beyoncé T-shirts (featuring ful, not shying away from minimalism and the singer’s face, $20) and “Lil Geek” hoodies dark hues—is in tune with the latest children’s ($80). decor. There’s a mini Pac-Man arcade game, a Kool Kidz joins a cluster of small local bou- neon “Support your local girl gang” sign, and tiques on 95th Street that have become shop- black walls covered with chalk drawings. Kids ping destinations for fashion enthusiasts: can enjoy the play area or help their parents Curve Culture (plus sizes), Dez DeMe House shop for jeans with all kinds of finishes and of Styles (fashion-forward garments), and details, like frayed hems and motocross-style Fashion Geek (sportswear). Burris says it was panels. Burris buys denim pants, skirts, and always her dream to bring something to her shorts ($30) and jackets ($40) in Los Angeles neighborhood that was not only high-end, but from brands like Hayden Girls and Haus of also aff ordable. “We deserve that,” she says. JR. Stylish sneakers ($75) are among the best —I G ISAGIALLORENZO
4 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll CITY LIFE Less scrolling.
The concept of War Tax Resistance is still technically not legal. ROBERTCOUSEBAKER More strumming.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT Oop! Ack! It’s tax time What to do instead of declaring your she shed a sovereign state
FORTHEMANYof us who are still pay- at locations all over the city and select sub- ing our fair share while corporations and urbs. This initiative can help single taxpayers the 1 percent stand around gawking gleeful- who earn up to $30,000 annually or families ly (“How droll,” they chuckle as the rest of who jointly earn up to $55,000 annually. us squabble over minimum wage), we might In addition, the AARP Foundation offers need help understanding how much we owe. free tax preparation for the public, and you If you haven’t started getting your stuff don’t have to be a certain age or an AARP together from last year’s wages, you better member to qualify. Go to the AARP site to get to the IRS site and file for an extension fi nd locations, days, and times. posthaste. The offi cial IRS website still has an A reminder that the concept of War Tax open and fairly easy-to-use slate of tax infor- Resistance (in short, refusing to pay some or mation available. If you have a simple return all tax as a direct-action protest against mili- (one W2, single fi ling, no extra property, etc.), tarization) is still technically not legal when it Give your digital life a break. you may want to just file on your own using comes to federal taxes in this country. As of the free interface at the same IRS site. April 2019, the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Connect over music, dance & more. If you need a little free one-on-one help, Fund Act (aka congressional bill H.R. 1947) several organizations have open hours all over has not been ratified, cosponsored, or, hon- Anyone can play! Find your spring class the city and suburbs. Tax Prep Chicago, a col- estly, even taken out for lunch. So if you at oldtownschool.org laboration between the nonprofi ts Center for consider yourself a War Tax Resister, offi- Economic Progress and Ladder Up and the cially we’ll have to say you’re on your own. city of Chicago run free walk-in tax help sites —S C -J ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 5 NEWS & POLITICS
Alderman Brian Hopkins urged for the council to ignore Emanuel’s request. MARISSADELACERDA
asked the council to postpone the vote on the the Sun-Times: “I think [Lightfoot] might be $2.4 billion projects, saying: “I made it very happy for the cash infusion coming in over the clear to the mayor-elect that I would not move course of the next 20 years from those poten- forward on these projects if she wanted to tial projects.” delay the process.” Planning chief David Reifman seconded this Second Ward alderman Brian Hopkins— notion, saying, “These sites are absolutely who’s sort of the Natarus of our times, minus critical as we consider our fiscal issues and Burt’s self-deprecating charm—urged for the our need to grow our tax base without in- council to ignore Emanuel’s request. “The creasing the burden on existing residents and mayor’s not on the fi nance committee,” Hop- businesses.” kins pointed out. Sigh. True. But of all the things for Hopkins to This is either willful ignorance or just plain suddenly fi nd his spine on. old ignorance. Either way, O’Connor and Anyway, the deal was postponed. Reifman might as well be telling us the earth is Even as I write that sentence, I can barely fl at. One more time: There will be no “cash infu- POLITICS believe it. Ordinary community activists sion” from these TIFs and they won’t decrease forced the mayor to at least temporarily back “the burden” on taxpayers. Quite the opposite: o on a TIF deal. As the guy who’s been pound- like all TIFs, they’re property tax hikes that will A new deal ing the anti-TIF drum since the Reagan years, increase the tax burden on us all. I feel like Sally Field when she won her Oscar: Neither Lincoln Yards nor 78 will add new Lori Lightfoot can negotiate a better agreement at Lincoln Yards and 78. You like me! You really like me! property taxes to our co ers from the moment I’ll calm down by pointing out that this fi ght their TIF districts are created until the mo- By B J is far from over. Again, it’s only a postpone- ment they fade away in at least 23 years—or ment. For all I know, advocates for both TIF longer, should some future mayor choose to deals may have already bamboozled Lightfoot extend them. o appreciate the significance of it matter? Back then Burt was always bellow- into complying with their demands by the Instead, all the new property taxes gener- Mayor Rahm’s retreat on Lincoln ing about something. time you’re reading this. ated in these TIFs will be used to pay for the Yards and the 78 projects, let me take The CDC unanimously approved LaSalle Damn, the mere thought has got me howling projects. In the case of Lincoln Yards, Ster- you back in time to a previous TIF Central, as did the city council. Since then the at the moon. ling Bay, the developer, will essentially take debate. LaSalle Central TIF’s gathered over $261 mil- In a perfect world, Mayor-elect Lightfoot property tax dollars that would otherwise go TThe year was 2006. Taylor Hicks had just lion in property tax dollars—far more than all and the City Council would blow up the cur- to schools and police and fi re, etc. and spend won the title on American Idol—which gives of the TIF districts in Englewood, Woodlawn, rent TIF program. Instead, she’d replace it them on themselves. Great deal for Sterling you an idea of how long we’ve been slogging at Austin, and Roseland combined. with ward-by-ward allocation of economic Bay, not so great for the rest of us who will this TIF beast. So much for fairness in Chicago. development funds, coming right out of the have to come up with new property tax dollars The city’s Community Development Com- Now fast-forward to Monday’s council city’s budget—as opposed to coming out of a to compensate for the ones we’re not getting mission was entertaining then-Mayor Daley’s events. Almost every newly elected alderman shadow TIF budget that’s largely hidden from from Lincoln Yards. proposal for the LaSalle Central TIF district— called for a delay in approving both TIFs. public view. There’s also the issue of who will pay for the Lincoln Yards of its time. Corporate Chi- Under pressure from a coalition of activists That way she could guarantee an equal the services Lincoln Yards will require—like, cago, both editorial boards, and pretty much put together by the Grassroots Collaborative, distribution of development funds, instead cleaning streets, filling potholes, policing everyone other than a handful of gadflies Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot asked the city of giving the lion’s share to a handful of the community, teaching the children, and so supported this baby. council to postpone approval of Lincoln Yards already-gentrifying wards—like Hopkins’s. forth. If there’s a fi re, someone has to rush to Only one public official—Cook County and the 78 deals until she and her sta fi nished Of course, Chicago’s far from perfect—or the scene—you don’t expect Alderman Hop- commissioner Mike Quigley—dared to speak poring over the fi ne details. even fair. Let’s start with some baby steps that kins to put it out, do you? against it. And the commission chair tried to “I want to make sure that we’re getting the might make either one of these TIFs almost But property owners in Lincoln Yards will keep Quigley from speaking on the grounds best possible deal for the city going forward tolerable. not contribute new property tax dollars to pay that, as a county o cial, he had no say in the and that we’re not hamstrung on other great At the very least, city o cials have got to for any of those services so long as that TIF matter. economic development needs on the south start telling the truth about Tax Increment district exists. Lori Lightfoot’s right—it’s time When Hugh Devlin, a Rogers Park activist, and west side,” Lightfoot said on the Fran Financing. Currently, this is far from the case. to renegotiate a better deal for Chicago. v testifi ed against the TIF, former alderman Burt Spielman Show. For instance, Alderman Patrick O’Connor, out- Natarus cut him o , bellowing—oh, what does Bowing to Lightfoot’s wishes, Mayor Rahm going fi nance committee chair, recently told @joravben 6 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll WE ASKED: Can a community-centered independent paper survive in this environment? THAT’S UP TO
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8 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll ChicagoStyle-Reader-Print.pdf 1 4/9/19 9:29 AM
him onward. A man near the door caught sight fi nd a building on Jordanian University Street of the family, walked over in no hurry, and opposite the University Hospital in Amman. extended a hand. “Welcome,” he said, before There, the International Organization for Mi- pointing the family to a taxi and giving the gration held a three-day cultural orientation, driver an address. in which Al Jarboai learned that, when he ar- Al Jarboai, 32, had been a refugee for three rived in the United States, a caseworker from and a half years and had known for 15 days the local refugee resettlement agency would that he was bound for Chicago. But as he rode take him to his new home. down the Kennedy Expressway, he watched Before Al Jarboai got into the taxi at O’Hare,C the colorful cars with gaudy license plates he tried to imagine what this new home wouldM
passing under highway signs labeled in a for- look like. He knew that many houses in theY eign alphabet—and realized he didn’t know United States had wooden fl oors. But when the CM where he was or where he was going. taxi came to a stop in Rogers Park, he looked He is from the Syrian village of al-Hirak, up at the door of a Super 8 motel. MY
where the distance between the curb at Al Jarboai’s resettlement agency, EthiopianCY O’Hare and the Kennedy on-ramp would span Community Association of Chicago, was un- CMY several towns. A nearby Roman amphitheater able to fi nd units fast enough to keep up with marks the ancient capital of Arabia, which is the high number of arrivals in 2016. LandlordsK home to one of the world’s oldest cathedrals, were asking for one year in deposit and proof which stands next to one of the world’s old- of employment. “It felt exclusionary,” the est mosques. Ask someone where they are agency’s executive director, Aklilu Adeye, said. from and the answer begins, “Well, 700 years Adeye started placing refugees in motels and ago . . . .” extended-stay hotel rooms. Then the office Most people live in homes that have living credit card maxed out at around $80,000. rooms fi lled with plush couches separated by The family spent five days at the Super 8 small coffee tables, each with a dish of hard before being moved to an extended-stay hotel candies at the ready for guests. The tiled fl oors near O’Hare that had the benefit of a small are washed clean with buckets of soapy water kitchen. Weeks of roaring takeo s and land- and dried by the afternoon breeze. Glimpses ings were punctuated by submitting paper- of olive groves and snow-covered mountains work to the Social Security Administration. waver between silky window curtains. Meet- Al Jarboai rarely went outside, where he was ing eyes with a neighbor prompts the oblig- afraid to encounter the Prohibition-era gang- atory invitation. “Welcome,” the host might land version of Chicago popularized in Middle say, with a wave toward the couches. “The Eastern pop culture. He didn’t speak a word of house is yours,” as the saying goes. English. The couches are now empty, the ruins de- Al Jarboai is one of fi ve million people who stroyed. When the war started in 2013, Al Jar- have fl ed Syria since 2013 and one of 84,994 boai fl ed Syria for a small Jordanian city called refugees who came to the United States during Madaba. He found work building homes on the the last year of the Obama administration. Six outskirts of town, got paid poorly, and risked months after he arrived at O’Hare, a crowd of being discovered, detained, and sent back to people holding signs and fl ags marched by the Syria. While Al Jarboai worked, his oldest son airport McDonald’s to protest the president’s EARLY WARNINGS started going to school. First, he would clean travel ban, and dozens of lawyers sat at the the room until the Jordanian students fi nished cluster of tables with the families of passen- class. Then he would study for two hours. gers who had been detained. But while the NEVER MISS A SHOW AGAIN Then he would be sent home. protesters marched and judges handed down Al Jarboai and his family waited in Jordan rulings, what had happened to Al Jarboai? for a year, then two, then three. Then, in early After about 20 days in the hotel near O’Hare, CHICAGOREADER.COM/EARLY July 2016, he got a call from an unknown num- the resettlement agency found his family an ber. He was told that his family’s background apartment in Edgewater. Finally, he was liv- checks, medical tests, and interviews had been ing in Chicago. As he surveyed the cramped approved. A federal contractor had assigned one-bedroom, he heard the lilt of voices on his case to a national resettlement agency, the street. He wondered what they were say- which in turn assigned it to a local resettle- ing, and felt in some ways more disoriented ment agency. He’d fl y to Chicago in two weeks, than he had been listening to the airplanes. the voice on the phone told him, and needed to “We didn’t know how to use the bus—or J ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 9 continued from 9 following a gut rehab. Tom Junkovic, a land- health insurance. When a baby was due, Hyde Muslim organization, o ers forgiveness on the anything,” he recalls. He didn’t have a job, or lord who rents about a quarter of his 200 units Park residents provided diapers and other loans refugees take out to pay for travel to the know how to fi nd one. Soon, he’d have to pay to refugees, said that Edgewater is the new supplies to last a year. United States. Even with this assistance, how- $1,100 in rent. Lincoln Park. Self-su ciency is elusive. From the remove of Jordan, a new life in ever, Visser tells of a father who must work After several weeks in Edgewater, a friend Resettlement agencies have started to look Chicago is no more than a vague idea. The fi rst three jobs—one full-time, one on the weekend, told Al Jarboai about the southwest suburbs. for a ordable housing outside of these neigh- month after arrival is the rhythm of govern- and a cleaning gig—to make ends meet. Like He could find more space there, the friend borhoods that have welcomed refugees for ment forms and visits with a caseworker, and many newly arrived refugee families, when he said, for around $900 a month. There were years. In 2016, an agency named RefugeeOne started making enough money to barely get by, Arab markets, restaurants, and doctors there, resettled a Syrian refugee family on a quiet he lost his cash benefi ts from the government. his friend told him. It was the kind of commu- side street in Skokie, about five miles from Visser said that she and her volunteers “had nity where Walgreens puts up Ramadan signs. the halal markets and Arabic pharmacies on no idea how minimal the support is.” In some towns, about 14 percent of people Devon Avenue. [Editor’s note: The author was speak Arabic (in Bridgeview, Illinois, around a case manager at RefugeeOne in 2016.] An- long 18th Street in Pilsen, vendors 2,300 out of 16,400 residents), compared to other agency, World Relief, rented apartments count change in Spanish while selling 0.5 percent in Chicago (around 14,000 in a city for two Syrian families even farther away, near Abags of fruit covered in salsa and lemon of 2.7 million). By the time the protesters and Cottage Grove and 49th Street along the bor- juice. In Pulaski Park, the smell of golabki lawyers descended on O’Hare, Al Jarboai and der between Kenwood and Grand Boulevard. wafts from a kitchen. A new market next to the his family had left Chicago for Worth, Illinois. A group of volunteers called the Hyde Park el in Albany Park makes sweets that, before it Refugee Project helped RefugeeOne resettle opened, could only be found in Damascus. local resettlement agency gets as little two Syrian families in Hyde Park. Large parts The city, however, is changing. Wide- as five days’ notice before a refugee of the city were not seriously considered in the windowed lofts still fresh with construction A family arrives at O’Hare. In that time, search for a ordable alternatives. “Given how “We didn’t know dust are taking the place of Pilsen’s brick the staff uses the limited amount of money vulnerable a new refugee is,” Spangler said, how to use the homes and backyard vegetable patches. New provided by the government’s refugee re- “we were afraid that the south and west sides high-rises next to el stops demand top dollar settlement program to find and furnish an would be retraumatizing.” bus—or anything.” as Pulaski Park becomes too expensive for apartment and prepare applications for food Penny Visser, director of the Hyde Park people to stay. Residents march through Al- —Mohammad Al Jarboai stamps, monthly cash assistance, and Medic- Refugee Project, said that when the Hyde Park bany Park before the next building of tenants aid from the Department of Human Services. families went to their first English lesson in is evicted ahead of a gut rehab. Across the Three months after arriving in a city, refugees Uptown and told the class that their commute country, the cost of housing is rising faster are expected to be employed, o public assis- began on Garfield Boulevard, they learned than both infl ation and wages, and cities are tance, covering full rent, and paying off the from their incredulous peers—many of whom fi lling out with tony neighborhoods built for loan that they took from a state department may have only spent several weeks in Chicago o ce workers. As a result, resettlement sta contractor to buy plane tickets. This is what and never traveled farther south than Mon- have noticed that refugees are moving to the resettlement agencies call “self-su ciency.” trose Avenue—about how “dangerous” the suburbs where there is cheaper housing and Agencies are usually able to place newcom- south side was. At fi rst, newcomers are skep- sometimes better-paying jobs. Al Jarboai was ers in jobs so that they can pay their fourth tical about why their friends warn them that one of them. month’s rent. But Ryan Spangler, who worked certain areas are off-limits. But after much Even though his fi rst job at a restaurant in for ten years as a housing coordinator at a re- repetition, the skeptics start passing on the Worth only paid eight dollars an hour, he felt settlement agency called Heartland Alliance, warnings. Refugees who drive for rideshare more comfortable because of the large Arab said that many refugees immediately fall be- companies recount, with the authority of the community. Then, someone at the restaurant hind. Some of those families are evicted and a now-well-acquainted, the fi rst time they un- told Al Jarboai he could earn more driving for small subset end up in homeless shelters or on wittingly accepted a request from Englewood Uber. He was soon earning $700 a week behind the sidewalk. While large families’ per-capita or Lawndale. then a growing awareness of the city—its mar- the wheel, compared to $350 in the kitchen. He government assistance, combined with a job, After class, the families nervously boarded kets, doctors, buses, and o -limits areas. But then found a job at a tow truck company near might cover the rent on a small apartment, a the train back to Hyde Park, wondering how when the resettlement agency stops paying Midlothian, Illinois, where he has worked ever single person’s minimum wage or the $304 per they could have missed what their classmates rent and government benefi ts dwindle, life in since. month he receives in cash from the Depart- described. Visser said she had to reinforce Chicago is shaped by the other organizations The national agencies that send refugee ment of Human Services probably won’t. that Hyde Park, confined between the Mid- that provide support. families to di erent parts of the United States Rents in neighborhoods like Rogers Park, way, Washington Park, 51st Street, and Lake In Hyde Park, a religious group provided are keeping an eye on this suburban migration. West Ridge, Edgewater, Uptown, and Albany Michigan, was like a small village in a big city, student-rate housing for two of the families, Church World Service (CWS) has heard from Park that have businesses, doctors, and com- and that it was safe. It is a place, Visser said, which Visser said is how they were able to af- their 19 local a liates—in places like Louis- munity centers serving refugee communities where everyone seems to know each other. ford the neighborhood. An organization called ville, Kentucky, and Concord, New Hampshire, have gone up as much as $100 per month in the Her volunteers networked with doctors at the Syrian Community Network provides six and Lancaster, Pennsylvania—that refugees last two years, according to a number of land- the University of Chicago Hospital to get the months of rental assistance to every Syrian are moving from cities to suburbs in search lords. At least four refugee families in Uptown families medical attention, and with someone refugee in the city. In years past, the Network of lower rents. CWS, which resettles refugees had to leave their building when rents went up who works at Medicaid to help them navigate also provided cars. Sirat, a Hyde Park-based through RefugeeOne in Chicago, collects data 10 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll Amr Othman Agha AMROTHMANAGHA
on average rents, monitors the availability of three-fl at. “Welcome to your home,” Graubard apartments, and examines refugees’ starting said. salary. In light of the rising cost of housing, Agha took English classes at Truman Mia Witte, the associate director for resettle- College. Graubard helped him fi nd a job as a ment at CWS, said that community support, dishwasher in Lakeview and then as a case like that offered by the Hyde Park Refugee manager at the Syrian Community Network Project, impacts the agency’s decision on in Edgewater. He helped him apply for a green where to resettle refugees. card. In January 2019, after making it through Despite the fi nely-tuned resettlement appa- immigration on his way back from reuniting ratus that accounts for everything from medi- for a brief time with family in London, Agha cal tests to fl ights to housing to food stamps, passed confidently by the cluster of tables where that extra support comes from—and next to the McDonald’s at O’Hare where the where people end up because of it—is often protesters had marched two years before. a surprise. Amr Othman Agha, 39, who fled When he hailed a taxi at the curb, Graubard Syria in 2013, was among the refugees who was at his side, having accompanied him all arrived in the U.S. during the summer of 2016. the way back from Europe, just to be safe. He lived in Sacramento, California, for several The voices on the street and the signs in a days before moving by himself to Oakland. For foreign alphabet are now conversations and Agha, America was the iron doors and alarm directions. Agha, who pays for utilities and systems that he saw on every home in his new groceries, still shares the apartment with neighborhood. America was the feeling of Graubard, who pays the rent. The neighbor- being told that it wasn’t safe to go out after 6 hood has everything Agha needs—a Wal- PM. America was paying $500 to share a single greens, a Jewel, and three bus lines. A nearby bedroom with three other people. After six police station makes him feel safe. months, he decided he would go back to either Syrians come to Agha’s o ce seeking help Syria or Egypt. But as Agha prepared to leave, in submitting paperwork to the Department a friend of a friend in Chicago named David of Human Services. People tell him that their Graubard told him to come visit before making multiple jobs aren’t enough to pay the rent, up his mind. and his office helps. When Arabic greetings On December 6, 2016, Agha walked out into echo through the room and a box of cookies the waiting area at O’Hare. Graubard caught makes its way from desk to desk, Agha feels sight of him, quickly walked over, extended like he’s back in Syria. Then he remembers a celebratory balloon, and beckoned him to what Graubard told him as they pulled up his car. They pulled away from the curb and in front of the house for the first time, and merged onto the Kennedy. When the car came his voice swells. “Chicago is my place, my to a stop in Albany Park, Agha looked up at a country.” v ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 11 Fish ’n’ faith
Lenten fi sh frys are a delicious and ubiquitous part of the Catholic midwest. By B S
For more than 30 years the Irish American Heritage Center on the northwest side has hosted Lenten fi sh frys, an all-you-can-eat fried cod buff et.
Saint Andrew Parish in Lakeview hosted two Lenton fi sh frys, where an estimated 800 baskets sold “I’m a dessert apprentice tonight,” says Patty Blum, whose childhood home is just around the corner each night. The fi sh fry tradition references the Bible parable of “the feeding of the multitudes,” from Saint Albert the Great Catholic Church in Burbank. At least nine diff erent homemade desserts where Jesus and his disciples fed a crowd of 5,000 with only fi ve loaves of bread and two fi sh. were donated to the fi sh fry.
12 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll Volunteer cooks Bob, Glenn, and Jim work the breading station at Saint Albert the Great’s Lenten fi sh fry. For three hours, the basement buzzes with deep fryers, chatter, and excitement.
Friends Mary, Arlene, and Pat of Saint Symphorosa Church came to the fi sh fry at Saint Albert the Great, hosted every Friday of the season in the church basement.
Off ering the choice between a fi sh basket for $12 or a mac and cheese basket for $7, the two-day BYOB event hosted by Saint Andrew Parish fi lled the school’s gymnasium. v
Aine McNulty dances to Irish music next to her mother, Deirdre (to her le ), while the O’Hara School of Irish Dancers performs around the corner at the Irish American Heritage Center’s Annual Lenten Fish Fry.
ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 13 T K | A B D | R W. Diversey R W. Diversey -- -- FOOD & DRINK turkitch.us alibabadoner.business.site
concentrated on Turkey’s most recogni- zable culinary export. Doner kebab, the Ottoman ancestor to shawarma, gyros, and tacos al pastor, is perhaps the world’s most international hangover remedy, available on street corners and sidewalks all over the plan- et. Though it’s typically carved from upright stacks of spinning lamb, or lamb and veal, owner Atalai Oenem brings a more contem- porary chicken variant, via Munich, where he worked in the hotel business. The centerpiece of his storefront is an upright golden cone of laminated poultry—“organic,” he’ll remind you more than once—which he shaves with an electric kebab cutter that buzzes the sizzling, crisping outer edge of the flesh as it rotates around the heating element. It’s a comforting display of mechanical efficiency that seems particularly of Germany, the country contro- versially credited with popularizing the late- night doner kebab sandwich; meat stu ed in a warm pocket of pita, bedazzled (or disguised) by an array of sauces and garnishes that adapt to whatever country you’re eating it in. Oenem o ers a fairly conservative selection RESTAURANT REVIEW of these: lettuce, onions, cabbage, tomato, sli- ces of feta if you like, creamy garlic sauce, and chili fl akes. You can request it all and he’ll still A kebab crawl from construct a well-balanced sandwich, the cool crunchy salad in harmony with the juicy, car- amelized (don’t forget: “organic”) poultry and the lake and beyond its soft, warm pita Snuggie. You can get this in variations: on a plate, with rice or fries, but the A handful of new restaurants off ers Turkey’s most important thing, Oenem will stress, is that you recognizable culinary export and more. eat it right away. Anyone who’s ever stood in line for doner By M S (or al pastor, or shawarma) understands what a grave disappointment it is to approach a glis- tening, sizzling, spinning monument of meat, e like the sea and the man skin condition), and the space has a Star- only to be served old scraps that had been lake,” says Özkan bucks-like quality to it. It’s bright and open, previously set aside for expediency, maybe Yilmaz, the owner of with plenty of room to stretch out before the even only minutes before. You can’t easily see Turkitch, a new café in gleaming glass display cases showing o the the doner spinning at Istanbul Grill, around Lakeview just a half- sandwiches, sweets, and a few of the hot dish- the corner and up a couple blocks on Clark “Wmile from the second largest body of water in es. Some of the latter are fairly uncommon in Street, a small storefront with more tables and the Americas. That’s why he reckons so many these parts, such as menemen, a saucy tomato, a much broader menu. When I visited one early Turks choose to live in the neighborhood, and pepper, and egg scramble, or the soujouk om- weekday afternoon I might not have ordered it From le : organic poultry rules the cone at Ali why, consequently, there are so many Turkish elette, a layer of over easy eggs ringed by coins Baba Doner; skewers of classic doner at Café if I’d seen it fi rst. It was the more common lamb restaurants there, from the Gundis to Cafe of salami-like beef sausage. Both are ideally Istanbul; pide on a plank at Istanbul Grill; Ali and veal variety, but though the sandwich was Orchid to ZiZi’s and more. sopped up with wedges of lightly toasted, black Baba Doner ALEXUSMCLANE (uncommonly) built on a nicely crusty section Yilmaz brings a unique concept to that sesame-spackled breads, basketed and served of baguette, the meat was dry and tough and a group, specializing in Turkish breakfast, sand- with each order. And they’re best idled over chore to get through. Closer inspection behind wiches, and pastries, building on the whole- with ornate demitasses of thick, inky co ee, or the counter revealed why: the cone had been sale line of frozen baklava, börek, and simit curvaceous glasses of black tea. whittled down to a gray nubbin, something he launched three years ago in Milwaukee. It’s a model designed for linger- that couldn’t have happened in the short peri- Available for purchase in a frozen case next to ing, and the obverse of Ali Baba Doner, od of time they’d been open that day. the register, the branding is a portmanteau of which opened right around the same But Istanbul Grill has more to recommend “Turkish and “kitchen” (not an ancient Otto- time, just a couple doors down, and it than day-old doner: particularly fl atbreads, 14 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll I G | C I | F L W | R N. Clark R W. Division R W. Diversey Search the Reader’s online database of thousands -- - - -- of Chicago-area restaurants—and add your myistanbulgrill.com mycafeistanbul.com/ lwcoffee.com own review—at chicagoreader.com/food.
Café Istanbul ALEXUSMCLANE
and namely lahmacun. You’ll annoy your ding that my fellow doner explorer insisted I Turkish friends if you call it “Turkish pizza,” return for after I absentmindedly left it behind.
but it is a thin and lovely oblong of blis- The variety there is in some part thanks to Doner cone of lamb and veal at Slicing lahmacun at Istanbul Grill ALEXUSMCLANE tered and charred dough, blanketed with a Chef Mustafa Guler, formerly of Roscoe Vil- Istanbul Grill ALEXUSMCLANE spicy-sweet tomatoey beef mince. And it is lage’s Turquoise. Guler was lured out of a brief the kind of thing that inspires you to forget retirement to open this place last summer your manners and devour it with abandon under the rubric Café Istanbul, which he has fat, all impaled on a horizontal spit. Unlike the Square at Four Letter Word, the second loca- (and maybe start trolling your Italian friends since taken far away from the water to Wicker space-saving doner machine, this rig makes tion of an Istanbul roaster and café, opened by calling pizza “Italian lahmacun”). Istanbul Park, in a more formal white-tablecloth set- e cient use of a wood-burning fi re, with the by Whiner Beer’s Ria Neri and high school Grill features another alluring fl atbread: pide, ting where you can order risotto and ribeye meat running parallel to burning oak splits. It chum Eylem Ozkaya. Four Letter Word o ers a more risen dough formed in a long, ovoid alongside your patlican salatasi and imam maintains a superlative char, as it’s threaded “Turkish style” co ee in pretty porcelain cups, canoe, filled with, among other possible bayildi. It’s the last place you’d expect to see onto a skewer and sliced free of the cone. Ele- without the standard formal presentation, but things, a roasty caramelized mash of eggplant, street food, but Guler o ers classic lamb and gantly plated on a bed of rice, there’s no better brewed with the outstanding single-origin tomato, and mushrooms, and a molten layer of veal doner as well, in addition to perhaps its thing for this than a glass of red, in particular Brazilian beans they’re roasting at their facil- mozzarella. most magnificent and dramatic variation: the Turkish varieties Guler has on his list. ity at the Plant in Back of the Yards. It’s pretty Istanbul Grill’s broad menu encompasses a cag dza kebab. You can finish whatever you’re eating at far from the water, but not far o from what variety of kebabs, salads, and essentially Tur- Originally from Turkey’s far eastern Er- these new Turkish restaurants with hot slurps you’d drink in Turkey. v kic things like kazandibi, a creamy, caramel- zurum Province, it’s a stack of juicy, all-lamb of Turkish co ee, but maybe the most trans- ized, resinously-perfumed “burned” milk pud- shoulder and saddle, interspersed with tail porting version of this can be found in Logan @MikeSula
ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 15 ARTS & CULTURE R READERRECOMMENDEDb ALLAGESF
VISUAL ART
n 2006, the artist Alberto Aguilar de- Art is life and life is art cided to let go of his studio. “I don’t like things that throw o being free,” he says. Alberto Aguilar draws no distinction between the two. “And not having a studio is, for me, being very free, to not have to make things in By K C Ithat designated space. To think of any of these spaces as a place to make things.” Aguilar makes work everywhere—while teaching art classes, during road trips with his family, while commuting to his job. He em- bodies the idea of living life like a work of art. He believes that art “results from the activi- ties of creative people moving through life,” that an activity becomes art simply by naming it so. For his “Domestic Monuments” series, the artist creates temporary installations using household objects. In one, a tubular glowing lamp runs horizontally through the open backs of four chairs. In the “Indiscreet Line” series, objects found in the streets of Havana, Cuba, were arranged in lines, photo- graphed, and then left to live out their fates as ephemeral public artworks. The resulting documentation—of fallen pink flower petals in a public square or tree pods running down the middle of a sidewalk—are stunning in their simplicity. Aguilar, now 45, wasn’t always the sort of artist who made conceptual or performative work. Tall and lanky, with close-cropped brown hair, he began his career as a traditional painter, inspired by powerhouses like Picasso and Cézanne. But as his life began to include more responsibilities—as a husband, a college professor, and father to four children—he realized that he wanted a simplifi ed creative practice. The dissolution of his studio came around the time he started working full time as a studio art professor at Harold Washington College. He resigned from that job in 2018: after 12 years, he was ready for new challeng- es. (He now adjuncts at UIC and the School of the Art Institute and makes art.) The period from the end of the studio practice until his resignation serves as a rough framework for “moves on human scale,” his upcoming solo exhibition at Gallery 400. Lorelei Stewart, the gallery’s director, says she was immediately excited about the pros- pect of showing Aguilar’s work. “Presenting Alberto’s work is such a pleasure because it’s Room View (Arcosanti, AZ), 2018 COURTESYTHEARTIST so searching and inquisitive,” she says. J 16 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll “ ” /-/ : Tue-Fri AM- PM, Sat noon- PM, Gallery , S. Peoria, -- , gallery.uic.edu . F ARTS & CULTURE
“It’s everydayness is deeply accessible, in when we were there, there was one part of it a way, as to almost efface its creativity. But that was what the teachers were trying to give that’s where something more profound is at you,” Lucero explains. “But there was another work, I’d say. At its heart, there’s a democratic chunk, and I think it was the predominant ethos embedded in his work. In the process of part, it was what you could do with your recognizing, even identifying with, Alberto’s classmates. It was how you taught each other. I familiar materials and methods, we viewers think through that, we sort of challenged each access the possibility of our radical everyday other. We were able to egg each other on to imaginations, not because Alberto’s work is even more adventurous areas.” easy but because it proposes that creative When Aguilar was 23, he graduated from capacities are in all of us.” SAIC and got married. He and his wife, Sonia, moved to Arizona, where Aguilar’s parents guilar grew up in Cicero, where his Still from Sensitive Equipment, 2012 COURTESYTHEARTIST had relocated. Aguilar continued to make parents owned a small grocery store work and decided to pursue a master’s degree. Acalled La Grande. After school, Aguilar are from. “It was happy up until the point I was searching for when I did drugs,” Aguilar He assumed he would attend Arizona State and his siblings (three brothers and one sister) where I realized we all kind of grew apart, says. “Like I could have that experience out- University, so he didn’t apply anywhere else. would walk there and hang out in the back. when I was still in high school,” he says. side of doing them. I think that’s what artists But then he didn’t get in. Depressed, the next His mother cooked dinner for them in the deli. It was also in high school, at Glenbard East, do, and I was amazed.” year he applied to several other schools. When Then, once his father arrived at the store from that Aguilar became seriously interested in His high school painting teachers encour- he was accepted at SAIC, he knew without a his fi rst job, he would take over and his mother making art. He came to it in a roundabout way. aged his pursuit of art. In fact, they submitted doubt that he wanted to go back. would walk them home. “I was really into mind-altering substan- an application for him to SAIC—an experience “There was just a loneliness that I felt out “At the store, I remember we used to take ces,” he says. “And I think that I was into it be- that would shape the rest of his life. Aguilar there, especially in the summertime,” he says. this butcher paper, and we used to roll out a cause of what it gave me, like, the access that was a serious student at SAIC, interested “I just wanted to come back to a bigger city. I big sheet and we would just draw on there,” it gave me to seeing things in such a di erent mainly in painting and drawing, copying loved my time at SAIC, and I think that the two Aguilar says. “We always drew, especially my kind of way. And for how it allowed me to see the styles of Picasso and his modernist con- years away made me realize how much I loved brother who’s a couple years older than I am. how strange life really was.” But then one day, temporaries. “I was resistant towards these it.” Him and I were really good at drawing. But he while high, he had a negative experience that more conceptual artists,” he says. “I was very was better, because he would draw without changed his trajectory. He looked up at the sky, traditional.” ne day in 2012, Aguilar came down the hesitation, and my drawing was always more and its vast endlessness became overwhelm- The artist Jorge Lucero has been friends stairs of his Garfi eld Ridge home to fi nd like scratchy lines.” ing and frightening. with Aguilar since they were in high school. Otwo of his children, Madeleine and Paolo, He remembers this period as a happy time. After that he stopped using drugs. He de- They also attended SAIC at the same time, hitting a balloon around the living room with The family was close, taking frequent road cided to improve his life and started focusing where at one point they shared a studio. “We handbells. The game was simple: you had to trips to Florida or Mexico, where his parents more on school. He enrolled in a photography spent a lot of time working alongside each stay in the confi ned space of the area rug and class and he excelled at it. But what really in- other and staying up drawing,” Lucero says. when the balloon touched the ground, the terested him was a painting class in the next He recalls Aguilar as always “totally serious” game was over. Immediately charmed, Aguilar room. “I would always see all the painters go about his work. “Not unlike how he is now: asked for permission to fi lm the game and then in and out of the room, and I felt kind of envi- dedicated.” joined in. ous,” he says. “I felt like I belonged there.” The painter Clintel Steed, who also attended In the resulting video, Aguilar and his Eventually he signed up for painting and undergrad with Aguilar, agrees. “He’s always pajama-clad kids move around the room, was quickly hooked. His senior year he visited challenged himself,” Steed says. He recalls one bouncing the red balloon to one another. The the Art Institute of Chicago for the fi rst time. time when the school organized a fi rst-come, handbells, constantly in motion, sound like He had never been to an art museum before. fi rst-served trip to Italy. “We stayed there all wind chimes. Their highly resonant tone adds “I was looking at paintings, but I started to night waiting in line, like it was a concert or a pleasant atmospheric effect. In the fore- become curious of the source of what I was something.” On the trip, Steed says, a lot of ground Aguilar’s other two children, Isabella looking at,” he says. “I wanted to see some of the other students treated it as a vacation. Not and Joaquin, play a computer game. Though these things in real life.” Aguilar. He spent his time visiting museums, o screen, their voices are clearly heard. Just At the museum, he was struck by a highly ab- seeing the classics, and painting. “He’s always as the balloon falls to the fl oor and the game stract Cubist portrait by Picasso titled Daniel- been a serious dude,” Steed says. “It’s just a ends, Isabella says the phrase “sensitive Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler, a German way of looking at life.” He compares Aguilar’s equipment.” art dealer, is depicted in dozens of scattered focus to that of Picasso. “I think that’s what “It was very serendipitous and perfect that planes. The muted brown and gray tones of people don’t get, to be Picasso in the studio. that should be the title of the work,” Aguilar his body blend in with the atmosphere around He made like three or four paintings a day. If says. him. “When I looked at it, it was like alive,” you’re gonna try to somehow stand up to that, Sensitive Equipment, which was originally Aguilar says. “He left all those forms open, and then you’ve got to bring it, you know what I’m displayed at the Museum of Contemporary it looked like these planes were just in con- saying? You can’t be joking around with that. Art in 2013 as part of Aguilar’s installation stant fl ux.” Aguilar was amazed that a painting We were all painting hard.” Home Field Play , will be the centerpiece of the Drawing in Passing, 04.28.14, 2014, pen and made in 1910 could still feel so vibrant. “I think “The thing about the Art Institute is that— Gallery 400 exhibition. “It encompasses so correction tape on mini legal COURTESYTHEARTIST that I made that connection that this was what and I don’t know if it’s still like this—but, much of the kind of ethos of his work, and J ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 17 ARTS & CULTURE continued from 17 place they encountered and asking for a free the sense of his coming out of his everyday slice. Aguilar’s youngest son, Joaquin, wore context, and using very familiar elements to a pizza costume emblazoned with buttons create unfamiliar or even surprising experi- handmade by Madeleine. Pizza Parade, which ences,” Stewart says. “It will be very partic- fi gures prominently in Aguilar family lore, will ipatory for our visitors. It’s in the center of be represented in the show by the costume, the space, so people can really have access to which normally hangs over the stairs at their his process, which I think is such a compelling home, alongside a photo of Joaquin posing part of the work that people can identify with. unhappily in front of a church. In addition to ‘This is so inventive and creative, but I also showing these artifacts in the context of an could have done it, but I didn’t.’” art show, Aguilar likes for the objects to have The playful, interactive piece, made collab- signifi cance for his family. oratively with his kids during a normal day at “In that picture, my son, he has a grumpy home, is a perfect encapsulation of the work in face because he never really liked those kind “moves on human scale.” There will be selec- of things, even as a young kid,” he says. “But tions from his “Sound Conversations” series, my hope is that some day, he’s going to look recorded conversations between the artist and at those objects and he’s going to realize the Pizza Parade, 2012 COURTESYTHEARTIST a collaborator. Often remixed and sometimes signifi cance of them and what they meant in set to music, the pieces aren’t straightforward our family history.” dialogue—they are shaped by wordplay and frequent collaborators. The two have made composed for the sound pieces, in home-based Madeleine sees her father’s approach to randomness. One moment, the participants videos and sound conversations, performed videos, photographs, and of course through life as inherently radical. “I’ve been to a lot might be talking about beards, which leads in variety shows together, and collaborated on the invention of Sensitive Equipment. of his lectures, I’ve performed at a lot of his to talk of beer. Aguilar often repeats a word multiple installations and exhibitions. When The Aguilar family is by all accounts close. lectures too, and I’ve just heard the questions or phrase, as a way to fi ll time or bide it, until the two met, in 2009, Cohen was treating Although some family members are less inter- that people have asked him,” she says. “And another idea strikes. school casually. A high school dropout, he de- ested in being a part of Aguilar’s artwork than what I’ve come to understand about what’s Laura Shae er, a local curator who now runs scribes himself at the time as very unfocused. others, Madeleine says, they are all used to it, special about his work is that it’s kind of like a the Oak Park domestic gallery Compound Yel- But Aguilar’s teaching approach appealed to and they all recognize the importance of the di erent way of living, or a di erent way of ex- low, looks back fondly on past exhibitions and him. work. periencing the world. And it’s not really about art happenings she’s staged with Aguilar. For “He’s able to meet students where they are “There are times when we’re doing weird trying to prove a point, or trying to say some- one event, the two went door-to-door in Hyde and create opportunities for them to learn on things, in strange poses, or just like standing thing, but it’s just a way of living that is able to Park collecting white objects from residents to their own terms,” Cohen says. “He makes the in a corner and he’s taking a picture of us,” she speak to a wide group of people, which I think be displayed in a defunct library space. At the classroom a place in which failure is a possi- says. “There’s a lot of humor involved and we is pretty amazing. And I think in a lot of ways, opening event, all the guests wore white and a bility for fi nding truth, or fi nding correctness. acknowledge that in the moment. But there’s his work and the way that it’s entwined in our chef served an all-white dinner—all Aguilar’s For me, that was amazing because I dropped also a lot of seriousness. Like if he’s taking lives, it challenges the way of the world.” idea. out of high school. That made learning safe or a picture of the dog, you can’t call the dog’s Allan Kaprow, the late American artist “Collaborating with Alberto is kind of like something.” name because then it’s going to ruin every- known for popularizing art “happenings,” looking through a camera obscura,” Shae er Cohen, who has become good friends with thing. So we have to be super careful. Not that once wrote, “Playing with everyday life often says. “Everything is fl ipped upside down and Aguilar, later transferred to SAIC after Aguilar he’ll get mad, but we know: this is important. is just paying attention to what is convention- seems foreign, in a delightful and illuminating applied on his behalf. He’s now pursuing an This is what he’s doing. It is fun, and it is funny ally hidden.” For Aguilar, that sentiment rings way. You never know what’s coming next or MFA in painting at Northwestern University. a lot of the time, but it’s also something that particularly true. He looks at the mundanity what’s going to happen. Working with him Cohen sees Aguilar as consistent no matter we know is important.” of everyday life—folding laundry, painting makes me feel alive, in all ways.” what role he’s inhabiting. “I can’t separate For Aguilar, part of the beauty of not having the garage door, lecturing to a class—and sees Through his work as a professor over him, his work, and his teaching practice at a studio, of creating art out of everyday mo- things with a freshness and a presence that the past 15 years, he has also collaborated all,” Cohen says. “For me, it’s like what sets ments, is the opportunity to capture family most of us lack. frequently with students. In many ways, his his work apart, I think it’s just what sets him moments. “I think that art is a way to docu- “I do want to always have an awareness teaching is just another extension of his art apart as a person. What sets him apart is the ment things as they take place, within even my because I think that it always is important,” practice. Joseph Josué Mora, an artist who way that he fights for freedom in the world, personal history,” he says. “I like the power of he says. “We as humans just don’t realize that studied with Aguilar at Harold Washington in freedom of expression. He’s fearless. That’s art to be able to do that.” because we’re blinded by being tired, or we’re 2012, recalls that Aguilar would start every one thing that he always tried to get me to be Reflecting on the moment in high school blinded by having—whatever—a hangover, class with a performance. “He’d pull down the as an artist, is fearless.” when he realized his family had grown apart we’re blinded by all the worries of the world. projector screen and go behind it,” Mora says. Many of Aguilar’s collaborations with fi lls him with emotion: the inherent sadness of That stops us from seeing how amazing things “The only thing you could see of him was his his oldest child will also be featured in the the passage of time, the regret of not enjoying are. And it’s not that I always realize how legs and then he would just start chanting or exhibition. Madeleine, now 21, is a junior at things in the moment. His open approach to amazing things are. But I think that making singing in a poetic way and talk about time, SAIC, concentrating on print media and fi bers. making art stems directly from this, as in the the work allows me to see that more clearly, about how his time was running out. It was “Moves on human scale” will include autobi- piece Pizza Parade. and also to hopefully share that with my fami- very in the moment.” ographical comics and books she’s made about For the ephemeral 2012 work, the Aguilar ly, but also with other people.” v Alex Bradley Cohen, also a former Harold her family. Her presence will also show up in family walked west on Archer Avenue from Washington student, is one of Aguilar’s most other ways: through background music she Pulaski to Harlem, stopping in each pizza @booksnotboys 18 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll W C / -/ : Thu-Fri : PM, Sat and : PM, Sun PM, Auditorium Theatre, E. Ida B. Wells, - - , abt.org , $-$ . ARTS & CULTURE
DANCE Sweetness and dark The ABT arrives at the Auditorium Theatre with the surreal Whipped Cream. By O S
Princess Tea Flower; Whipped Cream set COURTESYTHEARTIST
n the surreal world of American Ballet The- go for it,” he says. “But they loved it. It was a atre’s Whipped Cream, a boy is hospitalized very complicated piece to engineer. There are Iafter gorging on sweets, sending him into a two dancers inside, one operating the head and vibrant fantasyland of dancing desserts while front legs, the other the hind legs and a baby th eatre a drunk doctor and a gang of syringe-wielding that rides upon the back of the yak.” nurses attempt to treat his illness. This mas- A team of set and costume technicians had th ursdays sive spectacle cost nearly $3 million to create, the challenge of translating Ryden’s designs BREAK THE ROUTINE blending two ambitious, unique creative per- to the stage, fi nding solutions that would vent with world premiere theatre spectives to revitalize a largely forgotten 1924 heat, allow for movement, and provide visibil- score by composer Richard Strauss. ity for dancers moving large pieces through a Choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky with cast of 65 people. Take pride in the Thursday, April 18 at 7:00pm set and costume designs by pop surrealist “[Whipped Cream] is an entry point to painter Mark Ryden in his theatrical debut, understand what the theater part of our title UNIQUE PINOCCHIO THE HOUSE THEATRE OF CHICAGO Whipped Cream is the fi rst production in Au- is about,” says ABT artistic director Kevin at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division | Wicker Park ditorium Theatre’s new four-year partnership McKenzie. “The artwork and the design had RISKY Join The House for an “Insider Intro” and light bites with ABT. The contrast of creepy and adorable as much input as the choreography, but cho- BOLD at 7PM before the show. The story’s adaptors, Joseph visuals in Ryden’s artwork makes him the ideal reographically, it’s probably some of the most new work Steakley and Ben Lobpries, share their long-time designer to shape the show’s aesthetic, which challenging for every level of dancer in it.” interest in this classic tale in a conversation led by happening on engages with childhood fears even as it deliv- Following the 2017 announcement that professional dramaturg Derek Matson. After the show, ers a steady stream of whimsy. the Jo rey Ballet would be moving from the Chicago stages stay to mix ‘n’ mingle with the cast and artists and “One of the things I like best about Whipped Auditorium Theatre to the Civic Opera House year-round enjoy desserts from Whole Foods Lakeview. Cream is the contrast between sweetness and starting in 2020, the Auditorium found a ABOUT THE PLAY: darkness,” says Ryden. “The ballet travels mighty replacement to fill its ballet void in Theatre Thursdays is The House brings to life the classic fairy tale of a wooden boy who from a happy sweet world to a dark mysterious ABT. “We are the nation’s ballet company NEW every month! wishes to become real. Funny, imaginative, and moving, PINOCCHIO world and then back again. Life contains dark and Chicago is one of the major cities in the explores how the lies we tell ourselves hurt those we love. and light. To see and experience anything, world,” says McKenzie. “We’re supposed to Tickets are $30 (Apr 18 event + show) | Call 773-769-3832 there must be contrast. Without darkness bring the best of American dance to the world, Buy online at TheHouseTheatre.com (use code THTH) there would be no light.” and with a city of such culture in a theater with Of all his fantastical designs for the show, the such historic signifi cance, it would be a sin of snow yak that carries Princess Praline stands omission to not be coming to Chicago and the MORE EVENTS: bit.ly/theatrethursday out for Ryden. “When I fi rst came up with the Auditorium Theatre.” v @ChicagoPlays idea of incorporating this character of mine #TheatreThursday into the ballet, I didn’t think everybody would @OliverSava ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 19 THEATER R READERRECOMMENDEDb ALLAGESF
Lottery Day LIZLAUREN
Her boisterous guests hoot and holler to the dismay of her snooty (some might say siddity) neighbor Vivien. Holter excels at excavating L D the personal details of gentrifi cation through R Through /: Wed-Thu : PM, Fri PM, Sat and PM, Sun Vivien, played by a delightfully neurotic PM; also Tue / , : PM, and Sun Michele Vazquez. She’s the neighbor who / , : PM, Goodman Theatre, parrots false pleasantries, who can’t be both- N. Dearborn, --, goodmantheatre,org, $ -$. ered to explore real friendship by stopping by for a drink, and who calls the police for petty annoyances. When Vivien tells Mallory, “Now that the neighborhood is new, we have a re- sponsibility to be better,” Holter makes clear underneath the uproarious amusement from that this conversation is about dominance, not the audience. negotiation. Jason Lynch’s stage lighting expertly en- REVIEW Yet coexistence is the nexus of a neighbor- hances the terrifying experience of someone hood, and at the heart of every community reliving a PTSD-triggered trauma, subtly is a Mallory: a person who holds everything changing from amber to pale blue to deep pur- Community trust together through sheer will. Warm lighting ple, mirroring Mallory’s roiling emotions as that casts beautiful golden hues and a musical she tries to exorcise them by giving away the Lottery Day brings Ike Holter’s Chicago Cycle to a triumphant close. backdrop of nostalgia-inducing soul hits like remainder of her memories. Director Lili-Anne “Memory Lane” by Minnie Riperton imme- Brown masterfully paces the dialogue, allow- By S F diately cue us into the love she possesses for ing the cast to tumble at breakneck speed her odd collection of blood and chosen family. into organized cacophony while emphasizing meditation on endings and new begin- to change disinvested neighborhoods by mak- Other characters from Holter’s universe make the moments of quiet and fragile anxiety nings, Lottery Day is a fi tting capstone ing choices that they will never have to feel the appearances here: Cassandra (a powerful where the indestructible Mallory is rendered A for Ike Holter’s seven-play Chicago impact of. McKenzie Chinn, toting a magical baby that vulnerable. Cycle. Each play cast a spotlight on over- In Lottery Day, neighborhood matriarch never cries) from Sender, and her sister, Zora, A trademark of Holter’s style is how nimbly whelmingly unsolvable issues like gentrifi ca- Mallory, who lives in the last old house on a hilariously intense Sydney Charles, revisit- he telescopes between the broad themes and tion, violence, politics, and community identi- a newly “revitalized” block, invites a hand- ing her vigilante role from Prowess; Robinson sophisticated nuances of his subjects. Lottery ty in the fi ctional 51st ward of Rightlynd, and picked list of her closest family and friends to from Rightlynd (the deliciously jovial and salty Day is at once a meditation on personal loss Lottery Day attempts to reckon with the sum her backyard for an evening of merriment and Robert Cornelius); and the painfully earnest and a community grieving its end. It is equally of these parts. Through pointed references to mystery. Played by an explosively charismatic “woke” white guy Ricky (a pitch-perfect Pat di cult for family and friends to realize that Chicago politics, Holter takes aim at entities J. Nicole Brooks, Mallory is unapologetically Whalen) from Exit Strategy. a grieving person may never return to her such as Rahm Emanuel, Lori Lightfoot, the saturated in her own existence, full of glamor- Rounding out this impressive cast are former self and for a neighborhood to under- reviled police academy, and the thinly veiled ous joie de vivre, piss and vinegar, and a lot of James Vincent Meredith as Mallory’s love stand that the fi ght is over and the gentrifi ers “Applewood Foundation,” all of which strive weed. interest Avery; a spastically peppy Tommy have won. Sorrow mutates into a perverse Rivera-Vega as Ezekiel, the aspiring rapper; competition of bloodletting and point- Tony Santiago as Nunley, the a able hustler scoring. Who can claim that they are from A NUMBER HAS AUDIENCES ON with questionable business sense; and Aurora the hood? Who turned tail and ran away—or Adachi-Winter as the peppy and overbearing escaped? Who built their success off of the THE EDGE OF THEIR SEATS! entrepreneur Tori. Each of these people is exploitation of another? As things fall apart, broken in his or her own way, yet they are all “legitimacy” is all that is left with the pain of united in their loyalty to Mallory. abandonment and betrayal—and the nagging Since its debut in the 2017 New Stages Fes- doubt that it might be impossible to survive tival, the script of Lottery Day has changed, without compromise. As Robinson muses, “PROVOCATIVE [and] making for a stronger story. Several threads even if one does “make it,” what’s the point of INTENSE. An amazing piece!” and backstories have been trimmed and winning if everyone you wanted to share your compressed. Though the ending is a bit too success with is gone? Lottery Day o ers hope “A THOUGHT-PROVOKING BURGER. AND NATE WILLIAM BROWN PICTURED: BY MICHAEL BROSILOW. PHOTO indulgent, unpacking what might have more on the other side of defeat. As Mallory teaches NOW PLAYING e ectively remained subtext, the new ending us through her grand gesture, “The only way SCIENCE FICTION THRILLER!” offers more catharsis. As the run continues, out is by making it through.” v 847-242-6000 I WRITERSTHEATRE.ORG one hopes the actors will pause for laughs (and there are many) as some lines are lost @SheriFlanders 20 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll THEATER
lollipops and a root canal tomorrow. “If I were a terrorist doesn’t come from town, he comes from the forest. And THEATER I would blow this place right up,” says Ginnie (India as the tiki-torch-wielding villagers loudly exclaim, noth- Whiteside), whose husband, a teacher at Hillcrest, and ing good comes from the forest. The Blue Fairy (Karissa Does it really get better? son, a student, are black. Murrell Myers) explains: “They’re human. They’re afraid R A search for a missing gay teen reveals Sherri’s bubble of dubious liberal ideals stretches of anything they don’t understand.” Local twit-brained The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey. thin when Ginnie’s son gets into Yale and hers is only tyrant Doohickey (Kevin Stangler) harnesses that fear, waitlisted. Sherri’s son, Charlie, uses the language of demanding that the forest be burned down, never mind American Blues Theater presents the Chicago premiere inclusion to deconstruct its incompatibility with the the impact on the environment. of this 2016 play by James Lecesne (best known as basic tenets of capitalism and thus the hypocrisy of his Despite its heavy-handed moments, director Chris screenwriter of the 1994 fi lm Trevor and cofounder of white savior parents. Ginnie hates Asians because that’s Mathews’s production works as a picaresque adven- the Trevor Project, an organization focused on suicide OK. Race is used as a trading card in this play, but the ture and a tale of resistance and survival in times of prevention among LGTBQ youth). In this engaging work race that’s on trial here is the one that invented them oppression. Garratt’s Pinocchio is a charmer whose fl uid of theatrical storytelling, originally performed off -Broad- all. Admissions is a blistering, disturbingly apt critique movements and precocious-kid antics make you forget way by Lecesne himself, ABT ensemble member Joe of how white supremacist ideas blight the white liberal the wooden boy is a puppet. Molly Brennan’s kind but Foust portrays multiple roles under Kurt Johns’s astute elite. —I H A Through 5/12: Thu- harshly pragmatic Geppetto is also moving as both a direction. The anchor character is Chuck DeSantis, a Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, fi ercely protective parent and an artist whose work is hard-boiled, middle-aged detective in a small work- 773-975-8150, theaterwit.org , $30-$42, $28-$40 viewed with suspicion by the local powermongers. ing-class seaside town in New Jersey, who is investi- seniors, $25-$30 under 30. The House’s adaptation is loose: There’s no happily- gating a missing person report that, tragically, turns ever-a er ending with Pinocchio turning into a “real into a homicide case. The victim is a gay 14-year-old 90s nostalgia trip boy.” Myers’s Blue Fairy doesn’t sparkle—she’s a ragged, boy, Leonard Pelkey, whose inability and unwillingness You could do worse than the stage musical of haunting specter whose arias fi ll the air with sorrow Cruel Intentions JENNYANDERSON to tone down his fl amboyant personality makes him a Cruel Intentions. (composer Matthew Muñiz’s original music is glorious). target for bullies. It’s a Pinocchio for our time, politicized with a sense of As Chuck narrates the story in classic terse, wryly Fans of both the 1999 fi lm riff on Pierre Choderlos de urgency that perhaps Collodi never imagined. —C world-weary fashion (“I’m a detective. . . . The dark side Laclos’s 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and of S P Through 5/19; Thu-Sat 8 PM, is my beat”), he also takes on the personalities of the wit- 1990s pop and rock hits are the obvious target audience Sun 3 PM, Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 773- nesses and suspects he interviews, including Leonard’s for this musical, now in a touring production. Roger invites us to believe, he is being forced to face the 769-3832, thehousetheatre.com, $30-$50, $20 stu- distraught hairdresser guardian, her anxious adolescent Kumble adapted his own movie (which itself was de consequences of his actions. dents and industry (same-day purchase). daughter, the British-accented director of a community Laclos by way of Jay McInerney in its portrait of rich What is frustrating about Friedman’s play, at least as theater group, and a mob widow who fi nds a key piece dissolute Manhattan private-school kids) with assists it has been interpreted in First Folio Theatre’s otherwise It’s a world of laughter of evidence—one of Leonard’s homemade rainbow plat- from Jordan Ross and Lindsey Rosin. well-produced show (directed by Rachel Lambert), is Small World imagines a disaster on Disney’s most form sneakers. Following the formula of classic fi lm noir, The paint-by-numbers aff air has its charms, but that it pulls its punches, taking pains to show that the annoying ride. Chuck’s investigation leads him on a moral odyssey to mostly delivers on-the-nose musical interpolations (per- white male protagonist (played by Steve O’Connell) is comprehend the nature of good and evil. The focus formed by a live band, it still feels like a 90s karaoke really a nice guy—not racist at all!—and that, to some Three Disney World cast members fi nd themselves of the tale is not Leonard himself as much as it is the night) as it marches dutifully through the plot points extent, he is being unfairly called to account. In other trapped in the smoldering, electrifi ed remains of the “It’s survivors—those who loved him, those who feared him, about a pair of stepsiblings steeped in sexual licentious- words, this seems to be the story of a good white man a Small World” ride in Jillian Leff and Joe Lino’s darkly and those who never knew him yet are aff ected by his ness and blackmail. When mean girl Kathryn Merteuil being brought down because one little incident in his comedic 85-minute exercise in tonal irony. Like a theme- life and death. Leonard himself never appears except (Taylor Pearlstein), belts out Meredith Brooks’s “Bitch,” youth makes him look like one of the bad ones. (You park-set contemporary No Exit, the trio of clashing per- as a blurred image projected on the back wall, but his it doesn’t exactly tell us anything we don’t already know see, he was forced by his peers to do what he did, and sonalities—an impaled Mickeyphile (Stephanie Shum), beaming presence illuminates the story. about her. Jennifer Weber’s choreography feels like besides he resigned from the fraternity right a er the a downtrodden company skeptic (Jackie Seijo), and a The burly Foust illustrates his multiple characters a blend of Britney Spears videos (with the short plaid incident.) conservative, murmuring zealot (Pat Coakley)—work with de ly chosen gestures and vocal infl ections, aided skirts on the schoolgirl ensemble right out of “. . . Baby To her credit, Friedman touches on some aspects of with and against one another to survive an unspecifi ed by the imaginative contributions of designers Grant One More Time”) and Bill T. Jones’s furniture-leaping white privilege—Patrick clearly feels immune to charges disaster that’s wreaking havoc across the park and Sabin (set), G. “Max” Maxin IV (visual projections), and motifs from Spring Awakening. of racism because his wife (played with verve and maybe the world at large. Eric Backus (sound and music). —A W It’s not compelling stuff , but the cast’s energetic wit by Melanie Loren) is African American—but she One of the New Colony’s strengths as a company T A B L P commitment (particularly Brooke Singer as hilariously annoyingly leaves many other aspects unexplored. She is that the premise behind each of its new works Through 4/27: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, awkward-virgin-turned-sex-enthusiast Cecile, who cele- teases us with good questions—why, for example, did legitimately feels original and features the sort of Sun 2:30 PM; also Mon 4/15 7:30 PM and Wed 4/24 brates being part of the “secret society!” of the carnally Patrick never bother to apologize for his actions when creative challenges that require everyone involved 2:30 PM; no performances Sat 4/13 and 4/27 and initiated) keeps it from feeling like a completely cynical he was still in college?—but never fi nds time to explore in the production to step away from what is easy or Wed 4/17 7:30 PM and Sat 4/20 3 PM, Stage 773, aff air. Jeff rey Kringer’s libertine Sebastian and Betsy possible answers. Her play is meant to give right-minded expected. Here those include an actor who is fl oor- 1225 W. Belmont, 773-654-3103, americanbluesthe- Stewart’s good-girl Annette have moments of real audiences a horror-show thrill by forcing them to glance bound, an inciting action shrouded in ambiguity, and ater.com , $19-$39. chemistry, even when warbling the Cardigans’ sugary down into America’s void, the deep white supremacist a looped recording of a song notorious for annoying “Lovefool” to each other. Cruel Intentions is slick and assumptions that still undergird our culture. And then the hell out of listeners over the course of a 15-minute Varsity blues self-conscious, like the fi lm, but as 90s nostalgia trips she steps back from the brink and changes the subject. boat ride—so just imagine the eff ect a er an hour and R Admissions is a searing indictment of the go, you could do worse. —K R C I - —J H T F Through 4/28: Wed a half. Director Andrew Hobgood’s staging achieves white liberal elite. T M Through 4/14: Wed-Fri 8 PM, Thu 3 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, individual moments of grim comedy and otherworldly 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM, Broad- First Folio Theatre, Mayslake Peabody Estate, 1717 eeriness—like a survivor using a corpse as a leg weight Joshua Harmon’s 2018 Admissions opens in an admin- way Playhouse, 175 E. Chestnut St., 800-775-2000, W 31st St., Oak Brook, 630-986-8067, firstfolio.org, for ab crunches—but to what end? istrative offi ce at Hillcrest, an elite prep school in New broadwayinchicago.com , $35-$72. $34-$44, $29-$39 students and seniors. The impact isn’t as much as you’d think. Leff and Hampshire, where two blonde women bicker about the Lino’s story lightly touches on the merits and liabilities of new admissions catalogue. Admissions director Sherri He’s not a racist, but . . . His nose is growing innocence and optimism, but the backdrop of the larg- Rosen-Mason (Meighan Gerachis) points out that the The Firestorm pulls its punches in its examination R House Theatre reconfi gures Pinocchio for est mega-media conglomerate is mostly underused here images intended to cozen the privileged into throwing of white privilege. the Trump era. as a juxtaposition for the image of burst blood packs. In down cash for high school en route to an implied this loud, mostly prototypical disaster adventure, New Ivy League future fail to represent Hillcrest’s current The premise of Meridith Friedman’s 2015 drama sounds With their adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, Colony dances around juicy topics like culture jam- population, which has, under her ministrations, grown all too familiar: Patrick, a popular white politician run- Joseph Steakley and Ben Lobpries have fashioned a ming, capitalism, religious fundamentalism, and anarchy, to 18 percent students of color. “I don’t see color,” ning for a high offi ce and doing well in the polls, may fable about Trump-era nationalism. It’s not subtle. At without committing to any of the above. —D J replies her colleague Roberta (Judi Schindler)—but it’s be brought down by revelations of racist behavior in one point, a rabidly ignorant crowd condemns the titular SW Through 5/4: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 the conversation that ensues, in which Sherri insists on college. As part of a fraternity initiation, he and another wooden boy with percussive cries of “String him up!” PM; also Mon 4/15, 4/22, and 4/29, 7:30 PM, no per- photographs of people “easily identifi able as black or white boy spray-painted “Go Home [N-word]” on the His crime? Pinocchio (created by the Chicago Puppet formance Sun 4/21, Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, Hispanic,” that will make you cringe like a mouthful of door of a black student’s dorm room. Now, Friedman Studio and voiced and manipulated by Sean Garratt) 773-413-0862, thenewcolony.org , $20. v ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 21 T M C ! sss O W sss T B ssss Directed by Emma De Swaef and Marc James Directed by De Swaef and Roels. min. Directed by Niki Lindroth von Bahr. In Swedish Roels. In French, Dutch, Aka, and Maninka, with with English subtitles. min. English subtitles. min. Gene Siskel Film Center, N. State, FILM - , siskelfilmcenter.org, $ .
This Magnifi cent Cake! we, too, are but a mere slip on a banana peel away from them. Prior to This Magnificent Cake!, De Swaef and Roels were the toast of fi lm fests around the world—including the Chicago Interna- Chris Robinson for Animation World Network, tional Film Festival, where they won a Silver “I do remember both of us really getting into Hugo—for their delightful stop-action short Journey to the End of the Night by Céline and Oh Willy . . . (2012). The title is a pun: it may being inspired by that. In one chapter, the be the name of the main character, and/or main character meets a black servant sitting a reference to the part of the male anatomy in the kitchen of a manor making bombs. In that’s on fulsome display in the fi lm’s nudist another chapter, the main character describes camp setting. After his mother is felled by a going to an African colony to work and how stroke, a bereft man returns to the nature- terrible that was. The one idea that stuck loving commune where she reared him. with both of us was that it was nearly always Although his grief is palpable, as the only the very worst individuals that Europe had to clothed person there he’s a fi sh out of water, o er who ended up going to these colonies.” giving the filmmakers opportunities to take A feeling of surreal disconnection and an swipes at cultural fads and mama’s boys. Just elliptical approach to storytelling distinguish for fun, the directors throw in a yeti as well, a This Magnifi cent Cake!, which is divided into surreal element that nonetheless is the perfect fi ve chapters with di erent narratives explor- capper for this oedipal tale. ing a similar theme, like some anthology fi lms. Speaking of surreal, I can’t think of any REVIEW Foot-long dolls made of felted wool and often animated film of recent vintage that better shot in close-up evoke recognizably fallible captures that disorienting state than The human beings—including King Leopold II him- Burden (2017), from Swedish writer-director Puppet show self, given voice by veteran Flemish actor Jan Niki Lindroth von Bahr. A delirious musical Decleir (The Memory of a Killer). The royal send-up of suburban anomie and the dis- A program of three short fi lms demonstrates the power of cloth and sticks. dotard is a hiccupping bed-wetter who’s obliv- contents of the Scandinavian welfare state ious to other people’s feelings because he’s the system, the stop-action short (which was part By A G king, so he can be. After he dismisses a hapless of the 2017 edition of the Animation Show of concert clarinetist who got time to play only a Shows) considers a bunch of anthropomorphic few notes, the depressed musician travels to animals whose loneliness can be only partly uppetry is an art form that goes back long run at the Gene Siskel Film Center. the colonial hotel in the fi lm’s second chapter, attributed to working the night shift at their millennia. Puppets are referenced in This Magnifi cent Cake! (2018), written and where he’s also mistreated. He then wanders various jobs. From the plaintive opening the ancient sacred Sanskrit epic the directed by Ghent animators Emma De Swaef off into the nearby jungle, only to pop up warbles of “Long Time,” sung by a herring in Mahabharata and shadow theater and Marc James Roels (she’s Flemish; he hails again (tragically, for another character) in the an extended-stay hotel, to the rousing closing is still performed throughout India from South Africa), takes its title from the Bel- fourth. He becomes a kind of a running gag gospel-style spiritual “When the Burden is Pand southeast Asia, while its influence can gian King Leopold II’s desire for “a slice of this amid all the brutality and misadventure. Lifted from My Shoulders” (which has roots be seen in the works of silhouette animators magnifi cent African cake,” as he expressed it The second chapter revolves around a in a biblical verse from Isaiah 10:27), the songs from Lotte Reiniger (The Adventures of Prince during the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference where Pygmy who, after tragically losing his wife reveal the entrapment of these creatures who Achmed, 1926) to Michel Ocelot (Princes and the European imperial powers were carving and children in a fi re, is hired by the hotel as are isolated in a vast sprawl of o ce buildings, Princesses, 2000). Japanese bunraku puppets up the African continent into their new colo- a bellhop; when things are slow, he stands in fast-food restaurants, highways, and parking have been around since the 17th century, about nies. When the Belgian government wouldn’t as a hall ashtray for the guests. In this second lots. The sensations generated are akin to as long as kabuki theater, and are equally fi nance his ambition, he raised his own money storyline, another running gag emerges: many those of Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman’s suited for the delicate conveyance of complex to become sole proprietor of the Congo Free bad things occur because of objects rolling animated masterpiece Anomalisa (2015)—the emotions. First documented in Samuel Pepys’s State, and grew immensely rich on profits and people falling. It’s as though gravity characters yearn for meaning and connection, diaries of 1662 and originally aimed at adults, from ivory and rubber. Conscripted as his adds insult to the injuries infl icted by callous but their repetitive jobs and the banality of the hand puppet Punch and Judy shows be- workforce, the Congolese were by fi at routine- humans. Other chapters follow a drunken their encounters hold no future. In a purely came prominent in British culture as a form ly maimed for not meeting production quotas, embezzler who flees with his money to the existential sense, the short’s denizens are on of social satire, later incorporating political and over decades millions more were slain. Congo; a Congolese porter who mourns the the road to nowhere, with literally no exit, as a commentary (as seen in the introduction of a De Swaef says Belgians don’t much discuss death of a friend; and an army deserter who slow, sweeping zoom out of their town reveals Hitler character during World War II). These this part of their nation’s past, and if that seeks a new start in Africa. What’s astonishing at the end. The Burden is a hilariously nutty, three aspects—the spiritual, the psychologi- sounds like an unusual springboard for a is how much emotion the puppets’ fuzzy faces disturbing, and yet moving meditation on the cal, and the sardonic—combine in a program weird but touching animated movie, she and and pillowy bodies convey as the characters human condition—a fugue possibly best ex- of three contemporary European stop-action Roels arrived at their subject in a circuitous stumble and thrash toward their destinies. plored, as such meditations have been for time animated puppet fi lms now beginning a week- way. As Roels explained in an interview with These mortals are foolish, and we suspect that immemorial, through puppets. v ssssEXCELLENTsssGOODssAVERAGEsPOOR• WORTHLESS
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NOW PLAYING gi ed, idiosyncratic director of actors, and his patient aff ection for many of the characters can be disarming, as Alma when one of the main villains of the fi rst part transforms R A New York performance artist returns home to into a lovable supporting character in the second. —B a small Georgia town to care for her mother, who’s suf- S 122 min. Former Reader fi lm critic Jonathan fering a mental breakdown. Ruth Leitman’s 1998 docu- Rosenbaum introduces the Saturday screening. Fri 4/12, mentary slyly underscores the women’s exhibitionism as 2 PM; Sat 4/13, 2 PM; and Mon 4/15, 6 PM. Gene Siskel they pour their hearts out to the camera, revealing their Film Center troubled psychosexual history. Some of their revelations may be half-truths, while some are shockingly real (the NThe Chaperone family photo album with its snapshots the artist as a Silent fi lm actress and fl apper icon Louise Brooks should child took of her parents having sex), but in the manner have been the star of this drama, which captures the of a southern gothic, they never fail to fascinate. —T launch of her career in jazz-age New York. Instead, wAYNE’S wORLD S 94 min. Leitman attends the screening. Sat 4/13, 7 the movie hews to a 2012 novel by Laura Moriarty that APR 12-15 AT 11 PM PM. Chicago Filmmakers focuses less on bubbly, 16-year-old Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson) fl ourishing at a modern dance school in NThe Best of Enemies Manhattan than on the timorous, middle-aged chaper- R A bevy of sterling performances and writer- one (Elizabeth McGovern) who accompanies her from director Robin Bissell’s crackling screenplay (based on Kansas. The woman has other reasons for leaving their Osha Gray Davidson’s nonfi ction book, The Best of Ene- hometown, but hokey fl ashbacks and laborious conver- mies: Race and Redemption in the New South) propel sations about her issues reveal her story to be half as this civil rights-era drama into the arena of signifi cant interesting as her ward’s. Written by Downton Abbey American political movies. In an ingenious, dynamic showrunner Julian Fellowes and distributed by PBS, the screen pairing, Taraji P. Henson stars as the iron-willed fi lm has a sedate TV-movie quality, unbefi tting of the spitfi re Ann Atwater, a black activist in 1971 Durham, roaring era and its It Girl. Brooks, given second billing North Carolina, who reluctantly agrees to chair a town here, deserves her own biopic. —L P 108 min. hAMBURGER HILL summit on public school desegregation; the chameleon- Fri 4/12, 2 and 6 PM; Sat 4/13, 5:45 PM; Sun 4/14, 3 PM; ic Sam Rockwell plays her unlikely cochair, C.P. Ellis, a Mon 4/15, 7:45 PM; Tue 4/16, 6 PM; Wed 4/17, 8:15 PM; APR 16-18 AT 10:30 PM good old boy racist who heads the local chapter of the and Thu 4/18, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Ku Klux Klan. They’re brought together by an organizer For showtimes and advance tickets, visit from Raleigh (Babou Ceesay) who specializes in the Les cousins thelogantheatre.com charrette, a collaborative workshop process in which Charles (Gerard Blain) comes to live with his cousin Paul ideological opponents can solve seemingly insurmount- (Jean-Claude Brialy), falls in love with a fellow student able problems by way of issue clarifi cation, fact-fi nding, (Juliette Mayniel), but sees her become Paul’s mistress Check out the latest giveaways to and prolonged close social contact. Through its fi ne in Claude Chabrol’s 1959 study of the ill eff ects of urban win tickets to live theater, concerts, WIN and much more. ensemble cast the movie reveals the many gradations sophistication on an uncorrupted country youth. This FREE VISIT CHICAGOREADER.COM/WIN of the Durham community: on the side of entrenched is Chabrol’s second fi lm, and its subtle development of TICKETS for your chance to win! white power are a wily politician (Bruce McGill), a character points toward the dense structures of his later smooth but steely town elder (Nick Searcy), and a fi lms with their reluctance either to condemn or extol hothead in a Johnny Reb cap (Wes Bentley), while the without reservation. In French with subtitles. —D voices of moderation and change belong to a Vietnam D 109 min. Mon 4/15, 9:30 PM. Univ. of Chicago way. Most importantly, he functions at the higher end war veteran (John Gallagher, Jr.), an open-minded black Doc Films of the autism spectrum, o en abrasive among others businessman (Gilbert Glenn Brown), and Ellis’s wife but capable enough to hold down a trash collector’s (Anne Heche). Comparisons will inevitably be made to The Crow job, drive a truck, and, as it turns out, exhume a corpse. Green Book for its upbeat vibe, but in terms of serious A guitar player, guided by the title bird, comes back to Simon Fellows directed; with Bronagh Waugh as Scott’s cra and admirable aspirations, this fi lm is more in the life as a superhero in this 1994 action picture based on pretty coworker, Denise Gough as his trashy ex-lover, Dust in the Wind league of 42 and Selma. —A G PG-13, James O’Barr’s comic book of the same name. Brandon and Christa Beth Campbell as his daughter, all of R Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1987 Taiwanese feature is less 133 min. Block 37, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Ford City, Lee, the lead, died while performing a stunt for the fi lm, whom think they’re smarter than the hero (they’re not). powerful than his preceding A Time to Live and a Time Showplace ICON and many doubles were used in the remaining footage. —A G 89 min. At Facets Cinémathèque. to Die but much better than his subsequent Daughter of Directed by Alex Proyas; with Ernie Hudson and Michael Visit facets.org for showtimes. the Nile. It follows two young lovers who move to Taipei NA Bread Factory, Parts One and Wincott. —J R R, 102 min. 35mm. Fri to fi nd work because they can’t aff ord to fi nish high Two 4/12-Sat 4/13, midnight. Music Box Diane school, and slowly but irrevocably their relationship is R For decades Kent Jones has been one of the torn asunder. Hou’s feeling for the textures of everyday Patrick Wang’s ambitious two-part feature (2018) sug- NA Dark Place most eloquent and perceptive fi lm critics in the U.S.; life, caught mainly in long takes and intricately framed gests the cinematic equivalent of a David Foster Wallace Part psychodrama, part murder mystery, this aptly with this devastating chamber drama (his fi rst narrative deep-focus compositions, gives this unhurried but deep- novel, employing a wealth of formal devices, ranging retitled indie (formerly known as Steel Country) stars feature as writer-director), he also proves himself to ly aff ecting drama a deceptively subterranean impact from brilliant to precious, to contemplate what it means Andrew Scott as a developmentally disabled single be a keen observer of psychology and American social that gradually rises to the surface. The very natural to live in modern-day America. Set in an idealized but father in a sleepy rust belt Pennsylvania town who mores. Mary Kay Place, in a heartbreaking performance, and, for the most part, underplayed performances by not implausible everytown, it centers on the longtime suspects that the drowning of a local youngster was plays the title character, a single, 60ish woman in nonprofessionals are especially impressive. In Mandarin director of the local arts center (Tyne Daly) and her no accident. One of Ireland’s most compelling actors upstate New York who devotes herself to helping with subtitles. —J R 109 min. 16mm. actress wife (Elisabeth Henry); the expansive story also (his Moriarty in the PBS series Sherlock is the defi nitive the homeless and the terminally ill but can’t help her Sat 4/13, 7 PM. Filmfront considers members of the town school board (which has portrayal of the archvillain), Scott here fascinates as resentful grown son beat his addiction to drugs. Jones to vote on whether to cut funding to the arts center), the a vulnerable yet remarkably resilient odd duck whose doesn’t exploit the scenario for simple dramatic irony— La femme infidele feisty editor of the community newspaper, some visiting complexes are so variegated he’s like a walking one-man Diane is no saint, and her son is to some extent justifi ed Claude Chabrol’s richly ironic 1969 melodrama, in which artists, and several kids. In the fi rst and superior part, version of the DSM. To wit: his naivete and arrested in his resentment of her—nor does he steer the story it is shown that nothing revitalizes a dried-up marriage Wang builds on the understated long-take style of his emotional states lead him to identify with the dead toward predictable emotional payoff s. What he wants to quite like murder. Not the least of the ironies is that acclaimed In the Family (2011) by introducing brazenly kid and stubbornly needle the cops by buying into the explore is ultimately harder to defi ne—call it the longing the point is made sincerely and responsibly: when the theatrical devices (Albee-like mannered dialogue, actors victim’s mother’s cries of foul play and cover-up. He for transcendence that’s always underpinned American fi lm’s smug, tubby hero kills his wife’s lover, he genuinely breaking the fourth wall); in the second part, he heads has obsessive-compulsive tendencies that make him life. His handling of time’s passing is subtle and mysteri- becomes a richer, worthier individual. The observation full-throttle into theatricality, with musical numbers and surprisingly suited to the role of amateur detective, but ous as well. —B S 94 min. At Music Box Theatre. of bourgeois life (as practiced in France, where it was a Greek chorus. Throughout Wang demonstrates he’s a he’s prone to hearing voices in his head, which get in his Visit musicboxtheatre.com for showtimes. perfected) is so sharp and funny that the fi lm B ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 23 FILM continued from 23 movies with this comic adventure set in the Victorian era. The protagonist, Sir Lionel Frost (voiced by Hugh o en feels like satire, yet its fundamental seriousness Jackman), is an aristocratic explorer who hopes to emerges in a magnifi cent last act, and an unforgettable improve his chances of joining an elite adventurers’ last shot. With Michel Bouquet, Stéphane Audran, and club when he discovers a Sasquatch, the lovable but Maurice Ronet. In French with subtitles. —D K lonely Mr. Link, aka Susan (Zach Galifi anakis). The fi lm 98 min. 16mm. Mon 4/15, 7 PM. Univ. of Chicago is sophisticated in its revisionist take on the adventure Doc Films genre, introducing social and ecological concerns into the mix, though its irreverent humor is still accessible to Fireworks children. Most impressive, however, is Laika’s continued In this complex fl ashback narrative that fuses danger, commitment to a distinct mise-en-scène, much lighter sorrow, and loveliness, detective Nishi (writer-director here than in previous, darker eff orts; so -hued colors Takeshi Kitano) is a quiet yet volatile man who takes a and more natural textures further enrich the experience. road trip with his dying wife, while his partner Horibe Chris Butler (Laika’s ParaNorman) directed; with the (Ren Osugi) trains himself as an artist a er being voices of Zoe Saldana, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, paralyzed on the job. Intercutting between the lonely, High Life and Timothy Olyphant. —K S PG, 95 min. productive Horibe and Nishi, whose time with his wife ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Ford is periodically interrupted by violent face-off s with own Vietnam combat experience, trots out most of the Set in 19th-century Macao (though fi lmed modestly in City, Galewood Crossings, River East 21 organized criminals, this 1997 movie is as full of shocking, cliches we remember from 40s and 50s war fi lms and France and Spain), this parablelike tale stars Welles staccato brutality as meditative calm. Several static still manages to give them some ring of truth; director as a lonely and selfi sh merchant who gets his Jewish NPet Sematary compositions presented in satisfying long takes function John Irvin leads 14 unknown actors through gritty action secretary (Roger Coggio) to hire a courtesan (Jeanne This newest adaptation proves that, when written and as serene still lifes, and tight close-ups of sumptuous sequences and de ensemble playing (Courtney B. Moreau) and a sailor (Norman Eshley) to reenact a story. directed with care, there’s still life in the world of horror paintings and drawings (by Kitano), with their saturated Vance’s angry black medic is a particular standout). It’s awkward yet exquisite. —J R created by Stephen King. Beautifully directed with shots colors and surreal yet iconic imagery, are as forceful as The question that remains is whether it’s worth doing 58 min. Former Reader fi lm critic Jonathan Rosenbaum that are both breathtaking and faithful to the original the depictions of the gruesome maimings and killings another uncritical war-is-photogenic-hell excursion— lectures. Tue 4/16, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center text, this fi lm follows a married couple (Jason Clarke and that enable Nishi to keep the future at bay. In Japanese accommodating the Vietnam experience to the same Amy Seimetz) as they confront demons from the past with subtitles. —L A 103 min. Preceded unquestioning, grunt-level perspective that sustained Mapplethorpe and present a er relocating to a rural town in Maine. by a 7 PM lecture by Nang Magazine publisher Davide us through World War II and Korea while priming us for In her fi rst scripted feature, documentary fi lmmaker Codirectors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s vision Cazzaro. Thu 4/18, 8 PM. Filmfront still more noble sacrifi ces by steadfastly refusing to look Ondi Timoner attempts to tell the story of Robert of a small town haunted by its own secrets manages to any further. Less pretentious than Platoon and more Mapplethorpe, the queer photographer known for his grab your attention from the moment the opening cred- The G Force attentive to the Vietnamese than The Deer Hunter, this powerful yet controversial black-and-white images of its fade away, and the actors’ perfect comedic timing Strong women propel Pamela Sherrod Anderson’s picture proposes with a great deal of skill and sincerity BDSM and gay sex, but Timoner falls short of capturing intertwined with jump scares creates a tense mood that documentary, about seniors who step up as primary that we honor and respect the men who suff ered on our what made Mapplethorpe so daring. Though the fi lm makes even the absurd plausible. The pacing of the fi lm caregivers for their grandchildren a er their children behalf without even beginning to consider why they did doesn’t shy away from showing his work or some of the is quick—there’s no time to wonder what happens in the fall prey to mental illness, addiction, domestic violence, so, or to what eff ect. With a typically banal score by the traits that made him complicated, like his narcissism or everyday life of this family—but by hopping straight to incarceration, or sudden death. Ellen Robinson of Chat- once-interesting Phil Glass. —J R tendency to destroy personal relationships, it refuses the heart of the dilemma at hand, Kölsch and Widmyer ham rears her teenage grandson, Patrick, with the 110 min. Tue 4/16-Thu 4/18, 10:30 PM. Logan to lean into those scenes in a way that would give the create another classic horror tale that’ll leave even the help of Chicago police offi cer Denny Perdue, who has story a bit more nuance. Instead, it jams in as many of bravest of hearts shielding their eyes —A R steered the boy into swimming and boxing. Georgeanne NHigh Life the important moments in Mapplethorpe’s life from 1967 R, 101 min. Block 37, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Ford Fischetti of Lincoln Park took charge of her grand- R One reason why every Claire Denis fi lm to his death from AIDS in 1989 as it can in an hour and City, Galewood Crossings, Showplace ICON, 600 North daughter Martha during the girl’s infancy, became her requires multiple viewings to reveal its true nature a half, another entry in the list of fi lms (like Bohemian Michigan guardian a year later, and eventually adopted her at the is that the French writer-director refuses to repeat Rhapsody) that reduce the career of an iconoclast to child’s request. This warm, upli ing documentary also herself—her movies may share certain ideas and stylistic a formulaic biopic that refuses to scratch beneath the NPeterloo introduces the Second Chance Grandparents Writing tendencies, but each one is elusive in its own way. This surface. —M D L C 102 min. Fri 4/12, 8:15 R In his historical fi lms (such as Topsy-Turvy, Vera Group, which off ers a creative outlet to stressed care- English-language sci-fi drama is no exception. The PM; Sat 4/13, 3:45 PM; Sun 4/14, 3 PM; Mon 4/15, 8:15 PM; Drake, and now Peterloo), Mike Leigh approaches givers. —A G 57 min. Anderson attends plot moves freely between sequences of an astronaut and Thu 4/18, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center past eras much like he considers individual lives in his the screening. Fri 4/12, 6 PM. BBF Family Services F (Robert Pattinson) caring for a baby girl on an empty contemporary narratives: by observing a variety of idio- space station, fl ashbacks depicting the astronaut’s rela- Maze syncrasies until complex wholes emerge. This panoramic Goodbye South, Goodbye tionships with his crew mates (who are seen dead at Based on the 1983 breakout of 38 Irish Republican Army look at Manchester in 1819 benefi ts immensely from R Hou Hsiao-hsien’s discursive 1996 drama fol- the beginning of the fi lm), and fl ashes of the characters’ inmates from Maze Prison in Northern Ireland, Maze Leigh’s curiosity about what it might have been like to lows the wanderings of Kao, a small-time gangster with lives on earth. As usual Denis circles around her themes is an objective and historically sound screen adapta- have lived then. For the fi rst half-hour or so, the director big dreams; his sidekick Flathead; their girlfriends Ying (in this case, imprisonment, sexuality, and parenthood) tion. Writer-director Stephen Burke gets so lost in his eschews conventional storytelling and just amasses and Pretzel; and a motley cast of characters—including without connecting them in a readily legible manner, attempts to recreate history, though, that his depictions fascinating period details about everything from justice a rural cop and a crooked politician—as they struggle forcing viewers to sculpt the poetic associations into of the characters never go below the surface. The fi lm to gender roles to cooking; by the time he introduces to get ahead. We’re treated with splendid shots of the a coherent narrative shape. Yet those associations are centers on the relationships between the inmates and the central confl ict—between the movement for uni- countryside, whose beauty is lost on the protagonists: exciting, beguiling, and sometimes quite moving. Not the wardens—specifi cally Marley (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) versal male suff rage and opposing forces in the British the land they love is a stagnant backwater of urbanized surprisingly Denis cites Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and Gordon (Barry Ward)—and how they use each other government—you feel like you’re part of the society Taipei despoiled by industrialization. Using intimate as one of the science-fi ction fi lms that inspired her. With to gain leverage, but there’s little sense of character that’s undergoing it. Leigh valorizes numerous people vignettes and keeping most of the violence off screen, Juliette Binoche, Mia Goth, and André Benjamin. —B development or motivation past that point. What Maze within the movement and has a grand time satirizing Hou opens a fascinating window onto modern Taiwan. S 110 min. At Music Box Theatre. Visit musicboxthe- gains in its depiction of history, it loses in emotional the conservative politicians who want it squashed (his In Hokkien and Mandarin with subtitles. —B atre.com for showtimes. strength. The audience is not given much reason to characterization here is almost Dickensian); he also suc- R 116 min. 35mm archival print. Thu 4/18, 7 PM. care about anyone from either side, and the buildup ceeds in the diffi cult task of making antiquated political Univ. of Chicago Doc Films The Immortal Story to the breakout is drawn out so long that the climax rhetoric sound rousing. The fi lm looks fantastic, as Leigh This rarely screened Isak Dinesen adaptation by Orson barely hits the mark by the time it gets there. —C and cinematographer Dick Pope advance a painterly Hamburger Hill Welles—his fi rst release in color (1968), originally intend- C 92 min. At Facets Cinémathèque. Visit facets. aesthetic even richer than the one they created in Mr. The three critical questions to be asked of any movie are ed for a never-completed anthology fi lm—is far from org for showtimes. Turner. —B S PG-13, 154 min. Landmark Century (1) what does it try to do? (2) does it succeed? and (3) is one of his most achieved works. But thematically and Cinema. Visit landmarktheatres.com for showtimes. it worth doing? This fi lm tries to make a conventional, poetically it exemplifi es his late lyrical manner, and it NMissing Link “apolitical” combat story out of one of the most brutal provides clues as to what his most treasured late proj- Oregon-based stop-motion animation studio Laika Pursued battles fought in Vietnam, and succeeds impressively. ect—another Dinesen adaptation called The Dreamers, (Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings) continues to Screenwriter Niven Busch (The Postman Always Rings Writer/coproducer Jim Carabatsos, drawing on his for which he shot a few tests—might have looked like. eschew the overstated sentimentality of many kids’ Twice) designed this 1947 fi lm as the fi rst Freudian
24 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll R READERRECOMMENDEDb ALLAGESN NEWF
Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies. FILM
western, and it does handle Freud’s “family romance” and the fi nal scene between the title hero and the son with an unusual degree of sophistication. But the fi lm is he’s never known certainly carries a charge. In Bengali Hellboy On Power and Play in Virtual mainly notable as the personal expression of its director, with subtitles. —J R 103 min. 35mm Neil Marshall directed this re-boot of Mike Mignola’s Raoul Walsh, who here found the opportunity to treat archival print. Wed 4/17, 7 and 9:30 PM. Univ. of Chicago Hellboy comics superhero and the 2004 and 2008 fi lms. Worlds his self-creation themes with a new, subjective inten- Doc Films David Harbour stars. With Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Critics Dawn Chan and Mary Flanagan participate in an sity. The enveloping tone is horror at one’s own exis- Sasha Lane, Daniel Dae Kim, and Thomas Haden Church. illustrated conversation about the social and political tence, sublimely expressed through Walsh’s deep-focus R, 120 min. Block 37, ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts aspects of virtual reality, games, digital art, and so ware style, which makes a philosophical challenge of every ALSO PLAYING 6, Chatham 14, Ford City, River East 21, Galewood Cross- design. Thu 4/18, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center movement through the elongated frames. With Robert ings, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place 11 Mitchum, Teresa Wright, and Judith Anderson; strikingly NAfter NPenguins photographed by James Wong Howe. —D K 100 Jenny Gage directed this adaptation of Anna Todd’s His Nibs A Disney-produced documentary that follows a penguin min. 35 mm archival preservation print. Fri 4/12, 7 PM; novel about a good-girl college student who begins Gregory La Cava directed this 1921 silent comedy about during mating season in the Antarctic. Alastair Fothergill and Sun 4/14, 1:30 PM. Univ. of Chicago Doc Films a relationship with a mysterious bad boy. With Jose- a rural movie theater. Comedian Chic Sale stars, playing and Jeff Wilson directed. G, 76 min. Century 12 and Cin- phine Langford and Hero Fiennes-Tiffi n. PG-13, 106 min. seven roles. With Colleen Moore. 56 min. 35mm archival eArts 6, Ford City, Navy Pier IMAX, River East 21 Stop Making Sense ArcLight, City North 14, River East 21, Showplace ICON print. Live accompaniment by Dennis Scott. Sat 4/13, R Jonathan Demme’s 1984 fi lm of Talking Heads 11:30 AM. Music Box Power of the Press in concert is devoid of the usual rockumentary bull—no Auto-Erotic: Female Sexuality in Lew Landers directed this 1943 crime drama (from a “candid” backstage interviews with stammering musi- Life Without Death story by Samuel Fuller) about the murder of a newspa- cians, no cutaways to blissed-out fans bouncing in the the First Person Director Frank Cole chronicles his attempt to deal per editor. With Guy Kibbee, Lee Tracy, Gloria Dickson, aisles. Instead, it’s 88 minutes of solid, inventive music, A program comprised of Carolee Schneemann’s 1967 with his own fear of death by making a trek across the Otto Kruger, and Victor Jory. 64 min. 35mm. Showing fi lmed in a straightforward manner that neither deifi es experimental fi lm Fuses, Arthur Ginsberg and Video Sahara Desert in this 2000 Canadian documentary. 82 with the Chicago Film Society’s recent restoration of the performers nor encourages an illusory intimacy, but Free America’s 1970-75 experimental documentary The min. 16mm. Fri 4/12, 7 PM. Northwestern University Block Orlando Lippert’s 1950 documentary The Editor’s Note- presents the musicians simply as people doing their Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd, and the late Chi- Museum of Art F book (28 min., 35mm). Wed 4/17, 7:30 PM. Northeastern job and enjoying it. The enlightened humanism of the cago artist Barbara DeGenevieve’s 2004-06 video Des- Illinois University director of Melvin and Howard is evident in every perado. 112 min. Wed 4/17, 7 PM. Northwestern University NLittle frame. —D K 88 min. Thu 4/18, 9:30 PM. Univ. of Block Museum of Art F Regina Hall stars in this comedy about a tough business- Ramy Chicago Doc Films woman who is transformed into a 13-year-old version of Three episodes from Ramy Youseff ’s comedic webseries NBreakthrough herself (Marsai Martin). Tina Gordon directed. PG-13, about the spiritual quest of an Egyptian-American man To Have and Have Not Roxann Dawson directed this Christian-themed fi lm, 109 min. Block 37, ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, in New Jersey, played by Youseff . Youseff attends the R Howard Hawks’s 1944 answer to Casablanca based on true events, about a teenage boy who survives Chatham 14, Ford City, Galewood Crossings, River East screening. Tue 4/16, 7 PM. Univ. of Chicago Doc Films F (which he was originally set to direct but lost to Michael a near-drowning and the loss of his pulse for 45 minutes. 21, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place 11 Curtiz) is a far superior fi lm and every bit as entertain- With Chrissy Metz, Josh Lucas, Topher Grace, Mike NSeadrift ing. Humphrey Bogart, the captain of a charter boat in a Colter, Marcel Ruiz, Sam Trammell, and Dennis Haysbert. Mirai Tim Tsai directed this documentary about the tensions Nazi-held French colonial port, gradually grows into the PG, 116 min. Block 37, Century 12 and CineArts 6, City Mamoru Hosoda directed this animated Japanese fan- and violence between white crab fi shermen and new Hawksian ethos of action and responsibility as he reluc- North 14, Ford City, Galewood Crossings, River East 21, tasy fi lm about a boy who travels through time with his Vietnamese immigrants who take up the same profes- tantly enters World War II in order to protect a rummy Webster Place 11, younger sister as a future, teenage version of herself. sion in 1970s Seadri , Texas. 68 min. Showing as part of (Walter Brennan) and win a woman (Lauren Bacall). In In Japanese with subtitles. PG, 100 min. Sat 4/13, 7 and the Asian American Showcase. Fri 4/12, 8:15 PM. Gene many ways the ultimate Hawks fi lm: clear, direct, and By the Light of the Silvery Moon 9:30 PM; and Sun 4/14, 4 PM. Univ. of Chicago Doc Films Siskel Film Center thoroughly brilliant. —D K 100 min. 35mm. Sun David Butler directed this 1953 comedy-musical starring 4/14, 11:30 AM, and Tue 4/16, 7 PM. Music Box Doris Day as a young woman in Indiana who is dealing NNailed It NUlam: Main Dish with family issues and an on-again-off -again romance Adele Pham directed this documentary about the histo- Alexandra Cuerdo directed this documentary about the Wayne’s World with her newly returned WWI-vet boyfriend. With ry and cultural and social signifi cance of Asian nail salons recent popularity of Filipino cuisine, focusing on several “Bill & Ted’s Aurora Adventures” might almost serve as Gordon MacRae, Leon Ames, Rosemary DeCamp, Billy in the U.S. 59 min. Showing as part of the Asian American rising chefs. 90 min. Showing as part of the Asian Ameri- the subtitle for this very silly but enjoyable 1992 comedy, Gray, and Mary Wickes. 101 min. Tue 4/16, 9:30 PM. Univ. Showcase. Pham attends the screening. Sun 4/14, 5:15 can Showcase. Cuerdo attends the screening. Sat 4/13, 8 developed from characters introduced on Saturday of Chicago Doc Films PM. Gene Siskel Film Center PM. Gene Siskel Film Center v Night Live—heavy-metal fans (Mike Myers and Dana Carvey) with a cable-access show in Aurora, Illinois. The NVideos by Zachary Epcar fi rst feature produced by Saturday Night Live’s Lorne A program of experimental videos (2014-19) by the Michaels, directed by heavy-metal specialist Penelope Milwaukee-based artist. Epcar attends the screening. Fri Spheeris (The Decline of Western Civilization) from 4/12, 7 PM. Museum of Contemporary Art a script authored by Myers, Bonnie Turner, and Terry Turner, this has a minimal plot relating to the attempted Equation to an Unknown co-option and exploitation of the lead dudes by evil French painter and cabaret owner Francis Savel (under Chicago entrepreneurs (headed by Rob Lowe), but most the pseudonym Dietrich de Velsa) directed this 1980 of it is just Hellzapoppin-style gags, with a nice turn by gay porn fi lm about a motorcycle-riding loner who has Tia Carrere as a Chinese-born heavy-metal performer. several sexual encounters. 94 min. Fri 4/12-Sat 4/13, Smaller parts are doled out to Brian Doyle-Murray, Lara midnight. Music Box Flynn Boyle, Colleen Camp, Meat Loaf, and Alice Coo- per playing himself. —J R PG-13, 95 NFiction and Other Realities min. Fri 4/12-Mon 4/15, 11 PM. Logan A Korean American singer (Bobby Choy) whose career is going nowhere joins a band as a roadie on their tour The World of Apu of Korea, where he falls for a young busker. Bobby The fi nal and weakest part of Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy Choy and Steve Lee directed. In English and subtitled (begun with Pather Panchali and continued with Apara- Korean. 85 min. Showing as part of the Asian American jito), this 1959 feature follows Apu through an arranged Showcase. Wed 4/17, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center marriage that unexpectedly blossoms and then ends tragically, followed by a dark period and eventual spiri- Harmful Insect tual regeneration. Though the rhythm of the storytelling Akihiko Shiota directed this 2001 Japanese drama about is choppy and Apu himself seems incompletely realized, the troubled life of a high school girl. In Japanese with the fi rst appearance of the remarkable Sharmila Tagore subtitles. 92 min. 35mm. Sun 4/14, 7 PM. Univ. of Chicago as his well-to-do bride upli s the fi lm’s middle section, Doc Films ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 25 Merchandise at Kokorokoko (center) and Pilsen Vintage & Thrift GILLEORA
Remember resale shops
this Record Store Day Pilsen Vintage & Thrift Thri and vintage stores are among the best places to fi nd vinyl that nobody’s even 1430 W. 18th, Pilsen thought of reissuing yet. ccording to Medill Reports Chicago, By L G Pilsen Vintage & Thrift is the largest Asecondhand store in the neighbor- hood, and two years ago owner Paul Guizar hired Charly Garcia, cofounder of local Latinx DJ collective and label Sonorama, to manage n June 2012, Seattle reissue label Light Story, New York Times features reporter Ste- anything interesting, but even the tiniest its music stock. “All the records you see on the in the Attic rereleased Dreamin’ Wild, a ven Kurutz calls it a junk shop. In either case, chance is worth 15 minutes to me. fi rst fl oor, we used to have it in the basement, barely heard 1979 private-press album by Fleischer paid $5 for one of the few dozen Record stores can provide the same thrill so I had to dig up all those records,” Garcia two brothers from rural eastern Washing- original copies of Dreamin’ Wild that had ever of potential discovery, of course, and in case says. “I had to go downstairs with a mask.” ton, Donnie and Joe Emerson. Dreamin’ left the Emersons’ house. Outcomes as spec- you’re looking for an extra reason to visit Browsing the shop’s remarkable selection of IWild arrived during a banner year for the tacular as his are rare, but collectors and DJs one, the 12th annual Record Store Day is this vinyl, cassettes, and eight-tracks is more like label, which a month later would release the routinely seek out music at secondhand shops. Saturday. RSD’s founding principle is to sup- shopping at a record store than at a typical soundtrack for the surprise hit documentary In fact, one of New York City’s best-loved re- port local record stores, but I don’t think such thrift store. Garcia has cleaned the 12-inches Searching for Sugar Man , about obscure cord shops is a Brooklyn thrift store called the support should be confi ned to shops that stock and organized them by genre (funk, world, Detroit singer-songwriter Rodriguez (whose Thing, whose basement holds thousands of RSD special releases. Thrift stores can be great rock, soul, electronic, hip-hop); at least half music Light in the Attic had begun reissuing unorganized records priced at $2 apiece. places to buy music, even if they devote only a the records bear not just price tags but also in 2008). The Emerson brothers were the I often visit vintage, thrift, and charity shops small fraction of their fl oor space to it. stickers noting their condition. LPs make up subjects of lengthy, glowing profiles in the myself in search of cassettes, records, and CDs. To prove it, I decided to hit up some local the bulk of the collection, spread out on a few Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, and the New It’s usually a very different experience from thrift stores. I couldn’t visit every one, but I shelving units along with a healthy number of York Times. The standout track on Dreamin’ shopping in conventional record stores, whose wanted to go to enough to answer some ques- seven-inches. Wild, a blue-eyed soul number called “Baby,” stock tends to be organized and curated, even tions: Where do vintage, thrift, and charity Garcia says most of the music stock comes appeared in the 2012 romantic comedy Celeste though it changes from week to week—I know shops get their music? How do they present from neighborhood folks, some of whom are and Jesse Forever and the 2013 dramedy The I can walk into, say, Dusty Groove and find their stock? Are shops in the big thrift chains offloading their vinyl collections because Spectacular Now. Indie-rock misfi t Ariel Pink a great, cheap used rap 12-inch in less than mandated to carry all the same Barbra Strei- they’ve been pushed out of Pilsen by gentri- covered “Baby” on his 2012 album Mature ten minutes. Secondhand shops, by contrast, sand LPs? fi cation and don’t want to move them. People Themes, when he was at the peak of his fame. rarely sort or catalog their collections in any Not all the stores answered my questions, can donate vinyl or try to sell it to the shop, But the Emersons never would’ve had their way, so that it’s futile to take any approach unfortunately—if they were part of a larger though if they want to get paid, they have moment if it hadn’t been for a resale shop in other than “see what you can see.” Such stores organization, the process got tangled up in red to clear a higher bar—Garcia won’t buy just Spokane, Washington—that’s where record are often the last stop records make before tape. I wasn’t able to set up a time to talk to a anything. “It’s mostly people who are there to collector Jack Fleischer stumbled upon a the landfill, and browsing their collections representative of the Brown Elephant resale get some money, just because they don’t want sealed 1979 copy of Dreamin’ Wild in 2008. can feel like panning for gold in a sandbox. I shops, and though I reached Village Discount those collections,” he says. Pilsen Vintage gen- Fleischer has said he found the LP in an don’t mind spending 15 minutes at a Goodwill, Outlet’s general manager, he didn’t respond to erally has plenty of Spanish-language discs, antique store, but in a 10,000-word opus on though, digging through battered Herb Alpert my queries before publication. But I did leave and on my trip I saw a handful of seven-inches the Emerson brothers published in 2016 by discs and high school marching-band LPs—the every shop with a better understanding of its from Discos Joey, a long-running norteño Creative Nonfiction’s monthly spinoff, True longer I look, the slimmer the chance I’ll fi nd music selection—and usually a desire to return. label based in San Antonio, Texas. Browsing 26 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll but doesn’t already have them. Bear in mind, R S D however, that you’re listening to someone S A who’s entertained by seemingly worthless Visit chicagoreader.com Cassettes at Kokorokoko for an interactive map of (left); Pilsen Vintage & private-press LPs—at the Brown Elephant, participating shops and Thrift staffers Stephanie for instance, I found Yale Sings, an old com- listings of their RSD discounts, Calderon (center) and pilation of the school’s vocal groups that I giveaways, events, in-store Charly Garcia GILLEORA performances, and more. would’ve bought if the vinyl had been a little less scratched up. I considered a radio-station copy of AC/DC’s Powerage and a slightly water-damaged edition of Funkadelic’s Amer- ica Eats Its Young, but I left with just a clean copy of Real Drugs, a 2014 EP by defunct local garage-rock group Party Bat.
Kokorokoko 1323 N. Milwaukee, Wicker Park
hen Kokorokoko co-owner Ross Kelly decided to open a vintage Wstore focused on the 80s and 90s, he modeled it after the Boston-based chain he’d worked at in the late 90s: Newbury Comics, which carries not just comics and graphic novels but also music, toys, and pop-culture ephemera. Kokorokoko sells mostly cloth- ing, though music—dance, hip-hop, vintage the hip-hop, dance, and rock sections, I spot a The Brown Elephant music at the Andersonville shop, you could metal—has played a major role in its identity late-90s 12-inch single by Cincinnati rap group easily miss its designated space near the reg- and history. When the shop opened in 2009, it Mad Dog Clique, Jon & Vangelis’s 1981 LP The Resale Shop ister on your way into the cavernous former was a few blocks away at 1112 N. Ashland, and Friends of Mr. Cairo, and an LP released by a 5404 N. Clark, Andersonville ballroom that serves as the shop’s main space. Kelly says it got lots of customers who were on team of Northwestern undergraduates run- It holds a small shelf whose six compartments trips to Dusty Groove just to the north—and ning a music production company and label he Brown Elephant resells donated are mostly full of vinyl, with three crates of about a quarter of the people who came in did called the Niteskool Project. items to support Howard Brown Health records stacked on top of it and bookshelves so to buy dance records. Garcia says music isn’t typically what draws Tin its mission to provide care for the of DVDs on either side. I noticed some decent “We do still carry a lot of 12-inch singles, customers to Pilsen Vintage. “We never pro- LGBTQ+ community. Of the store’s three loca- CDs—plus an obviously homemade CD-R copy ’cause we’re DJs,” Kelly says. “That’s what sep- mote the records,” he says. “The Instagram tions (Andersonville, Lakeview, and Oak Park), of U2’s Zooropa with “Pirated Limited Ed.” arates us from a multipurpose record store or mostly is clothes and fashion stu .” But once I went with the northernmost one. I’d been handwritten on its spine—but I focused my something like a thrift store, which is 100 per- people come inside, the music gets their at- before, and remembered its music selection attention on the store’s hodgepodge of unor- cent broad spectrum—where you’re like, ‘Oh, tention—Garcia estimates it accounts for 30 as respectable—much larger than at the Lake- ganized records, which all sell for $1. there’s an Andy Williams record and there’s percent of the store’s sales. I leave with three view store. I found more delights than dreck, though a DJ International acid-house or hip-house seven-inches (including Sue P. Fox’s entry in Records, cassettes, and CDs don’t appear some of the stock was definitely everyday record in here too.’ We’re working the same Kill Rock Stars’ 1998 mail-order singles club) on the Brown Elephant’s online list of items thrift-store rubbish—I can’t imagine who lane in a way, but we’re distilling all the Andy and a $2 dance cassette from Istanbul for a that it says it accepts—but they’re not barred might want three records by Charlie Rich Williams records and Herb Alpert records out total of $11 plus tax. either. If you’re not specifically hunting for (the guy who did “Behind Closed Doors”) of the mix.” J
LINCOLN2424 N LINCOLN AVE HALL SCHUBAS3159 N SOUTHPORT AVE
04.12 - JARED & THE MILL 04.28 - ONRA 04.08 - TELEKINESIS 05.02 - SKATING POLLY 04.13 - ROGER CLYNE & THE 05.01 - DENGUE FEVER 04.09 - THE DEAD TONGUES 05.03 - DELICATE STEVE PEACEMAKERS 05.02 - THE SCORE 04.10 - TENNYSON 05.05 - TIM ATLAS 04.16 - OF MONTREAL 05.03 - STRAND OF OAKS 04.15 - THE PALMS 05.08 - JULIA JACKLIN 04.17 - LADY LAMB 05.07 - ICEAGE 04.18 - FLORA + JORDANNA 05.10 - MATTHEW LOGAN 04.18 - GIRLPOOL 05.08 - NICK WATERHOUSE 04.22 - TYLER RAMSEY VASQUEZ 04.19 - STEVE GUNN 05.09 - MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND 04.23 - SASAMI 05.11 - THAD 04.20 - THE MURLOCHS 05.11 - TACOCAT 04.24 - DIANE COFFEE 05.12 - HENRY JAMISON 04.21 - DEERHOOF 05.17 - THE WAR ON PEACE 04.26 - BAYONNE 05.16 - MOLLY BURCH 04.22 - PRIESTS 05.22 - WEYES BLOOD 04.28 - KATIE VON SCHLEICHER 05.18 - SEGO 04.24 - BEA MILLER 05.23 - ANDREW BELLE 04.30 - CISCO ADLER 05.19 - CAROLINE SPENCE
TICKETS AND INFO AT WWW.LH-ST.COM ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 27 Stephanie Calderon of Pilsen Vintage & Thrift (above) and Kokorokoko co-owner Ross Kelly GILLEORA
continued from 27 only outlets further south than the Chicago Kokorokoko’s inventory of cassettes and Lawn Village Discount are in Chicago Heights records refl ect the shop’s a ection for the 90s, and Hammond, Indiana. Clothes take up the like the bulk of the rest of its o erings—band great majority of the store, and the records T-shirts, heavy-metal trading cards, buttons. occupy one corner of a room marked “mis- Unlike most thrift stores, Kokorokoko doesn’t cellaneous.” Short stacks of sleeveless seven- accept donations—Kelly and co-owner Sasha inches are threaded through their center Hodges travel around the midwest buying holes onto two long horizontal hooks sticking stuff, and the size of their music collection straight out from the wall, above a shelving fluctuates based on what they find. “Two, unit full of old binders, photo albums, and two three years ago, there was a lot of people deep rows of LPs. coming here just to buy cassettes—we had There are few enough records that you probably 1,000 of them out on the fl oor at one can see everything in less than 15 minutes, point,” Kelly says. “At that point, maybe 15 though the selection is fairly run-of-the-mill. percent of people coming in were just coming I spot some Lawrence Welk, some concerto
Est.Est.1954 1954 in for the cassettes.” LPs I don’t remember anything else about, a Celebrating over The cassettes are displayed in the shop’s bunch of John Denver, and two copies of Jud 6165 years of service service to Chicago! entryway, while its small selection of records Strunk’s 1973 country album, Daisy a Day. I’m 1800 W. DIVISION shares the main space with the clothes. I spend not in the market for a used copy of Marvin MYKELE DEVILLE (773) 486-9862 too long staring at a sealed copy of “You’ve Gaye and Kim Weston’s 1964 seven-inch Come enjoy one of Been Messin Around,” a local hip-house “What Good Am I Without You” b/w “I Want Chicago’s finest beer gardens! 12-inch that Delle Del & Jamin Jack Starling You ’Round,” but it still breaks my heart to released on Basement Records in 1990—it’s a find a copy with a chunk knocked out of its FEBRUARYSEPTEMBERJAAPRILNUARY 11 11...... 20 23 ...... MIKE DA FLABBYVID QUINN FLABBY FELTEN HOFFMAN HOFFMAN SHOW SHOW 8PM 8PM ABSOLUTELY NOT SEPTEMBERJAAPRILNUARY 12 12...... 21 .....WAGNER SONIA AMERICAN& AND MORSE THE BOYZ DRAFT decent deal at $12, but I can’t pull the trigger edge. FEBRUARYSEPTEMBERAPRIL 13 22 24 .....THE ..... SCOTTYDADYRKNAMOSRO “BADOM BOY” MEN BRADBURY JA NUARY 13...... AND JON DJSKID MCDONALD LICIOUS on it. I end up leaving with weathered copies of SEPTEMBERJAAPRILNUARY 14 14...... 23 ....WHOLESOMERADIO HEISENBERGWHITEWOLFSONICPRINCESSTONY DO UNCERTAINTY DJRO NIGHTSARIO GROUP PLAYERS 7PM APRIL 15 MURPHY PROSPECTMOJO THOMPSON 49 FOUR 9:30PM 9PM the Association’s Insight Out and the 1955 JAAPRILNUARY 17 17...... MIKE MORSE FELTENJA MIE& WAGNERWAGNER & FRIENDS JAAPRILNUARY 18 18...... THE BEER RON MIKEANDTHE RACHELBAND FELTON SHOW FEBRUARYAPRIL 19 25 .....WHOLESOMERADIO SKIPPIN’ ROCKS DJ NIGHT single “In the Year of Our Love” b/w “Hey! SEPTEMBERJANUARY 19...... 24 .....RC BIG BAND SITU 7PMATION DAVID APRIL 20 CALIDIOUSMAXLIELLIAM TIMEBOMB ANNA AVANTIST FEBRUARY 26 .....RC BIRDGANGS MILK BIG INC. 9:30PMBAND 7PM Village Discount Ba-Ba-Re-Bop” by west-side singer Lola Dee. JA NUARY 20...... TITTY BALD CITTY FIRSTCOW WARD PROBLEMS FEBRUARYJAAPRILNUARY 22 21...... 28 .....PETER DUDE RC SAMEBIGTO BAND CASANONY DO 7PMROVASARIOQUARTET GROUP 8PM I also buy the empty sleeve from the split RICK SHANDLING DUO 9:30PM Outlet Store 1 USE THE CODE SEPTEMBERJAAPRILNUARY 24 22...... 26 .....PETER AMERICAN CASANOVA RC BIG TROUBADOUR QUARTETBAND 7PM NIGHT LP We’re Pullin’ Together by the Downtown MARCHSEPTEMBERJAAPRILNUARY 25 1...... SMILIN’ 24...... 27 .....DORIAN DJ SKIDTA PETERJ LICIOUSBO CASONOBBY ANDVA THEQUARTET CLEMTONES GANSER SEPTEMBERJAAPRILNUARY 26 25...... 28 ..... TO URS DEADLY THE BUNGALOWS WICK 6419 S. Kedzie, Chicago Lawn Sound and the Music Company, released in MARCH 2...... ICE BULLY THE PULPIT BARBBOXAND AND BIGBARRETT HOUSE SHOW APRIL 27 THE POLKAHOLICS 10PM “RSD” SEPTEMBERJANUARY 26...... 29 .....SOMEBODY’S THE SINSHEPKATS 1986 by local indie polka label Bel-Aire (like MARCH 3...... CHIDITAROD LETTERBOMBSKIPPIN’ ANDROCKTARRINGTON 10PM THIS WEEK & FEATURING UNIBROW JOE 6PM LANASA f you’ve spent much time thrifting in Chi- I said, I’m a sucker for odd private-press re- SEPTEMBERJAAPRILNUARY 28 27...... 30 .....OFF WHOLESOMERADIO THE VINE THE 4:30PM STRAY BO LTDJS NIGHT GET 20% OFF MARCHJANUARY 7...... 28...... NUCLEARJAMIE WHOLESOMERADIO JAZZWA QUARKTETGNER & 7:30PM FRIENDS DJ NIGHT cagoland, you’ve probably gone to one of its leases). All the store’s LPs and seven-inches YOUR ONLINE EVERYOPENEVERY MIC TUESD TUESD HOSTEDAY (EXCEPT BY MIKE 2ND) 2ND) &ATAT MIKE8PM8PM 12 Village Discount stores. I decided to visit sell for $2, but since We’re Pullin’ Together MEAT WAVE OPENON TUESDAY MIC HOSTED EVENINGS BY JIMIJON (EXCEPT AMERICA 2ND) NOTRENDRECORDS.COM I PURCHASE the southernmost location in the city—the has no vinyl, I get a discount. 28 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll 3730 N. CLARK ST At Kokorokoko, METROCHICAGO.COM they love the @ METROCHICAGO 80s. GILLEORA ON SALE FRIDAY! WILD BELLE JEFFERTITTI'S NILE DUMPSTAPHUNK SUN APR 21 MAGNOLIA BOULEVARD SAT JUN 15
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Another Man’s the fragrance of a rose, you have to accept the thorns that it bears.” Treasure Resale About 20 percent of the inventory at 5444 S. Damen, Back of the Yards Another Man’s Treasure is music, Green esti- mates, though most of it is out of sight. With ilburn Green came to Chicago in the exception of a small cassette selection, 1979, and he says he opened Another it’s in a closet-size room behind a DJ booth WMan’s Treasure 18 years ago—by in the Ambrosia Room. Inside the room, a then he’d already been going to thrift stores wooden shelving unit takes up an entire wall, for decades with his family. Before he entered stretching from floor to ceiling, and holds the secondhand business himself, Green hundreds of records—mostly 12-inches, with remembers, he had a cousin who’d refurbish smaller stacks of seven-inches and 78 RPM discarded mattresses and box springs and sell records. A turntable tipped vertically balances them. “I knew then that the saying is true— precariously atop a haphazard stack of vinyl. one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” he Green says most of the people interested in says. buying music from him own record stores Green’s store is near the southern edge of or sell music themselves, and they generally Back of the Yards, and it originally occupied call ahead. Few walk-ins want to rummage almost all of its freestanding building—he through a closet of LPs. displayed loads of furniture and knickknacks Another Man’s Treasure provides a real throughout a storefront and a large banquet digging experience. My hands get dirty flip- hall connected to it. But about a decade ago, ping through the unorganized records, and I Green decided to turn the hall into a function- have a strong feeling I might discover a real SMARTBARCHICAGO.COM al events space—it already had a small stage, treasure—maybe because this collection is 3730 N CLARK ST | 21+ and Green owned the furniture and gear to do clearly less picked over than most. Unfortu- the rest. He dubbed the space the Ambrosia nately, a lot of what I pull looks like the typi- Room (currently it hosts blues sets on Thurs- cal stock of an old record shop: a weathered day nights), and he stu ed all the stock for copy of Big Brother & the Holding Company’s Another Man’s Treasure into the storefront. Cheap Thrills, Ray Charles’s Modern Sounds “That’s why I’ve got so much piled up,” he in Country and Western Music Volume 2. After says. about 20 minutes, I get overwhelmed. I grab Green gets a lot of stock from people in decent copies of 1973’s Love Is the Message by nearby neighborhoods—senior citizens trying Philadelphia soul-disco band MFSB and 1986’s to downsize or just people donating things Get Busy 1 Time! by New York City rap group they don’t want. He also has a connection at a Full Force. I add fi ve odd cassettes—including local U-Haul storage facility, and occasionally a homemade dance mix from 1988, a sermon he bids on the contents of abandoned lockers from 1982, and a couple private-press releas- sight unseen. “Winning the auction, you have es—and my total comes to $3. That is, until I to take everything that’s in there,” he says. return. v “The last two times I’ve been over there, it’s garbage—I learned earlier that if you enjoy @imLeor TICKETS AVAILABLE VIA METRO + SMARTBAR WEBSITES + METRO BOX OFFICE. NO SERVICE FEES AT BOX OFFICE! ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 29 Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of April 11
MUSIC b ALLAGESF
increasingly pressured them to be more “south- THURSDAY11 ern” (like their biggest signees, the Allman Broth- PICK OF THE WEEK ers), leading to a breakup later that year. (In 1976 Xeno & Oaklander Odonis Odonis and the band re-formed without Evans, but that version Public Memory open. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, likewise lasted only a couple years.) Evans le the Doom pioneers Electric Wizard 1035 N. Western, $12. 21+ music biz long ago to work in respiratory therapy, and Dorman and Reinhardt both died in 2012 (a er worship at the altar of horror films, Brooklyn duo Xeno & Oaklander (aka Sean McBride taking part in many Captain Beyond reunions). So and Liz Wendelbo) have been blending electronic Captain Beyond 2019 is Caldwell and some hired experimentation with pop music for fi ve full-length guns—most of whom have only been with him for a stoner culture, and Black Sabbath albums and more than a decade, layering strange few years. Recent YouTube footage shows the cur- synths with hushed, hook-driven vocals. McBride rent lineup sounding blues-based, earthbound, and Wendelbo have pushed their sonic minimalism and pedestrian—not unlike Cactus, which Caldwell in many directions, including stark cinematic sound- joined for a sec in the early 70s (replacing Carmine scapes and heady drones, but on the brand-new Appice). Seemingly gone are the spacey synths, odd Hypno (their fi rst album for Dais), they try shaking time signatures, and raging guitar tones—and defi - off their fascination with challenging sounds to take nitely gone are all the other musicians who original- a stab at straightforward dance pop. Their true col- ly made the band great. Friday’s show is sold out, ors still shine through the album’s melodic turns, though, so I guess the hard-core fans don’t much though: the beats glitch more than pound, the care. This longtime Captain Beyond enthusiast will vocals feel disconnected and foreign, and an eerie probably just crank the fi rst LP on headphones at murk hovers above the whole record. It all adds up home instead. —S K to a fun, addictive record—Xeno & Oaklander are just as good at making you move as they are at mak- ing you think. —L C Lee Fields & The Expressions Neal Francis opens. 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, $20- $28. 17+ FRIDAY12 The recording career of Lee Fields extends at least as far back as 1969, but he was considered lit- Captain Beyond See also Sunday. Furr opens. tle more than a footnote in R&B history until the 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint, 2105 S. State, $30, late 1990s and early 2000s, when he emerged as sold out. 21+ a latter-day roots-soul celebrity. Cast initially as a James Brown-style funk artist, Fields landed his As much as I love the music of eras past, I’m pret- sole chart hit, “Stop Watch,” in 1986, and though ty skeptical of band reunions—especially when he enjoyed moderate success on the 90s south- the number of founding or classic-era members ern soul-blues circuit, he was scuffling in semi- begins to dwindle. Case in point: 1970s cosmic rock- anonymity a few years later when the retro-soul ers Captain Beyond are still touring, but drummer crowd caught up with him. This led to a string of Bobby Caldwell is the only original member aboard. highly acclaimed albums on afi cionados’ labels such Caldwell played on the fi rst and last of the band’s three proper LPs, leaving a er their 1972 self-titled SAMSCOTTHUNTER debut to join hard rocker Rick Derringer (of “Rock E W and Roll, Hoochie Koo” fame) on 1973’s All American Mon 4/15, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, $35. 18+ Boy and then returning to Captain Beyond for the disappointing 1977 LP Dawn Explosion. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about Caldwell as a drummer: he also started proto-metal outfi t Arma- geddon with former Yardbird Keith Relf, played in Johnny Winter’s band during its seminal era, and YOUCAN’TACCUSE British doom pioneers Electric Wizard of forgetting their roots—after jammed with the likes of Duane Allman, Eric Clap- 25 years and eight full-lengths, their Black Sabbath worship shows no signs of abating. ton, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr. Caldwell formed They even titled their latest record Wizard Bloody Wizard (Spinefarm/Witchfi nder), for Captain Beyond in Los Angeles in 1971 with recent- ly fi red Deep Purple vocalist Rod Evans, former Iron hell’s sake. They also haven’t wavered one bit from the aesthetic laid down by singer and Butterfly members Larry “Rhino” Reinhardt (gui- guitarist Jus Osborne, the band’s sole remaining original member, in their earliest days: tar) and Lee Dorman (bass), and keyboardist Lewie heavy ri s, morbidity, horror fi lms, and drug jokes. But Black Sabbath changed it up and Gold. The band played a dizzying mix of styles, loading their catchy tunes with extended jams that branched out much more than they’re generally given credit for, and so too have Electric wrapped Latin rhythms, jazz, and more in a heady Wizard. Second guitarist Liz Buckingham, who joined the band in 2003, has contributed space-rock sheen—and their famous cosmic-pirate to a relatively lithe and up-tempo sound (at least compared to the crushingly slow doom album covers let listeners know to expect a strange trip (it’s a hologram on the first LP, dude!). Their of their fi rst decade), and if Wizard Bloody Wizard received mixed reviews for having a self-titled debut hit number 134 on the Billboard lighter touch than its predecessors, well, Sabbath’s 1978 album Never Say Die! got the same charts, no small feat for a challenging collection of treatment, and it’s likewise better than people said it was at fi rst. “Necromania” has a sly largely interconnected proggy suites by a stoney “supergroup” of mostly unknown sidemen. Their sexy edge, and 11-minute closer “Mourning of the Magicians” goes out on a grandiose epic second, more streamlined LP, 1973’s Sufficiently roar. For this tour, Electric Wizard are joined by bassist Haz Wheaton, who played with Breathless, cracked Billboard’s top 100, but by then Lee Fields SESSELIND Hawkwind from 2015 till 2018. —M K Captain Beyond were a mess—infi ghting had caused several lineup changes, and their label, Capricorn,
30 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard. MUSIC N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG . .
JUST ADDED ON SALE THIS FRIDAY! as Desco, Truth & Soul, Daptone, and, most recently, the likes of Travis Scott, A$AP Rocky, J. Cole, and focused on geek culture that it reeks like a Trekkie Big Crown. The audience for Fields’s style of music Jeremih. Scott included a Fields sample on “Anti- who’s stayed at C2E2 too long to shower between Television Finn Andrews (of The Veils) loves the type of heart-ripping soul ballad that dote,” the second single off his 2015 debut, Rodeo— days. I’m talking about how accepting the hip-hop Cracker with special guest Ike Reilly just happens to be his true metier: he sings with which gave Fields’s voice its fi rst appearance on the community can be of people who are singularly FOR TICKETS, VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG the classic soul combo of muscularity and tender- charts in almost 30 years. —D W focused on cultural artifacts that the outside world ness, summoning a coarse-edged, deeply textured considers niche at best. Which brings me to Chi- croon, achingly vulnerable but girded with just cago rap duo O.R. They?, easily the world’s best SATURDAY, APRIL PM enough sinew to avoid becoming cloying. On his O.R. They? Defcee opens. 10 PM, Subterranean hip-hop homage to director Wes Anderson. Jed latest recording, It Rains Love (Big Crown), Fields is downstairs, 2011 W. North, $10. 21+ Sed and Walter J. Liveharder named their proj- Soul Train Uncovered backed by a vintage-sounding studio crew, and he ect after a line from Rushmore: it’s what protago- In Szold Hall pours it on with more fervor than ever—demonstrat- Hip-hop has a great way of encouraging nerdiness. nist Max Fischer considers a witty response to the ing his soul balladeer’s knack for summoning power By that I don’t mean nerdcore, a rap subgenre so O.R. scrubs worn by an imagined romantic J WEDNESDAY, APRIL PM from even the tritest conceits (“It rains love when I’m with you / You’re my sun when the clouds roll with special guest through”). And Fields has fi nally found his way onto Darlingside Lula Wiles mainstream contemporary playlists via big-eared hip-hop producers: He’s been sampled for songs by RECORD STORE DAY DISCOUNT! FRIDAY, APRIL PM
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WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES Rattleback Records is a unique music store FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE offering a myriad selection of new and used Clarice and Sérgio Assad Rattleback vinyl, CDs, cassettes, movies and more. RECORDS Juan Falú 5405 N Clark Street | 773-944-0188 OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG Rattleback Records | www.rattlebackrecords.com | 5405 N. Clark Street - Chicago Designed by | www.plusorange.com ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 31 Find more music listings at MUSIC chicagoreader.com/soundboard.
continued from 31 debut, Heavy Handed, sound like they were made rival. But while Jed and Walter are clearly enam- to start mosh pits in grimy rock clubs and get peo- ored with Anderson, they’re not hamstrung by their ple sweating at all-night dance parties in unfi nished fandom. On their new self-released EPs, Either lo s. Front woman Rita Lukea sings with a mischie- They Can’t Hear Us, or They Don’t Understand Vol. vous edge that helps the band’s sprawling, glisten- 1 and 2, the duo deploy a barrage of pop-culture ing synths and rumbling percussive patterns sug- references (only occasionally to Anderson mov- gest both dreams and nightmares—and even a sub- ies) to color their vision of Chicago—a place where tle shift could produce a dramatic swing in either locals still call the tallest building the Sears Tower direction. The joyous, sweltering single “Diamonds” and where Wicker Park offi cially died with the clos- pairs crystalline melodies with an irresistible thump ing of Rodan in 2015. And whether or not your take so perfectly that you’ll wonder how you ever spent on the city lines up with theirs, it’s hard not to be a summer night without it. —L G charmed by O.R. They?’s wacky, rubbery raps and self- deprecating lines about falling asleep to Point Break. —L G Squirrel Nut Zippers 7 PM and 9:30 PM, Squirrel Nut Zippers SKHMUSIC SPACE, 1245 Chicago Ave., Evanston, both shows sold out. b Portland Cello Project 8 PM, SPACE, together. The Portland Cello Project has recent- 1245 Chicago Ave., Evanston, $17. b ly been performing Radiohead’s OK Computer in SATURDAY13 You wouldn’t be alone if your first response to a its entirety in large theaters, with backing from an Squirrel Nut Zippers concert listing was to won- The Portland Cello Project was created in 2006 orchestral ensemble. But for its spring tour, the Pixel Grip Grun Wasser, Cameron Traxx, and der, “Are they still around?” Ardent fans except- to bring the cello into new spaces and pair it with PCP is scaling back to a small group that features DJ Ariel Zetina open. 9 PM, Sleeping Village, ed, listeners mostly lost track of the Zippers after unlikely source material, and it’s since juxtaposed singer Patti King (a touring member of the Shins), 3734 W. Belmont, $12. 21+ their late-90s heyday—but the show ain’t over yet. a wide variety of reconfigured pop, rock, and rap drummer Tyrone Hendrix (Prince, Stevie Wonder), The Squirrel Nut Zippers formed in Chapel Hill, songs with Western classical arrangements—con- and trumpeter Farnell Newton (Bootsy Collins, Jill Local multimedia collective and label Feeltrip has North Carolina, in 1993 (taking their name from a trasting Kanye West with J.S. Bach, for instance, or Scott) to play Radiohead tunes as well as selections carved out a niche releasing music by outre indie- brand of old-time candy) with six members, includ- Pantera with Arvo Pärt. The group tweaks its instru- from Bach and John Coltrane. Trying new things is pop bands and far-out dance artists, including one ing James “Jimbo” Mathus and his wife at the time, mentation from show to show, adding horns, gui- characteristic of the group, and tonight’s dynamic, group who do a great job bridging those worlds: Katharine Whalen. With the release of their sopho- tar, bass, drums, vocals, and more, but whatever its adventurous set (in the intimate confi nes of Evan- Pixel Grip. The Chicago three-piece meld indie- more album, Hot, in 1996, the band rose to fame as lineup, it makes for a sight to behold and a sound ston’s SPACE) promises to be more improvised than pop songwriting with electronic music’s insistent, part of the swing-band craze of the era, along with to relish, o en with more than ten cellists onstage a typical PCP performance. —S M seemingly infi nite grooves; the tunes on their new the likes of Royal Crown Revue and Big Bad Voodoo
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32 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll MUSIC
thee Casual Hex North by North, Tomblands, and Rainbow James open. 6:30 PM, SUNDAY14 Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $8. 17+ Captain Beyond See Friday. Keith Scott & the Nothing has made me feel quite as old and irrele- Electric Blues Junkies open. 7 PM, Reggie’s Music vant as my 15-year-old son telling me he hates the Joint, 2105 S. State, $30. 21+ Beatles. He insists that their music is simplistic, bor- ing, and unlistenable; he’d rather listen to current- day genre-bending experimental groups such as Elkhorn The Shippy/Wyche Duo opens. 9 PM, Clipping., Watsky, and Igorrr. But if the Fab Four Elastic Arts, 3429 W. Diversey, $10. b are no longer cutting-edge, no one told Chicago rockers Thee Casual Hex (not to be confused with John Fahey fi rst incorporated psychedelia into his Seattle postpunk band Casual Hex). Their 2018 American Primitive approach to acoustic guitar in self-titled debut on Midwest Action sports red, fl ow- 1966, when he ran the tape backward on “Knot’s ery, psychedelic cover art and equally retro hooks. Berry Farm Molly.” Cosmic-minded pickers have Album highlight “When I Was With You” shameless- been combining the two styles ever since, and these ly cribs a guitar riff from “Day Tripper”—because if days no one does it better than Elkhorn. New York- you can crib from “Day Tripper,” why wouldn’t you? er Drew Gardner and Pennsylvanian Jesse Shep- Alice Karynak’s vocals are mixed a bit further down pard have been playing together under that name than they would’ve been back in the day, which since 2013, but their personal and musical asso- gives the song a rough-and-ready punk feel as the ciation stretches back to the 1980s—which helps bandmates lean their heads together to add those explain the ease and fl exibility of their rapport. They familiar vocal harmonies. “I Want to Be Loved” gets achieve an intricate weave of complementary tones its licks from “Taxman” and the heavier, more stoned on “Sugar Hill Raga,” one of the duets on their vinyl end of the 60s, while “Delilah” throws some Jeff er- debut, 2017’s The Black River (Debacle). On their son Airplane infl uence into the mix. I doubt my son new twin LPs, Sun Cycle and Elk Jam (both on Feed- would be won over, but for those of us who still ing Tube), Sheppard’s acoustic fi ngerpicking keeps have some affection for John, Paul, George, and up a steady fl ow of radiant sonorities and gambol- Ringo, it’s nice to hear a young band keeping the ing rhythms, the latter of which are periodically bol- spirit of the music—not to mention its rubber soul— stered by the shuffl ing beats of visiting percussion- alive. —N B ist Ryan Jewell, while Gardner and guest gui- J
Daddy. The Zippers drew inspiration from musicians scattered (though some original members, includ- such as Cab Calloway and Tom Waits, and they also ing Mathus and Whalen, reunited in 2007 for a tour distinguished themselves by crossing genres (some- and live album before going on hiatus again). For the times adding elements of calypso or klezmer) and 20th anniversary of Hot in 2016, Mathus, who now turning their videos and freewheeling live sets into lives in Mississippi, revived the Squirrel Nut Zippers mesmerizing spectacles. Hot went platinum, and its with a slew of new faces from New Orleans but the catchy lead single “Hell” brought the band appear- same carnivalesque approach, and in 2018 the band ances on late-night shows, regular play on MTV, and released the album Beasts of Burgundy (Southern invitations to perform at the 1996 Summer Olympics Broadcasting). Beasts is a stew of horns, fiddles, in Atlanta and at President Clinton’s 1997 inaugural upright bass, banjo, blues guitar, and piano, weav- ball. But the Zippers’ subsequent albums didn’t chart ing in Dixieland, swing, vaudeville, blues, and other nearly as well, and by the end of the decade inter- styles, with more than a nod to the Crescent City. est in swing music had largely fi zzled out. Over the But the band’s music really needs to be heard live next few years things got messy: Mathus and Wha- to be appreciated; their shows are equal parts bur- len divorced and band members ended up mired in lesque, performance art, and circus, with Mathus as arbitration over royalties. Eventually Whalen went ringleader of a nine-person lineup that occasionally on to a solo career, Mathus collaborated with musi- strolls through the audience like a second line—it’s cians such as Buddy Guy, Luther Dickinson, and like being transported to Congo Square by a bunch Alvin Youngblood Hart, and the rest of the band of carnies. —K L ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 33 MUSIC
continued from 34 tarist Willie Lane swap bright, burning leads that sound like what Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir might’ve produced had they steered “Dark Star” onto un pa- trolled country roads before lighting up their a er- burners. Local drummer Charles Rumback, who has explored similar territory with guitarist Ryley Walk- er, will join Elkhorn for their Chicago debut. Also on the bill is a very diff erent but similarly mind-altering electric guitar duo, Mark Shippy and Daniel Wyche, who’ve recorded a pair of cassettes with drummer Ben Billington on which they manipulate feedback to sound like a ray-gun shoot-out. Also performing is saxophonist Molly Jones, who recently moved to Chicago from Detroit. —B M
J Fernandez COURTESYOFFORCEFIELDPR
MONDAY15 yacht rock rakes in Spotify streams by the millions, I wonder why the tender tunes of J Fernandez hav- Electric Wizard See Pick of the Week, page en’t earned him headlining sets in the city’s big- 30. 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, $35. 18+ gest rooms. Fernandez’s second album, Novem- ber’s Occasional Din (Joyful Noise), is one of 2018’s best overlooked releases by any Chicago artist; its J Fernandez Coughy and Izzy True open. charming, airtight songs hark back to 60s vocal pop, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western. 21+ F and he delivers them with exacting mastery and a loving touch. Fernandez exudes such a pleasant In our new era of mellow Chicago indie rock, when calm that even the postapocalyptic society in the Whitney’s gentle “country soul” has earned praise spookily anxious “Volcanic Winter” feels a little less from Elton John and Paul Cherry’s incandescent bleak. —L G v
34 CHICA O READER - APRIL ll CHICAGOSHOWSYOUSHOULDKNOWABOUTINTHEWEEKSTOCOME
b ALLAGESF EARLY WARNINGS WOLFBYKEITHHERZIK
noon b Television 5/10, 7 and 10 PM, Never miss Maurer Hall, Old Town School a show again. of Folk Music, on sale Fri 4/12, Sign up for the 8 AM b GOSSIP Thank You Scientist, Kindo, In newsletter at the Presence of Wolves 4/24, chicagoreader. 8 PM, Sleeping Village com/early WOLF Tinariwen 10/1, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ A furry ear to the ground of Touche Amore, P.O.S., True Love 6/20, 8 PM, Bottom Andrew Bird, Madison the local music scene Lounge, 17+ Cunningham 7/16, 7:30 PM, True Widow, Telekinetic Yeti, Chicago Theatre b GOSSIPWOLFGOT hooked on local Rezn 4/20, 8:30 PM, Sleeping Elvin Bishop's Big Fun Trio Village 5/30, 8 PM, City Winery b experimental pop trio White Ppl late last Jeff Tweedy, Ohmme 8/10, Andy Black 5/7, 6:30 PM, year via their debut single, “Ilovemybb.” 7 PM, Canal Shores Golf Metro b Rapper-producer Ano Ba and singers Club, Evanston, on sale Fri Black Coff ee 5/11, 9 PM, Con- Elly Tier and Cado San (none of whom 4/12, 10 AM b cord Music Hall, 18+ Twrp, Protomen 7/12, 8 PM, Carbon Leaf 4/19, 8 PM, City is white) transform bits of rap, indie rock, Lincoln Hall b Winery b Death PETERWOLF outre dance, folk, and soul into enchant- Unspooling, Matt Ulery Sextet Jawbox 7/27-28, 7:30 PM, ing songs. On Saturday, April 13, White 4/18, 8:30 PM, Constellation, Metro, 7/27 sold out b Ppl play the Whistler’s monthly Brasstax Fruit Bats 8/9, 9 PM, Thalia Lounge b 18+ L7, Le Butcherettes 5/21, NEW Hall, 17+ Jackie Mendoza 7/15, 8:30 PM, Will Varley, Adam Lee, Ross W. 7:30 PM, Metro, 18+ series alongside the DJs who organize Mary Gauthier 6/6, 8 PM, Empty Bottle F Berman IV 6/20, 6 PM, Cobra Lucette, Long Lost 6/20, 9 PM, it. The free show starts at 10 PM, and the American Music Festival Szold Hall, Old Town School Monatik 11/23, 7 PM, Concord Lounge b Schubas, 18+ Brasstax crew are accepting donations featuring the Waco Brothers, of Folk Music b Music Hall, 17+ Wand, Dreamdecay, Wet Piss Maypole Folk Festival featur- to raise funds for Hoist Fest —a daylong NRBQ, C.J. Chenier, and Glitter Moneyyy, DXTR Spits, Ohmme, Bunny, Cold Beaches 6/23, 8 PM, Sleeping Village ing Sam Amidon, the more 7/3-6, 4:30 PM, FitzGer- McKinley Dixon, So Pretty 4/27, 8 PM, Sleeping Village Faye Webster 6/19, 8 PM, Western Elstons, and more event at Subterranean on Sunday, May 26, ald's, Berwyn, on sale Fri 4/12, 5/4, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Okkervil River, Lip Talk 7/12, Schubas, on sale Thu 4/11, 4/27, 2 PM, Empty Bottle where White Ppl will play with Rich Jones, 11 AM b Guerilla Toss, Blacker Face, 10 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town 9 AM, 18+ MC Lars, MC Frontalot, 5/3, Jordanna, Jovan Landry, and more. Basta 12/14, 7 PM, Concord Good Willsmith 4/25, 8 PM, School of Folk Music b Worriers, Awakebutstillinbed, 6 PM, Cobra Lounge b Gossip Wolf has fond memories of bass- Music Hall, 17+ Sleeping Village J.S. Ondara 10/24, 7:30 PM, Pity Party 5/24, 7 PM, Cobra Mini Mansions 6/7, 9 PM, Bike Cops, Impulsive Hearts, Mayer Hawthorne (DJ set) Lincoln Hall b Lounge, 17+ Empty Bottle ist Paul Parts and drummer Ross Howard Gal Gun 4/22, 8:30 PM, 5/11, 2 PM, Virgin Hotel Ozomatli 6/28, 9 PM, Schubas Xavier Wulf, Beau Young Missio 4/20, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ tearing up house shows with garage rock- Empty Bottle F Hoist Fest with Rich Jones, Sam Prekop, Aki Tsuyuko, Prince, Marty Grimes, Reco- Mystery Skulls, Phangs, ers Mama . A er bandleader Chris De Ar- Black Caviar 4/20, 10 PM, Brasstax, Jordanna, White Douglas McCombs 6/8, Havoc 5/29, 7:30 PM, Bottom Snowblood 7/23, 6:30 PM, cangelis revamped Mama’s lineup in 2016 , Electric Hotel Ppl, Defcee, and more 5/26, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Lounge b Subterranean b A.A. Bondy 6/22, 9 PM, Sleep- 4 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Louie Prima Jr. & the Witness- Xuitcasecity 6/15, 8:30 PM, Ayla Nereo 4/25, 7 PM, Parts and Howard teamed up with guitar- ing Village Bruce Hornsby & the Noise- es 7/26, 8 PM, City Winery, on Chop Shop, 18+ Schubas b ist Adam Cohen-Leadholm (and drummer Bone Thugs-n-Harmony 5/3, makers, Suzanne Vega 8/11, sale Thu 4/11, noon b Nilüfer Yanya, Pixx 7/31, 8 PM, New Found Glory, Real Friends P.T. Bell, since departed) to form Bandy— 6:30 PM, Concord Music 6:30 PM, Canal Shores Golf Quantic (DJ set) 8/17, 2 PM, Sleeping Village 6/23, 6 PM, Concord Music and their power pop comes loaded with Hall, 17+ Club, Evanston, on sale Fri Virgin Hotel Hall, 17+ Bongripper, Like Rats, Aurora 4/12, 10 AM b Joshua Radin & the Weepies Johnny Orlando, Hayden Sum- just as many brilliant hooks and just as L'Orealis 5/11, 8:30 PM, Horse Feathers 5/30, 8 PM, 10/24, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, on UPDATED merall 4/29, 7:30 PM, Park much fuel for basement pogoing! Last Sleeping Village SPACE, Evanston b sale Fri 4/12, 10 AM, 17+ West b month, Bandy dropped The Challeng- Las Cafeteras 11/22, 9 PM, Hudson Taylor 5/25, 8 PM, Beat Red Wanting Blue 7/31, 8 PM, Family of the Year, Hollis Pink Avalanche, Anatomy of ers via Texas label Under the Counter Lincoln Hall, 18+ Kitchen, 18+ City Winery, on sale Thu 4/11, Brown 5/4, 8 PM, Bottom Habit, Djunah 4/18, 8:30 PM, Cake 8/8, 7 PM, Canal Shore Jackopierce 7/12, 8 PM, City noon b Lounge, canceled, refunds Empty Bottle Tapes, and when they play Reed’s Local Golf Club, Evanston, on sale Winery, on sale Thu 4/11, Reverend Peyton's Big Damn available at point of purchase, Sego, Nectar 5/18, 10 PM, on Thursday, April 11, they’ll have copies to Fri 4/12, 10 AM b noon b Band 7/25, 8 PM, SPACE, 17+ Schubas, 18+ sell (along with their 2017 EP, About). Cinthie, Garrett David, Alejan- Justindemus, Melvin Henry Evanston b Joanna Newsom 10/7-10, 9 PM, Shed, Aurora Halal, Ariel Zeti- Duane Powell is not only a spectacular dro 5/9, 10 PM, Spy Bar 4/30, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Ruidofest with Los Tigres del Thalia Hall, 10/7-10/9 sold out; na 5/3, 10 PM, Smart Bar Classixx (DJ set) 7/20, 2 PM, Lucy Kaplansky 5/17, 8 PM, Norte, Hombres G, Enanitos 10/10 added and on sale Fri Slushii 5/18, 9 PM, Aragon DJ and stylish dude but also a heck of a Virgin Hotel Szold Hall, Old Town School Verdes, and more 6/21-23, 4/12, 10 AM, 17+ Ballroom, 18+ soul historian. His Rear View Mirror Ses- Dead Meadow 6/13, 8:30 PM, of Folk Music b 1 PM, Union Park b Smallpools 5/29, 7:30 PM, Park sions illuminate the careers of classic sing- Empty Bottle Knife Knights, Lando Chill, Saymyname, Porn and Chick- West b ers and maverick producers by pairing a Death, Ono, Breathing Light Curta 5/3, 9 PM, Sleeping en, Osevera 4/26, 10 PM, UPCOMING Soledad 5/22, 8 PM, Maurer 4/27, 7 PM, Avondale Music Village Sound-Bar Hall, Old Town School of Folk lecture from Powell with a performance Hall Ben Kweller 7/20, 8:30 PM, Shura 10/16, 8:30 PM, Empty Cisco Adler 4/30, 7 PM, Music b by an artist who vibes with his subject. Dijon 6/22, 8 PM, Schubas b SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri Bottle, on sale Fri 4/12, 10 AM Schubas b Tommi Zender 6/2, 7 PM, Previous installments of the free series Dressy Bessy, Colleen Green, 4/12, 10 AM b Sonreal 6/22, 8 PM, Lincoln Adventure Club, Riot Ten, SPACE, Evanston b have examined Maurice White of Earth, Potty Mouth 6/26, 8 PM, Alex Lahey 8/27, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall b Tynan, Inzo 5/3, 9 PM, Aragon Tunic 4/21, 8:30 PM, Empty Sleeping Village Hall, 18+ Spanish Love Songs, Drew Ballroom, 18+ Bottle Wind & Fire and Patti LaBelle; this season 88Glam 5/6, 8 PM, Subterra- Jacob Lee 7/24, 8 PM, SPACE, Thomson Foundation, Allah-Lahs, Tim Hill 8/16, Turnover, Turnstile 5/2, 6 PM, kicks off Thursday, April 11 , at the Green nean, 17+ Evanston b Turnspit 5/19, 6 PM, Cobra 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Concord Music Hall b Line Performing Arts Center with a lec- Felice Brothers, Johnathan Legendary Shack Shakers 7/28, Lounge b Herb Alpert & Lani Hall 5/4-5, Xiu Xiu 5/17, 9 PM, Empty ture on songwriter Eugene McDaniels Rice 5/2, 9 PM, Sleeping 7 PM, Reggie's Music Joint Spring Awakening Music Fes- 8 PM, City Winery b Bottle Village Luluc 6/12, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ tival with Zedd, Destructo, Avantasia 5/21, 8 PM, Patio Yheti, Nastynasty, Eazybaked and a set by Tiaybe Bledsoe. Sessions this Flamingosis 6/15, 2 PM, Virgin Mandolin Orange, I'm With and more 6/7-9, 1 PM, Poplar Theater 5/3, 10 PM, Bottom Lounge, spring will highlight Curtis Mayfield and Hotel Her 8/9, 7 PM, Canal Shores Creek Music Theater, Hoff - Bear's Den 5/27, 8:30 PM, 17+ Sugar Hill Records cofounder Sylvia Rob- Fontaines D.C., Pottery 9/15, Golf Club, Evanston, on sale man Estates, 18+ Thalia Hall, 17+ Ted Yoder 5/21, 7:30 PM, inson. —JR N L G 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri Fri 4/12, 10 AM b Chase Spruill 4/21, 8:30 PM, Beast Coast, Joey Bada$$, SPACE, Evanston b 4/12, 10 AM, 18+ Stephen Marley, Mystic Marley Constellation, violin; playing Flatbush Zombies 8/14, 7 PM, Yungblud 7/13, 8:30 PM, Lin- Foxing, Now Now, Daddy 6/9, 7 PM, Park West, 18+ works by Michael Nyman, 18+ Huntington Bank Pavilion b coln Hall b Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail Issues 4/19, 8 PM, Thalia Jonah Matranga, Nathan Angie Stone 7/5, 7 and 10 PM, Bilmuri, No Dice 4/25, 7 PM, Zveri 5/31, 7 PM, Concord [email protected]. Hall, 17+ Gray 5/19, 6:30 PM, Bottom City Winery, on sale Thu 4/11, Bottom Lounge b Music Hall, 17+ v ll APRIL - CHICA O READER 35 SAVAGE LOVE
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: I’m a heterofl exible I lied too, but I didn’t take My therapist believes that married cis woman in my it. I know what I’m doing is my actions are a coping 40s. I’m also a POS cheater wrong. My husband would mechanism, i.e., it is easier to and a catfi sh. I really fucked be very hurt if he knew. And pretend to be someone else up. One year ago, I met my boyfriend, who wants to than it is to be me. I don’t an older man in an online make a life together, would think she’s wrong, but I also fetish forum. He sent me be very hurt as well. I’m in don’t think it excuses what an unsolicited PM, and love with both men, but I’m I’ve done. How do I end this we have talked for hours not leaving my husband. I relationship without doing every day since then. My know the only right thing to any more damage to my two husband, whom I’ve been do is break things off with my partners? —C A married to for more than 20 boyfriend. I’ve tried multiple T F I years, does not know that times: I’ve told him that he S H I am having an emotional is better off without me, aff air. I have no intention of that I’m a bad person, and A: Far be it from me to telling my husband what I’ve that he shouldn’t trust me. question your therapist’s done. I have been honest Each time, he convinces me assessment—she’s spoken with my online boyfriend to stay. We have not been with you on multiple about everything except physical. We have never occasions, and her insights my name, my age, and the even been in the same room, are doubtless more fact that I have a husband. much to his dismay. I have informed—but I think her (I know those are all really thought about telling him framing falls short. big things to lie about.) My the truth, but I am worried She describes your actions boyfriend lied to me early about my safety, and I do as a coping mechanism: on about his name, age, and not want to hurt him any You told a stranger lies and relationship status, but came worse than I already have. abused your husband’s trust clean out of guilt. So I had Plus, I’m a fucking coward. to escape your miserable life. the opportunity to say that I am in treatment for PTSD. If you weren’t so fucking mis- erable—if other people and/ or circumstances hadn’t con- spired to make you so fuck- ing miserable—you wouldn’t have done this. But despite your therapist’s efforts to help you down off that hook, CATFISH, you seem deter- mined to hang there. She’s offering you absolution while you stand around flagellating REAL PEOPLE yourself. REAL DESIRE Personally, I think you’re REAL FUN. entitled to your feelings. Go ahead and feel terrible. You did a bad thing. It’s not the worst thing someone’s ever please recycle done online, and most peo- Try FREE: 773-867-1235 ple know not to take what a More Local Numbers: 1-800-926-6000 stranger tells them on the this paper internet at face value. But if feeling terrible doesn’t moti- Ahora español vate you to make changes . . . Livelinks.com 18+ well, it’s not for me to
36 CHICA O READER -APRIL ll interview Software Engineer President Ability to climb ladders, work SERVICES JOBS screening test. Must be willing American Liberty Services, at ceiling heights, work in tight GENERAL to occasionally work in the Inc. spaces Danielle’s Lip Service, Ebony evening or on the weekend. Chicago, IL Ability to sit/stand/walk for Beauty, Erotic Phone Chat. To apply, please email your prolonged periods of time 24/7/365. Must be 21+. Credit/ By Dan Savage Software Engineer sought by resume to Recruiting@relativity. Direct and oversee the Ability to successfully complete Debit Cards Accepted. All IMC Americas, Inc. in Chicago, com, Please reference “JOB ID: organization & financial and a background check subject to Fetishes and Fantasies Are IL to work alongside traders 19-9007” in the subject line to budgetary activities, and applicable law Welcomed. 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Interested conjunction with hardware. and developing a reliable cash STUDIO ANTWAN CHILDS 341 W candidates should send resume Utilize: SharePoint, C#, ASP. fl ow projection and budgeting 11OTH ST CHICAGO, IL 60628, to: [email protected] NET, JQuery, Javascript, K2, USA (4/11) about having done them. If you’re not one of process. Review accounts Large studio near Warren with “Software Engineer” in Powershell, SSRS, SSIS, SSAS, payables and receivables, loans Park. 6804 N. Wolcott. subject line. SQL Server. Job locations STATE OF ILLINOIS, those people, doing something about it and payable and accrued interest, Hardwood floors. Laundry in Park Ridge,IL & various PUBLICATION NOTICE OF banking and loan arrangements in building. Cats OK. $825/ learning something from it will alleviate your Make money giving away my unanticipated client sites COURT DATE DATE FOR and agreements and approve month. Heat included. audio stories on CD. nationally requiring relocation REQUEST FOR NAME Cook agents balance monthly roll Available 5/1. (773) 761-4318. misery. AudioQuickie.com & travel to these sites involving CHANGE. Request of: Michael forward. Raise outside capital www.lakefrontmgt.com short & long term assignments. to support the growth of the Scott Hefner Enter the case Here’s what you need to do: End things Thora Capital seeks Specify job title & MAIL resume number to the new name of: company’s operations. The Large studio apartment Managing Director for to AQL Technologies Inc, Winnie Michael Hefner. The with your boyfriend. Write him an e-mail, tell minimum requirement for this near Loyola Park. 1329-41 various & unanticipated 2604 E. Dempster, #201, Park court date will be held: the position is a bachelor’s degree W. Estes. Hardwood floors. worksites throughout the U.S. Ridge,IL 60068 in accounting or the foreign Request for Name Change. him the truth about your age, marital status, (HQ: Chicago). Responsible Cats OK. $825/month. Heat Make sure the date is at least CLASSIFIEDS academic equivalent. Must included. Available 5/1. for originating, sourcing, & 5411 Empanadas seeks 8 weeks after the date you and unavailability. Don’t share your real name have ten (10) years of (773) 761-4318. deploying investor capital into professionals for the following file this on 5-8-2019 Date at experience as President, www.lakefrontmgt.com with him; you’re under no obligation to do so, investment opportunities w/ two positions at our Chicago, Chief Executive Officer, 09:30AM form with the Circuit in aviation industry. Bachelor’s IL office: Franchise Marketing Clerk. Executive Vice President or Large studio near Morse and if he turns out to be the vindictive type, in any field +10yrs exp OR & Development Analyst and at 50 West Washington Chief Financial Officer for a red line for sublease. 6826 12yrs exp req’d. Req’d Skills: Staff Accountant. Send resume Chicago Cook in Courtroom # fi nancial services or insurance N. Wayne. Hardwood floors. CATFISH, you don’t want him to have your aircraft purchasing, leasing to: Fifty Four Eleven Store 2 1706 (4/11) company. Must also ten Laundry in building. Pets & sales; negotiating aircraft LLC d/b/a 5411 Empanadas, years of experience with: a OK. Sublease from 6/1-8/31. real identity. Apologize for not coming clean sales; conducting aircraft 2045 W North Ave, Chicago, IL Notice is hereby given, JOBS specialty non-standard auto $775/month. Heat included. appraisals; conducting aircraft 60647. Attn: N. Ibarzabal. (NSA) insurance organization; pursuant to “An Act in relation when he did—he lied to you too at the start— market studies; dev aircraft (773) 761-4318. to the use of an Assumed managing outsourced www.lakefrontmgt.com and thank him for the pleasure of his virtual ADMINISTRATIVE marketing strategies; dev Personal Driver/ Assistant investment management; Business Name in the conduct asset backed investments; needed. Candidates must be reinsurance; acquiring, or transaction of Business in company and the joy he brought to your life. SALES & managing aviation assets; driven to provide the highest integrating and growing NSA BEDROOM the State,” as amended, that securing lending from private levels of customer service, operations in multiple states. If a certification was registered Then block him. MARKETING equity funds; securing lending as well meet the following you are interested in applying by the undersigned with from secured bank lenders; guidelines: Clean Driving / for the career opportunity Large one bedroom apart- the County Clerk of Cook Here’s what you need to learn: You didn’t FOOD & DRINK managing sales staff ; managing Criminal Background Check, listed above, please e-mail ment near Loyola Park. 1341 County. Registration Number: entirety of aviation transaction Extensive geographical your resume to us at: W. Estes. Hardwood fl oors. Y19000807 on March 12, 2019, do this just because you’re miserable. You did SPAS & SALONS process. Mail resume to: Thora knowledge, Courteous with a careers@myamericanalliance. Laundry in building. Cats OK. Under the Assumed Business this because it was fun. We call it “play” when Capital 150 N. Riverside Plaza, professional attitude, Must be com. Please reference Job: Available 5/1. $995/month Name of FLOW UNLIMITED BIKE JOBS Suite 4270, Chicago, IL 60606 at least 20 years old. Excellent PRES0319. (heat included). (773) 761-4318. with the business located at: children pretend to be someone or something income potential. Contact www.lakefrontmgt.com 4214 SOUTH GREENWOOD GENERAL Full Time/ Part Time Window [email protected] United Methodist Homes & AVENUE, CHICAGO, IL 60653 they’re not. Vulnerable children pretend to be Washer subcontractors Services seeks Occupational The true and real full name(s) needed in Chicago suburbs. Therapist in Chicago, IL: and residence address of big and powerful superheroes and/or mon- Must have experience, Loyola University Chicago is Assess patients’ OT needs, BEDROOM the owner(s)/partner(s) is: equipment and own vehicle. seeking an Assistant Professor plan & implement programs MILES CURRY 4214 SOUTH sters to cope with and momentarily escape REAL Call John at 847-212-5729 of Information Systems & to restore work & daily living GREENWOOD AVENUE Supply Chain in Chicago, IL skills. Reqs. Bachelor’s degree Luxury Downtown Rentals CHICAGO, IL 60653, USA (4/11) their relative powerlessness. And nothing Marketing Analyst: Assess ESTATE to perform research in the in OT & IL OT license. Periodic/ 2bed/2bath $2,500 and up market preferences in order fields of closed-loop supply intermittent travel to patients’ For a list of units, email: Notice is hereby given, makes a child’s playful fantasy feel more real to help company decide chains, sustainable operations homes at unanticipated [email protected] pursuant to “An Act in relation than a good friend who plays along. RENTALS how to shape, advertise, & & service parts inventory locations w/in commuting Mark Killion to the use of an Assumed market products & services. management. Please send distance of company Kale Realty Business Name in the conduct Most adults don’t make time for play—most FOR SALE Design, implement, & maintain resume to Maciek Nowak at headquarters. Send resume to 2447 N. Ashland or transaction of Business in marketing budget processes, [email protected] & ref job R. Policarpio, UMH&S, 1415 W. Chicago, IL 60614 the State,” as amended, that of us aren’t LARPers or kinksters—but even reports & dashboards for 091276. Foster Ave., Chicago, IL 60640 Offi ce: 312-939-5253 a certification was registered NON-RESIDENTIAL budget stakeholders. Job Cell: 773-354-6693 by the undersigned with adults need play. You found a space where location in Chicago, IL. Mail The Marketing Store is SERVPRO ® of the County Clerk of Cook ROOMATES resume: Saheli, Inc d/b/a Sahil seeking a Director, NetSuite Ravenswood County. Registration Number: you could play and you found a playmate who Exclusive, 2605 W Devon ERP in Chicago, IL with is seeking Production Y19000642 on February 21, Avenue, Chicago, IL 60659. the following requirements: Technicians 2019 Under the Assumed helped make your fantasies feel real. It got Bachelor’s degree in Business Name of HARDCORE MARKETPLACE FITNESS with the business out of hand when arousal, orgasms, oxytocin, MARKET- Handy Persons Wanted! Accounting or Information Primary Responsibilities: MGT Co is looking for Technology and 5 years Inventory and load the work GENERAL located at: PO BOX 87123, and promises you couldn’t keep got stirred RELIABLE people to complete related experience. Prior vehicle with equipment, CHICAGO IL 60680 The true PLACE work orders daily! experience must include products, and supplies needed and real full name(s) and into the mix. Own car and tools required! the following: implement for each project. MUSIC & ARTS residence address of the 773-301-1091 leave message. NetSuite ERP System within a Prepare rooms/areas for work owner(s)/partner(s) is: Owner/ You need to find a way to build some play GOODS Promotions Marketing Agency activities. Set up staging area Dominik D & Tracy Guns, was Partner Full Name SHANNON exp U.S. Services Inc. (3 yrs); design, develop and and equipment for each project. at video shoot/hot pencils with BONNER at 6500 S. MINERVA into your life, sexual and/or nonsexual, that SERVICES is seeking a Project implement project management Perform production processes kitten, Kitty & Cherry, Chrissy #2S CHICAGO, IL 60637 USA Architectural Designer in and resource management following SERVPRO ® No. Brittney Beach, LIa Lakely (4/11) doesn’t require you to lie or hide. It would be HEALTH & Chicago, IL to develop & prep processes within OpenAir production guidelines per work with photos with Guns N. design drawings, renderings, and/or other PSA systems (5 order per crew chief directions. Roses, Aerosmith, & M. Crew. great if you could do that with your husband, WELLNESS plans, animations, & models yrs); financial management Ensure clear two-way CATFISH, but if he’s not willing or able to play for client presentations. This of billing, revenue recognition communication with crew Love, INSTRUCTION position reqs up to 75% and work in progress for a chief and other technicians Hollywood Rose EARLY WARNINGS with you, get his okay to play on your own. v travel to client sites in the Promotions Marketing Agency (especially regarding customer 312-206-0867 NEVER MISS A SHOW AGAIN MUSIC & ARTS U.S. Apply at www.exp.com, (5 yrs); create annual budgets needs and concerns). CHICAGOREADER.COM/EARLY ref job # 3020. and perform ongoing forecast Position Requirements FOR SALE NOTICES management and budgetary Basic English communication Relativity (Chicago, IL) control (5 yrs). Please submit Send letters to [email protected]. and math skills Tile Store Closed Brand New seeks a Software Engineer resume to andrew.depaola@ MESSAGES High school diploma/GED Desiger Tile 70 Percent Off. Download the Savage Lovecast every to design/write/ test/deploy & tmsw.com. 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