CHICAGO’S FREE WEEKLY SINCE | JANUARY
mayoral Spotlight on Lori Lightfoot Ben Joravsky | Curtis Black 8
film reviews Ben Sachs | Andrea Gronvall | Anne Elizabeth Moore 22
Muk s + Sharkula: together at last Leor Galil 27
A life told in images Gonzalo Guzman’s portraits and text, paired with archival photographs, evoke his grandfather’s long journey. 15 THIS WEEK CHICAGO READER | JANUARY | VOLUME NUMBER
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR IN THIS ISSUE
THE SNOW FINALLY STARTED—late, OK, history-focused short essay that will highlight serves a delicious, uh, cheese tea. (Actually it CITY LIFE but I’d been feeling anxious without it—and it little-known tidbits from our weird city’s past. sounds amazing.) 04 Public Service Announcement fi nally feels like winter. We should slow down, Man about town and history buff Joe Mason There’s more, but I can’t tell you about it yet. Survivors fi nd support at Mujeres Latinas en Acción right? Cuddle up with a warm mug of some- will be a frequent contributor, so it’s sure to be Have you learned to trust me when I tell you it 04 Sightseeing Joe Mason tells thing and eight million books and forty million a blast. will be great? It will, I promise. the story of Streeterville’s criminal cats and refuse to take out the garbage? Not at Of course we’re also digging in deep, Last week we erred in stating that Ahmed- namesake the Reader. We’re just getting going. election-wise, with a focus this issue on Lori abad is the capital of the Indian state Gu- 05 Feral Citizen Nance Klehm’s new City Life, the friendly section that directly Lightfoot’s mayoral campaign, as well as Maya jarat. In fact it’s the former capital. Sorry, column invites us to look at the urban follows the Table of Contents, has several Dukmasova’s report from the 49th Ward, long Gandhinagarians! ecosystem new features, including local permaculturist, held by Joe Moore. Can his challengers unseat And remember, we’re taking your mail for teacher, and ecological systems designer the vulnerable candidate? After all the politi- a special one-time-only return of the letters Nance Klehm’s new monthly column, Feral cal strife, you’ll surely want a break, so Mike section at [email protected]. We can’t Citizen. We’ve also got Sightseeing, a new Sula brings us along to a Malaysian cafe that wait to hear from you. —A E M
FEATURES
NEWS & POLITICS 06 Joravsky | Politics Rahm’s big TIF bamboozle and the illusion of oversight 10 Dukmasova | Politics No more Joe Moore? The th Ward contends with the progressive who may not live up to his reputation
FOOD & DRINK 13 Restaurant Review Resistance to Taiwanese cheese tea and Malaysian noodles is futile
ARTS & CULTURE 18 Theater I Know My Own Heart looks back on the life of diarist MAYORAL SPOTLIGHT PHOTO ESSAY MUSIC FEATURE mountaineer and queer icon Anne Lister St Nicholas presents a Meet Lori Lightfoot A grandfather’s life When Mukqs met selfloathing white man in search of meaning and I Call My Brothers is a Does the reform candidate stand a in images Sharkula portrait of the anxiety of being “other ” chance in post-Rahm Chicago? 20 Lit It’s a horse! It’s a tank! It’s Portraits and archival photographs The oddball electronic artist and Q&A B B J | Battlepug! evoke a long journey. outsider rapper make weird sounds 21 Comedy In It’s a Guy Thing three P B C B 8 that go down easy together. women explain everything you need to B G G 15 know about dudes B L G 27
2 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll ARON BATHTUB REFINISHING T R - @
FILM 22 Reviews Lars von Trier has a really P T B funny way of showing he loves women E C AE M in The House That Jack Built Pawel M E P S K M E D K H Pawlikowski chronicles a love aff air D E K S that blazes across the Iron Curtain C L SK and Life & Nothing More takes a hard D P J R C E AL look at a workingclass woman and M E PM Ready to use her son A E J L S W D I in 4 hours! 25 Movies of Note Of Fathers and BJ M S Sons Owned A Tale of Two Americas S W M D L G Paternal Rights and more fi lms to S M E B W REFINISHING check out M L C L C F L C P F T A E C S TUBS, TILES C D AE B D C L & SINKS C I G A G J H J H I H D J M K SK M Special price this M BM S M JRN week $250.00 M O L P J P BS D S KW A W ------773-418-2766 www.aronbathtubrefinishing.com D D JD D P E & P MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE K K 30 Shows of note Victor! Grails O M SN L Ayanna Woods and other excellent shows this week ADVERTISING 36 Early Warnings Ex Hex Van Hunt -- - @ C @ Mdou Moctar Jawbox and many more justannounced concerts S M P F 36 Gossip Wolf Dronesong duo S A R AM Mending near the halfway point of a A R song narrative cycle topnotch LM -H N S Chicago rapper Tree decisively ends C R M T P his release drought and Whitney trumpeter Will Miller drops the debut by his psychedelic souljazz band N A V M G --- JL SB CLASSIFIEDS ------37 Jobs D C 37 Apartments & Spaces [email protected] 37 Marketplace -- STM READER LLC 37 Savage Love Factchecking dick B P D RL T ER size and navigating humilition and S J S commitment Dan Savage off ers A- S V advice for every situation C C EB ------39 Comics Allnew weekly serial strips from Mike Centeno Melissa Mendes R ISSN - STMR LLC and John Porcellino SM SC IL --
C ©C R O A P C IL J G F G ’ A C R R RR T ® ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 3 CITY LIFE
Public service announcement Where Latina voices are heard Survivors fi nd support at Mujeres Latinas en Acción.
Sightseeing
FOR MUJERES LATINAS EN ACCIÓN tial intake, to legal advocacy, to individual Streeterville (Latina Women in Action), empowering and group counseling. All Mujeres’ off erings women isn’t just about off ering counseling, are free or low-cost, and free childcare is was named for survivor support, and other services out of available while clients are onsite accessing their three offi ces—it’s about being an active services. a land-grabbing and visible presence in the community. Other services include a 24-hour domes- Whether it’s the Women’s March downtown, tic violence help line, a er-school programs, criminal meetings with legislators in Springfi eld, or referrals to medical and financial resourc- The story behind the family festivals in Pilsen, the regal purple es, leadership development, and citizenship statue T-shirts make Mujeres an instantly recogniz- workshops out of offi ces in Pilsen, North Riv- able force to be reckoned with. erside, and South Chicago. And, of course, “Mujeres has always been very rooted in there are plenty of opportunities for clients advocacy,” says Fanny Cano, development and members of the community to join the and communications manager. “It’s our way protests, meetings, and events that cen- to ensure that the best interests of the com- ter the voices of Latinas and their families. A statue of George Streeter. CHICAGO CRIME SCENES munity and the clients we work for are being —K H represented.” Founded in 1973, Mujeres bills itself as M L A THE JOHN HANCOCK CENTER is a popu- nois boundaries. He lorded over his trash the longest-standing Latina organization www.mujereslatinasenaccion.org lar tourist draw, but few visitors know that the kingdom. in the country, serving more than 8,000 cli- land it sits on was where a dangerous criminal Using forged documents, Streeter sold Main Office ents every year in English and Spanish. The West st Place hatched his notorious schemes. property that he had dubious claim to. Police founders recognized the need to help Lati- Chicago, IL George “Cap” Streeter served in the and private detectives tried to oust Cap. He nas and their families in their own language () - Union Army as a private, not a captain. His and Maria responded by dousing them with and in ways that resonated culturally, but West Suburban Office fi rst wife, Minnie, le him for a life in vaude- boiling water or fi ring birdshot at them from the communities served haven’t always been W. Cermak Rd. Ste. ville. He and his second wife, Maria, made muskets. Cap faced the courts several times receptive. The history of Mujeres is marked North Riverside, IL plans to pilot his steamboat Reutan to Hon- and was eventually sentenced for the murder () - by what the organization describes as bat- () - duras and become gunrunners, but they of John Kirk. A December 18, 1988, Chicago tles against “politics, social stigmas, and even lacked funding for the endeavor. Tribune article claimed that Kirk was a tres- personal threats.” A er a couple years being South Chicago Office According to the Chicago Public Library’s passing night watchman, but a December 21, E. nd St. volunteer-run, the fi rst staff was hired in 1975. Chicago, Il Streeterville Collection, Cap, Maria, and their 2017, Chicagoly article off ered that Kirk was a Today, the Domestic Violence and Sexu- ()- crew ran the Reutan into a sandbar 450 feet hired gun out to kill Cap. He was pardoned by al Assault programs follow clients from ini- off Chicago’s near north shore on July 10, the governor of Illinois a er nine months. The 1886, at the future site of the Hancock. Street- Dead in Chicago website shows that Maria er claimed the area—today known as Streeter- died in 1903 from complications following a ville—as the independent U.S. District of Lake trolley car accident. Michigan. He fi lled the sandbar area with rub- Streeter married his third wife, Emma “Ma” ble and secured a title, then sold lots and col- Lockwood Streeter, in April 1906. The two were lected taxes on them. a match. When the Chicago Title and Trust Streeter converted the landbound Reutan Company tried to seize the fortress, she retal- into his stronghold. The top half was his iated with a meat cleaver. Cap died of pneumo- home, and the bottom half served as his “war nia on January 24, 1921. As he had never actual- room.” As Chicago experienced a building ly divorced his fi rst wife, the courts would not boom after the 1871 fire, the land surround- allow “Ma” to fi le claims on his property. ing the boat had became valuable and he A statue of Cap stands at Grand Avenue claimed it as his domain. The Streeterville and McClurg Court. A marker commemo- Collection indicates that Cap’s legal standing rates him as “The eccentric resident who gave depended on an 1821 government survey that Streeterville its name.” While it’s not untrue, deemed his 186-acre U.S. District of Lake the description fails to capture his gunrunning COURTESY MUJERES LATINAS EN ACCIÓN
Michigan to be outside of Chicago and Illi- and land-grabbing side. —J M 4 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll CITY LIFE THE M E X I C A N
1 9 6 7
dress in some socially acceptable fashion (still a challenge), but my opportunity to relate to others so diff erent from me increased mani- celebrating fold and that gave me the responsibility to do so positively. It also made me realize I had to work to discover ways to fi nd and connect to 51 the plants, animals, and fungi that were more numerous and varied than from where I came. Who does this land, this place, this city and all its layers—open sky, tree canopy, shrub layer, grasses, forbs and crops, top soil, sub- YEARSYEARS soil and bedrock—belong to? Can we get back to this understanding of shared space OPEN 7 as an increasingly urbanized animal? It’s pos- days a week sible. Our decisions can and do affect our until X- mas land underfoot and thus, food security, habi- tat conservation, living economies, community please for resilience, and soil health, clean water, and air. Extended☎ just steps from the A lack of understanding that our lives depend holiday hours Dempster “L” stop on our biological systems results in broad- DAVID WILSON scale insecurity in all these realms. What are we willing to risk when we don’t 847-475-8665 believe our livelihoods and vitality depend Feral Citizen on the relational pathways that connect our 801 Dempster Evanston neighborhoods, the health of our urban wild- Who does this land belong to? life, the breathability of our air and soil? Inhabiting the city as shared space Recently, while changing trains, I noticed a woman cooing toward a pigeon trapped inside the Clark and Lake complex. We caught eyes and I slid off my coat and tried to THE GRIDDED CITY is ancient, popularized lived practice realized in specifi c valued spac- slowly approach and tarp the frightened bird by the Romans but not prevalent globally until es. Then, we were closer to understanding so I could release it outside. Another stranger the 18th century. When land is subdivided our spheres of relationship and infl uence. We joined in with her coat. Commuters dodged into equal—or by a factor divisible—parcels, it maintained common grazing lands and raised our lungings. A security officer admon- helps with both administration of the area and animals within our yards, we composted their ished us, her leashed German shepherd wayfi nding through it. Gridirons are imposed manure and extra organic waste, grew exten- growled. The kid selling chocolate bars for his over topography and are unresponsive to sive kitchen gardens to feed ourselves. Our charter school cheered us on. We missed local organization. The curve of waterways, animals ate our scraps, openly grazed grasses, several rounds of trains. The chasers and the soil-born connective tissue of place, desire shrubs, and trees, fed on insects and grubs. chased panting before we all understood it paths of mammals and migratory trajectories We redistributed our abundances through was time to give up and we parted ways with- of birds are invisible to us. We navigate land selling, trading, and sharing. We cached or out ever exchanging words. The pigeon hope- Find hundreds now mapped as real estate without acknowl- sold useful materials to be repurposed at a fully lives on. edging we are crossing native walking trails later time. We realized our dependence on How we perform in public, how we inhabit of Reader- that we have renamed “Clark” or “Halsted” the people who lived near us and the skills our city, how we navigate spaces less gridded, recommended or “Elston.” We fail to sense the dolomite par- they contributed to the functioning of the is a way to reclaim this connection. There is ent rock we have anchored our tallest build- whole community. The domestic and civic opportunity for relationship of place through restaurants, ings into is also weathering and mineralizing spheres were something we couldn’t sepa- participation. If we allow for a more relational the skin of soils made richer by deep-rooted rate, or separate from easily. We were closer dynamic to inform us, we will discover we can exclusive video perennial grasses since paved over. This logic to our methods of production. Closer to our learn about this place. We might even start features, and sign is superimposed onto our swampy grassy waste streams. Closer to our food sources designing this city differently with our curi- homeland—vibrant, complex social spheres and closer to our neighbors. We were closer ous steps and our fullhearted interactions as up for weekly news shape how we perceive and navigate space, to land. We were closer to ourselves. fi rst steps in this otherwise lumbering city so conceptualize place, relate to each other. As a rural person, it took me years of living we can support our beingness wholly and we chicagoreader.com/ Many, many years ago, when village life in this city to realize that when I walked out learn to care more deeply about each other food. was the norm and cities were rare, the idea the front door of my apartment, I was in pub- and the land that we share because of it. It’s of the commons was not just an idea, but a lic. Not only did this make me realize I had to possible. —N K ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 5 NEWS & POLITICS
Raise Your Hand Action, a coalition of public school parents, protested TIFs before the lars for upscale developments in gentrifying Joint Review Board on January 11. COURTESY neighborhoods when our schools are so broke RAISE YOUR HAND ACTION they can’t a ord to adequately fund special education. Hard to argue with that. The Raise Your Hand activists knew about the meeting thanks to freelance journalist and Roosevelt/Clark TIF districts. Together, Dave Glowacz, my podcasting buddy. He those two TIFs would siphon o another $1.6 wrote about it on his blog, Inside Chicago billion or so from the taxing bodies (at least Government. $800 million from schools alone) over the Well, they certainly didn’t hear about the next 23 years. meeting from the city—which seems deter- The Cortland TIF will fund Lincoln Yards. mined to keep the board a secret. You can’t The Roosevelt TIF will fund a project I call fi nd a mention of the Joint Review Board on Rezko Field—in honor of Tony Rezko, the the city’s website. political wheeler who used to own the land So three cheers for Glowacz—he’s like Paul before he went to prison for his part in a state Revere riding through Chicago yelling: The pay-to-play scandal. review board’s meeting, the review board’s In a perfect world, the taxing bodies would meeting! be cautious before they let Rahm force them Roughly 80 people showed up—not that to raise property taxes only to see it get di- it mattered. The board voted for both TIF verted to his slush fund. districts without asking any meaningful The Joint Review Board is their opportu- questions or answering the ones that the au- nity to be vigilant. It consists of representa- dience asked. Board member Josh Ellis went POLITICS tives of these taxing bodies, plus a member so far as to say he couldn’t vote no, even if he appointed by the city who’s supposedly wanted to, as state statute only permits the looking out for the wider public—in this case, board to address whether an area qualifi es to Mayor Rahm’s TIF bamboozle Josh Ellis, from the Metropolitan Planning be a TIF district. Council, a local think tank. With all due respect, Mr. Ellis, you got it The Joint Review Board creates the illusion of oversight. The board’s job is to scrutinize a proposed wrong. The main point of the Joint Review By B J TIF district to determine if creating it justi- Board is to examine the impact on taxing fi es the property taxes it would raise. bodies. It says so in the state law book, where In a perfect world, the board would be it permits the Joint Review Board to consider stocked by high-ranking o cials—like, Jan- “an assessment of any financial impact” on or the last several weeks, the 13 or In chapter one, we learned that TIFs raise ice Jackson, CEO of Chicago Public Schools— “any taxing district a ected” by a proposed so mayoral candidates have been your taxes even if the mayor claims they who’d ask probing “but for” questions. That TIF. (Go to Sec. 11-74.4-3 of the good old TIF promising to defend Chicago’s al- don’t. In chapter two, we watched Tony and is—but for this TIF subsidy, would the land code and check it out yourself—for some scin- ready overburdened taxpayers from his girlfriend have wild sex outside the mon- get developed? tillating nighttime reading.) future hikes to our ever-rising prop- key cage at the zoo. Of course, Chicago is far from perfect. And Not only has Mayor Rahm not shown how Ferty taxes. Just kidding. That scene from The Sopra- so the board consists of lower-level bureau- either TIF district impacts the taxing bodies And then on January 11, the Joint Review nos has nothing to do with TIFs (lately, I have crats, who ask no questions and vote yes—as (CPS included), he shows no inclination to do Board gave Mayor Rahm the green light The Sopranos on my mind)—I was just hoping told. so anytime soon. to raise property taxes by as much as $1.6 a little levity might ease the pain of getting If you looked up rubber stamp in the dic- As the meeting ended, board members billion over the next 23 years. Yet not one fl eeced. tionary, it would have a picture of the Joint thanked people for attending—a trend they mayoral candidate showed up to the meeting In this installment, allow me to introduce Review Board—right next to a photo of the said they hoped would continue, like they to protect us. you to the Joint Review Board, a Potem- school board. were chiding citizens for not attending previ- In their defense, the candidates—like most kin-village facade intended to give you the Generally, the Joint Review Board’s meet- ous meetings. people in Chicago—probably don’t know the illusion of oversight that doesn’t really exist. ings draw few observers. And usually they’re Even though those who did show up were board exists, much less when it meets. To understand the board’s purpose, you held in a small, windowless room in City Hall. told that showing up is pointless as the Welcome to another chapter in my multi- must remember that TIF districts force Chi- In the good old days of Mayor Daley, city board’s just a rubber stamp anyway. part series—the making of the Lincoln Yards cago Public Schools and the park district and o cials set out donuts and co ee, as though Say this for Mayor Daley—when he fed us TIF. Where I take you step-by-step as Mayor the county and all the other taxing bodies to they felt sorry for people who had to show up. his TIF baloney, he passed out some donuts to Rahm tries to bamboozle you into thinking raise their property taxes to compensate for But at the January 11 meeting, there wasn’t sweeten the taste. it’s a good idea to spend hundreds of millions the money they’re not getting from the TIF a donut in sight as the city moved to a larger And so the rubber stamp express contin- of property tax dollars underwriting the districts. room to handle a bigger crowd brought in by ues—next stop’s a January 24 meeting of the redevelopment of an already gentrifying We’re talking about hundreds of millions the Raise Your Hand Action coalition of pub- Community Development Commission. I’ll be neighborhood. of property tax dollars a year—a number lic school parents. watching. v All in the name of eradicating blight in that will rise if Mayor Rahm gets the City In a nutshell, the coalition believes it’s ob- low-income communities. Council to create the Cortland/Chicago River scene to earmark hundreds of millions of dol- @joravben 6 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll HERE’S THE QUESTION: Can a community-centered independent paper survive in this environment? THAT’S UP TO
YOU,For the first time, we’re asking readers CHICAGO.to chip in to show their support for the independent-once-again Chicago Reader. (And, if you donate by January 20th, we’ll even put your name in this very paper at the end of the month.) When it comes to crafting real taste in our blends, GIVE A BUCK:two ingredients are all we’ve ever needed. ChicagoReader.com/BackerTobacco Ingredients: Tobacco & Water Use your smartphone to check for paperless Gift Certificates at AmericanSpirit.com*
CIGARETTES *Offers and website restricted to age 21+ smokers. ©2019 SFNTC (1)
WANT TO DONATE VIA CHECK? Make checks payable to “Chicago Reader” and mail to Chicago Reader, Suite 102, 2930 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60616. Include your mailing address, phone, and email—and please indicate if you are okay with us thanking you by name in the paper. ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 7 Chicago Reader 01-17-19 M19NASB25 RSD Blue Light Wood.indd 1 1/4/19 5:27 PM
Chicago Reader 01-17-19 M19NASB25 RSD Blue Light Wood
Steven Mosher N/A Please reference code 283662 M19NASB25 on all billing RSD Blue Pack Light Wood Q12019 for prompt payment
Flat Ad 9.75” x 9.875” 2019 X X X X 9.75” x 9.875” 9.75” x 9.875” 1 X X X X 9.75” x 9.875” 2 X X 9.75” x 9.875” B X X
96.28 96.28 X X X X 1 X X NEWS & POLITICS
MAYORAL Q&A Lori Lightfoot DOUG MCGOLDRICK Lori Lightfoot
IN EARLY DECEMBER Ben Joravsky interviewed can- didate Lori Lightfoot. The mayoral challenger is an ized her career—particularly the leading experienced manager and reformer and has worked role she played in pressing Mayor Rahm at several levels of city and state government. This Emanuel to get serious about police re- interview has been condensed and edited for length form—reveal the kind of mayor she would and clarity. be: one who would stand up to political pressure and reorient city government to JORAVSKY: You’re one of the few mayoral candi- serve neglected communities. dates who spoke out against Alderman Burke when Raised in a struggling working-class the feds came a knocking at his door. What are family in southern Ohio, Lightfoot cred- your thoughts when you see thousands show up for its her mother, now 90—a health-care his fund-raiser? aide who served for 25 years on the local LIGHTFOOT: Look, it says a sad thing about our school board—as her role model, someone city: It’s not a trivial matter for the FBI to execute a who “truly was fearless,” who taught her search warrant on a sitting elected offi cial’s govern- “not to shrink from a challenge, to take ment offices this close to an election. And yet we on hard fights” without concern for the saw, like lemmings, a thousand people going there to MAYORAL PROFILE consequences. kiss the ring. That says to me, we have to break from After college Lightfoot worked in the the machine-style government, the past, and move Washington office of the local congress- forward in a diff erent direction. Obviously he’s enti- Is Lightfoot really the man. Then she went to the University of tled to a presumption of innocence, but this is not Chicago Law School, where her indepen- about his guilt or innocence. It is about the people dence came to the fore. That time was “re- of the city being entitled to have a government that progressive candidate? ally tough,” she told me recently. Despite actually is legitimate and working for them. growing up in a small segregated town, The black and lesbian woman promises to reform Chicago. she said, “I never felt more conscious of my Does it annoy you when the presumption of inno- race than I did in my three years in Hyde cence is only invoked for certain white-collar peo- By C B Park.” Each year saw major racial inci- ple, but so many poor black people in the west and dents “created or exacerbated” by the law south sides get locked up all the time without a school’s administration. In her third year, presumption of innocence? ne indication that Lori Lightfoot Lightfoot is not from central casting. If when she was president of student gov- There clearly is a double standard in our criminal is not your standard politician elected, she would be the city’s fi rst black ernment, a friend complained about racist justice system. And having frankly defended a lot came at the end of the Chicago woman mayor and the fi rst lesbian mayor. and misogynist comments by a recruiter of people who have been wrongfully accused, they Teachers Union’s forum in In public, she doesn’t o er oratory as much for Baker & McKenzie. Despite the fact that get on the conveyor belt and nobody stops to say, is December, when mayoral candi- as she presents arguments. One on one, she the law fi rm was one of the biggest in the this a righteous prosecution? Does this really make Odates were o ered the chance to ask each has a quiet focus and a wit that can be af- world—and a major benefactor of the law sense? And as you well know, we’ve paid hundreds of other questions. fable or cutting; her eyes have a searching school—Lightfoot led a successful fi ght to millions of dollars to individuals who’ve been wrong- This has become a standard feature of intensity that draws you in. have its recruiters banned from campus. fully incarcerated, some of whom have been on political debates, and it allows candidates Like most of the other candidates in the Lightfoot spent six years at the white- death row in this state. But look, I still believe in the to launch “zingers” at each other. The next race, she’s never held elected o ce but has shoe law firm of Mayer Brown; in two rule of law. It’s very important to me, particularly in day’s headlines focused on Toni Preckwin- an extensive background in government— stints there she’s worked on two lawsuits these times when it’s under siege. kle’s question to Susana Mendoza about in her case, in criminal justice and as a brought by Republicans challenging con- her earlier support of the death penalty troubleshooter in some of the city’s most gressional redistricting. She now argues If you are elected mayor, what would your stance and on Mendoza’s question to Preckwinkle challenging agencies. Indeed, parts of that her interest was in promoting greater Lati- be on the chairman of the Finance Committee about her soda tax. background—as a federal prosecutor and no representation, but in 1991 all parties being a property tax attorney? When it was Lightfoot’s turn, she asked as head of the police department’s O ce of agreed to a new Latino majority district; I think that there should be a prohibition on any Paul Vallas what he thought about the Professional Standards—have given pause in 2010, “Lightfoot’s fi lings and arguments elected or appointed offi cial who takes outside busi- changes and challenges in Roseland, the to some activists who might otherwise in the case clearly contend that the map ness that is in confl ict with their obligations as a pub- far south neighborhood where he grew up. have been drawn to her call for “a new was unfair to Republicans,” according to lic servant. That’s one of the pillars of my good gov- He gave a thoughtful and refl ective answer. progressive vision for the city.” Crain’s. ernment plan. We can’t restore confidence in our She scored no points. It was as if she was Supporters argue that her working-class In 1996, urged on by a mentor at Mayer democratic institutions when you have people who just there to have an intelligent conversa- roots and what the Sun-Times has called Brown, Lightfoot joined the U.S. Attorney’s were either not disclosing obvious confl icts, are still tion about issues facing the city. the “independent streak” that’s character- Office. She was motivated in part by J taking those on, and then serving a diff erent master 8 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll other than the people of the city of Chicago. I’ve lost NEWS & POLITICS count of the number of times that an Ed Burke, or frankly a Gery Chico when he was head of the Chi- cago schools, had to recuse themselves because he Jthe fact that the o ce was “almost ex- went after top Daley fund-raiser Elzie Hig- and “sets the police department up for had all these entanglements with outside business. clusively white male” and people of color ginbottom. (Higginbottom is a part owner failure.” She pressed publicly for measures needed to be represented, particularly of the Reader.) Mayor Daley reportedly felt to increase the independence of the new What’s your response to Toni Preckwinkle challeng- given the wide latitude in investigating and they had gone too far. Civilian O ce of Police Accountability and ing your petitions? charging enjoyed by federal prosecutors. Lightfoot left after a few months, con- called the mayor out for failing to follow There’s no there there—we’ve examined on a line-by- She also cites family history when describ- cerned, she now says, that corruption through on a community oversight board. line basis all of the challenges, and some of the stuff , ing her motivation. Her grandmother’s wasn’t being adequately addressed. She has repeatedly pointed to the many it’s just frankly completely made up. Challenging husband was murdered by a Klansman Dempsey was Daley’s longtime library task force recommendations that Emanuel pages of a petition that don’t even exist. Challeng- in the 1920s, when “there was never any commissioner—she resigned after Eman- has ignored. She criticized the proposed ing people’s signatures. Like for example, my lawyer thought that the guy would face justice”; uel’s first budget included deep cuts for state-city consent decree for lacking bans signed my petition. She challenged that. If Toni wants an older brother has been in and out of libraries—and her assistant commissioner on chokeholds and shooting into crowds a fi ght, let’s fi ght about the issues. My understand- prison, which she has said gives her insight was Amy Eshelman, who is now Lightfoot’s and for failing to mandate a foot-pursuit ing is that she had 200 people working ’round the into the impact of crime on families. wife. They married on the day Illinois policy. She has also been a forthright critic clock to put together these bogus challenges and She prosecuted violent crime extensive- made gay marriage legal. Dempsey is now of the leadership of the Fraternal Order of frankly, the lawyer who lodged this complaint against ly in addition to bankruptcy fraud and pub- a top donor to Lightfoot. Police. us, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. It’s a lic corruption. She helped convict former Lightfoot returned to Mayer Brown and When her police board term expired, game that’s played, but the sad thing is it turns peo- 15th Ward alderman Virgil Jones of taking in 2015 Emanuel appointed her president Emanuel hesitated, but under public pres- ple off from the election, from participating in our a $7,000 bribe in the Silver Shovel scan- of the Chicago Police Board. The board sure and after a long meeting—where he democracy. dal. It was the height of the war on drugs, was notorious for overriding disciplinary reportedly pressed her about her inten- which she now criticizes as resulting from recommendations by the police super- tions to run against him—he reappointed Back in 1984 I interviewed some freshman at North- politicians who wanted to look tough on intendent. Under Lightfoot it changed her. western University and I could not understand how crime without regard for the “devastating” course, terminating o cers in 72 percent Given that history, it wasn’t a surprise somebody so young—you presume somebody at consequences increased incarceration of the cases it heard. As board president that less than a year later Lightfoot an- age 18 would be idealistic—could support Ronald would have on communities. As for her she was sometimes the target of vociferous nounced she would run against Emanuel. Reagan. I presume in 1984, you were not a Reagan role, she told me, “I was a federal prosecu- protests, particularly calls for the firing She promised a progressive campaign that supporter. tor enforcing existing federal law.” of Detective Dante Servin, who shot and would challenge the status quo. She raised I was not. But Reagan came across as this vibrant Lightfoot became chief administrator killed Rekia Boyd, though at the time his hundreds of thousands of dollars, much “morning in America” guy and giving people hope. of OPS in 2002 and led it for two years. case wasn’t before the board. of it from the legal community—nothing So there were a lot of young people in those days A Chicago Tribune investigation of that A few months into Lightfoot’s tenure at near the millions Emanuel had amassed, that were supporting Ronald Reagan. I was not period revealed a pattern of cursory inves- the police board, a judge ordered the city but enough to position her as a challenger, among them. I was defi nitely, [have] always been, a tigations, sometimes involving no more to release video of Laquan McDonald’s perhaps even his foremost challenger. Democrat. than a review of police reports. Lightfoot shooting by Officer Jason Van Dyke. The But when Emanuel dropped out, several now says she made numerous recommen- U.S. Department of Justice announced an more established candidates entered the Do you have any sort of nostalgia for the style of dations to terminate o cers for unjustifi ed investigation of CPD, and under fire for race, and Lightfoot dropped back in the Reagan and Bush as opposed to the style of Donald shootings, and that the agency for the fi rst having kept the video under wraps, Eman- pack. Lightfoot has focused her fire on Trump? time recommended fi ring o cers charged uel appointed Lightfoot to head a Police County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, There’s been a lot of nostalgia, but I think what peo- with lying in an investigation, but the rec- Accountability Task Force. another black woman who casts herself as ple are feeling is unease with the level of viciousness ommendations were generally rejected. Issued in April, the task force report a reformer. Lightfoot charged Preckwinkle in our politics. Moderation and compromise is viewed The problem, she says, was that the agency was scathing and systematic. “The com- with trying to “bully” her out of the race, as something that’s evil and anathema to being a was part of the department it was charged munity’s lack of trust in CPD is justifi ed,” and as the Ed Burke scandal unfolded, she strong supporter of one position or another. with investigating. it found, citing pages of data about dispro- hit Preckwinkle repeatedly for her slow Look, we can’t move forward together as a city, as Lightfoot went on to be a top adminis- portionate shootings, tasings, tra c stops, response. a state, as a country, if people aren’t willing to see the trator at the O ce of Emergency Manage- and street stops of black residents. The With more than a dozen candidates, other person and not villainize them. I’m just hopeful ment and Communications in 2014; she has report also found an “utter lack of a culture the election has a horse-race aspect that we’ll get to a narrative that’s about how can we recalled getting dirty looks from officers of accountability” in the department, and that tends to overshadow the merits of solve problems of everyday citizens and move the who’d been assigned to the 311 call center charged that union contracts have “essen- individual candidates. That doesn’t help city forward. We’re going to keep doing everything as a result of disciplinary actions she had tially turned the code of silence into o cial Lightfoot. Her most prominent supporter, we can to advance that narrative because I think it’s recommended. In 2005 Lightfoot was ap- policy.” former reform alderman Dick Simpson of critically important to reengaging people with gov- pointed deputy chief of the procurement From that point Lightfoot became a the 44th Ward, says “she has the back- ernment. We’ve lost too many people that turned us department under Mary Dempsey, in the leading voice pushing Emanuel to move ground, qualifi cations, temperament and off . They think government doesn’t work for them or wake of a scandal involving minority con- on police reform, sometimes occupying a policies that we need in a mayor.” She worse, the government hurts them. That elected offi - tractor fronts run by a white family close middle ground between protestors and the does seem like the antithesis of Rahm cials are there just to pass out the slush fund of gov- to Mayor Richard Daley. mayor but often criticizing Emanuel sharp- Emanuel—calm, focused, principled, and ernment to friends and family. And we really need to According to the Sun-Times, Dempsey ly. She slammed him when he tried to head independent. The question her campaign be about a hell of a lot more in this city and in this and Lightfoot “made waves by taking on o a federal consent decree with a memo- poses is an old one: is Chicago ready for election if we’re going to take on and solve some of powerful targets” including wheeler-deal- randum of understanding with the Trump reform? v the tough challenges that are critically important to er Tony Rezko, who was later convicted on Justice Department, saying the proposed laying the foundation for the future of the city. v corruption charges. She and Dempsey also agreement was “fundamentally flawed” @curtisoblack ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 9 Joe Moore SARAHJI NEWS & POLITICS
“Joe Moore is about Joe Moore, and getting reelected.” POLITICS If he won, Morton said his first priority would be to implement a weekly ward night. “His public meetings are a dog and pony show,” Morton said of Moore. “I haven’t seen No more a regular weekly ward night that’s not inter- rupted or that’s not cherry-picking who he would like to speak with personally.” Joe Moore? When I asked him about Hadden’s cam- The 49th Ward gears up for another paign, Morton said he didn’t think she had election with the 28-year incumbent. enough of a proven track record of community service in the ward. He was also disappointed By M D that her camp challenged his petitions, just like Moore did. Morton said that pushing Moore into a runo is the key to beating him, and that the 2007 election proved that he’s most vulnerable when multiple candidates are on the ballot. n a sunny afternoon last week, a political machine, has lost popularity in recent ne person who appears to be intensely couple of men walked into Jessica’s years. Increasingly, he’s been criticized as an preoccupied with the health of small n the corner of Devon and Sheridan, Western Ware, a large store stock- unwavering ally of Rahm Emanuel’s who puts Obusinesses in the ward is Chamber of where construction of the new Target ing rainbows of cowboy boots in his political career ahead of residents’ con- Commerce president Bill Morton, 41. He’s Ois underway, a diverse group of seniors every type of leather, button-down cerns. Although he came within 251 votes of faced an uphill battle getting onto the ballot gathered for an afternoon viewing of General Oshirts, wide-brimmed hats, and a variety of losing his seat in a 2007 runo , this may be his with his roughly 500 petition signatures, but Hospital at the Caroline Hedger Apartments. other clothes, shoes, and personal grooming toughest reelection. Morton said he’d have a good chance to win It’s a Chicago Housing Authority high-rise items. They spoke in Spanish with owner Romero, who’s originally from Jalisco, Mex- if he made it. Despite having no money in his that’s been a source of controversy for the Rigo Romero, 56, about getting some patches ico, and has lived in the U.S. since 1979, said campaign fund, he said he has “huge name city due to heat outages in the winter and on their ripped, light-wash jeans. Afterward, he’s not impressed by any of the candidates. recognition” in the ward and a history of com- persistent elevator problems. Contractors Romero, who’s run the shop near the corner Though his business has been in the ward as munity service. who contribute to Moore have been slammed of Clark and Lunt in the 49th Ward for 25 long as Moore’s been in o ce, he doesn’t feel I caught up with Morton at the banquet for cost overruns and shoddy workmanship. years, said the alterations “keep the store like the alderman has done anything particu- room of the Ethiopian Diamond on Clark Many of the residents were also opposed to open because the retail business has been so larly benefi cial and he doesn’t think much will Street—the restaurant recently lost its liquor the new Target. bad.” change if he’s replaced. license and had a Joe Moore sign in the win- Still, as a couple of elderly black women Romero dug up a purple shoebox from “I do vote, usually only for president and dow—as he was setting up for a monthly job chatted over religious literature in the TV underneath a glass sales counter housing a governor,” he said. “Besides that to me it fair he’s helped organize over the last year, room, one said she liked Moore because he’d few scattered pieces of jewelry. On the back doesn’t really make a big difference. When dressed in gray slacks and a utility jacket. hosted a Christmas party for the residents in of the box he keeps a tally of his annual gross they are running they promise so many things Morton, a 16-year resident of the ward who December. “He made a good impression on sales. In 2011 he pulled in almost $600,000. and it’s just like a game. . . . The alderman can also runs a promotional business helping me,” the woman said, explaining that she only Last year, it was about $290,000. If this year he be a white, it can be a black, it can be a woman, recording artists get radio airtime, said his recently moved to the building from North doesn’t see his revenue climb again, “that’ll be a Hispanic, honestly I don’t really care.” “works,” such as “small business well-being Lawndale. “I started reading about him and my last year in the business,” he said. He said local businesses like his have been checks” and organizing against a new Target he’s been alderman here for like 25 years— Around Rogers Park, businesses like Rome- struggling as condo conversions in buildings store and for rent control, have been “stunted” that says something. I don’t think people will ro’s have increasingly given way to higher-end closer to the lake have driven out lower- by Moore. keep voting for somebody that wasn’t doing restaurants and shops serving the 49th Ward’s income Latino families and Trump adminis- “Alderman Joe Moore has a personal nothing for their community.” whiter, wealthier population. And as election tration policies have frightened people into grudge against me,” he said, because when Hearing this, another woman standing day approaches, the ward is gearing up for withdrawing money from local banks and not he cofounded the Chamber of Commerce nearby seemed unable to resist the temptation a showdown between 28-year incumbent spending for fear of deportation. “People get (which currently has about 125 member busi- to butt in. “He got in front of a whole group of alderman Joe Moore, on whose watch gentri- scared, they stop buying stu ,” he said. nesses) the organization didn’t seek Moore’s seniors who voted on using their own funds to fi cation has become a fact of life, and fi rst-time Although he’s pessimistic about the future, “blessing.” have that Christmas party,” she said. “ Alder- candidate Maria Hadden. A third candidate, Romero said that if the alderman could do “We did that specifi cally so we wouldn’t be man Moore took credit for giving us a party Bill Morton, is fi ghting petition signature chal- anything in this part of the ward it should be in a position to give him any funding for his from our own funds.” lenges from both Moore and Hadden’s camps helping more local eateries get liquor licenses. campaigns,” he said. And since then, Morton The woman from North Lawndale looked and is unlikely to make the ballot. “That will be the only thing that’ll bring peo- says Moore has refused to take meetings with stunned. “Wow,” she said, in disbelief. “I think Moore, who was first elected in 1991 and ple into this fi ve blocks, going north and south him and the groups he’s involved in. Worse that’s incorrigible. I did not know that!” who for many years had a reputation for in- [on Clark],” he said. “If there’s no restaurant still is that the alderman isn’t doing enough to The woman who interrupted introduced dependence from Mayor Richard M. Daley’s with a liquor license I don’t see any changes.” help residents with their problems, he added. herself to me as Elizabeth M., 63, but said she 10 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll NEWS & POLITICS
Aldermanic candidate Maria Hadden, 37, with her partner, Natalia Vera; Hadden’s headquarters at Morse and Greenview MAYA DUKMOSKOVA
didn’t want to share her full last name for fear was indeed funded through its allocation for re about Moore, especially this feeling that Moore was the first elected official in the of “possible repercussions. The incumbent resident-selected activities.) “I will not open he’s out of touch with ward residents, is country to implement participatory budget- has a way of singling people out and knocking my big mouth again about Joe Moore because Iwhat’s fueled Maria Hadden’s campaign. ing, and in 2009 Hadden joined a ward group them down as if that’s just a loudmouth indi- he had just totally deceived me,” she said. Headquartered in a brightly lit storefront figuring out how to spend the more than $1 vidual,” she explained. Elizabeth said she shouldn’t blame herself, on the corner of Morse and Greenview, she’s million in aldermanic “menu money” from Elizabeth, who said she’s Puerto Rican and and that it’s hard to fact-check Moore when attracted more than 300 volunteers to knock the city. She still remembers going to the fi rst has been living in Rogers Park on and o for his version of events is the only one you hear. on doors and sta a phone bank. Hadden, 37, meeting. “It just sounded like democracy.” The ten years, also made clear that she’s volun- “You have to make sure you understand that is tall, with short, tight curls, big, expressive experience eventually led her to start two non- teering with Hadden’s campaign and that sometimes he will just lie to you, to your face, eyes, and a face that easily slips into a smile. profits that consult with local governments she’s a member of the Jane Addams Seniors to put himself ahead,” she said. She has a casual demeanor and often says on how to implement participatory budgeting in Action PAC. She said it’s unfortunate that I asked how things were going with the “whatchamacallit” as she searches for the and otherwise improve civic engagement. Moore gets access to the CHA building as the Target construction. Elizabeth shrugged and right word. The first time she met Moore, though, alderman but that the other candidates aren’t pointed out the sidewalk closure. To go north Hadden began her campaign in late 2017, Hadden was far less impressed. She’d moved allowed by CHA to campaign inside. “They’re on Sheridan people coming from Devon have after having lived in the ward for 11 years to Rogers Park in 2007 and bought a condo not allowed to do any politicking on CHA prop- to cross six lanes to the other side. She said and grown disenchanted with Moore’s rep- right before the housing market collapsed. erty,” she said. “[Moore] can have all these it was particularly inconvenient for Caroline resentation. Nearly 3,000 people signed her The developer absconded, leaving her and 18 bingo games and stu and put [his] name on Hedger residents in wheelchairs and with nominating petition—11 percent of the 27,000 neighbors in a half-fi nished building with un- it.” walkers or canes. “Usually the construction registered voters in the ward—and she’s paid bills. (The story of her building was doc- The woman from North Lawndale—who is such so there are pedestrian walkways developed a base of fervent supporters who, umented in a 2009 episode of This American said she’s also 63 but that she didn’t want to and people aren’t inconvenienced,” she said. like her, believe Moore’s transformed from a Life.) She went to one of Moore’s now-defunct share her name because she’s so new to the “Here the priority is for the developers to get fi rm, independent voice in City Council during ward nights and gave a PowerPoint presenta- building—was still processing the story about whatever they want. Especially if they’re con- Richard M. Daley’s term into a rubber stamp tion about the problems she and her neighbors the Christmas party. (CHA later confi rmed it tributing to [Moore’s] campaign fund.” for Rahm Emanuel. were facing and their ideas of the kind of assis- tance the aldeman could provide. “Alderman Moore nodded o over his fast- food dinner in front of me. . . . Wendy’s, I very distinctly remember,” she said. “I thought ‘Wow, we might lose our homes, things are ter- rible, we’ve been defrauded, what do we do?’” Eventually, Hadden and her neighbors made it out of the crisis, and a sta er of Moore’s, J
Rigo Romero, 56, owner of Jessica’s Western Wear on Clark Street; Bill Morton, 41, an aldermanic candidate whose petition signatures were challenged by both Moore and Hadden and founder of the Rogers Park Chamber of Commerce MAYA DUKMOSKOVA ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 11 NEWS & POLITICS continued from 11 Anne Sullivan—who would later be fired by and Mackintosh, peered at a printout of regis- Moore, allegedly for raising alarm about tered voters under the light of Frazier’s phone, ethics violations in his office—helped them then tried to fi nd corresponding names on the fi gure out how to settle the developer’s debt buzzer. with utility companies. Nevertheless, Haden One building entryway didn’t seem to have says, over the years she’s only seen Moore get any listed voters still living there. He had more more complacent. She read the 2015 election, luck next door. in which Moore trounced pro-foie-gras, bor- “Hi, Ms. Williams? Alderman Joe Moore,” he derline libertarian Don Gordon by double the said merrily when a short, thin black woman number of votes, as a sign that a third of the opened her door. “Just stopped by to say hello ward was ready to vote for “anybody but Joe and see if there’s anything my office can do Moore.” for you? Anything you want your alderman to Hadden promises to restore the 49th ward’s know about?” independent credentials. She doesn’t want the Williams asked what new projects he was city to give long-term leases of public land to putting into Rogers Park. “Well, we just got corporations for $1 and plans to play hardball some more affordable housing lined up,” he with developers, from whom she’s refused began, “We’ve got, um, about 54 units of af- New Target under construction (red) with a senior housing building in the background to accept campaign donations because she fordable housing for low and moderate income MAYA DUKMOSKOVA doesn’t “even want the appearance of being families over at Clark and Estes where that compromised.” She says she also plans to be vacant lot is. We’ve got a new Target coming more attentive to the needs of local public in. I don’t know if you know anyone looking schools and not support charter school expan- for jobs but we’ve got a job fair for the new Whether or not he’s really campaigning as looking for jobs,” he explained, adding that he sion in the ward, as Moore has. Target coming up next week. And there’s also much as he says, Moore’s staff certainly is. considers himself to be among the most acces- When I asked why her camp had challenged in that development 111 units of housing, 65 Everyone I spoke with in the ward had encoun- sible aldermen in the city. “Ward night was be- Morton, she said that it wasn’t an easy call. of them will be CHA housing. So we’re bring- tered his canvassers or received a call. coming an employment night and I didn’t feel Ultimately, though, she decided it was the ing in affordable housing, new jobs for the Sitting in a closet-sized back room of the it was the best use of my time. Anyone who right thing to do because he had signatures community.” 49th Ward Democratic organization store- wants to see me—there’s no problem setting from people not registered to vote in the ward. The whole spiel sounded at once rehearsed front at Greenleaf and Ravenswood, amid up a time to meet.” “If you can’t meet the technical requirements and rusty, like maybe Moore had it prepared filing cabinets, shelves, computer servers, Moore acknowledged that Hadden is a for- and do the work—how seriously are you tak- but hadn’t practiced saying it often. Williams and framed images of “A Visual History of the midable opponent. “I’ve had some tough elec- ing it?” asked him to “keep us informed” and said she Democratic Party” and the Kennedys, Moore tions, I’ve had some cakewalks,” he says of his Despite Morton’s theory that Moore will was already on his e-mail list. He gave her a appeared more at ease. He leaned back in a seven terms in o ce. “This is closer to a tough be weakest in a runo , Hadden says she’s got campaign flier. “There’s an election coming computer chair and slalomed a ably through one.” But he added that he, like Morton, thinks the best chance to beat the incumbent. Plus, up in February and I’m on the ballot again and questions easy and hard, his button-down Hadden lacks a proven track record of caring realistically, she’s only got the money for one I would love to have your support,” he said. shirt gaping ever so slightly at the apex of his about Rogers Park. If the voters give him one election. She’s gathered more than $100,000 “Can I count on your support?” belly. more term, he said, he’d focus his energy in her co ers, mostly from small donors and “As always you can,” Williams said before Does he have a grudge against Morton? on improving the participatory budgeting a few unions. Her biggest backer—notwith- closing the door. “I rarely think about Mr. Morton.” process and bringing in more a ordable hous- standing unsubstantiated rumors that she was Moore and Frazier hit one last building on Did he fall asleep in front of Hadden? ing—he even said he’d work in City Council to getting money from Alex Jones’s publicist, the block, where several residents only spoke “I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. It’s been limit the infl uence of aldermanic prerogative which she suspects were spread by Moore’s to him through closed doors. One yelled that treated and I don’t do that anymore.” on a ordable housing construction citywide. people—is Gabe Gonzalez, another candidate he needed to do something about the rats in Did he claim credit for the Caroline Hedger His plan for the upcoming debate was “to who dropped out of the race before petition they alley behind the building. Frazier made a Christmas party? remind people of all the good I’ve done,” he fi ling time. note of it. “I showed up but I didn’t claim credit for said. “I’m not just phoning it in, I’m working As she prepared to head out for an evening This block was in a precinct that delivered it,” he assured me. “I will claim credit for the as hard, probably harder that I ever have in my of door-knocking after a quick taco dinner him the second-best results in the last elec- Thanksgiving Day dinner that we provided for tenure as alderman.” delivered by her partner, Natalia Vera, Hadden tion, but the door-knocking was still a slog. them. I hope they enjoyed that.” And what if he lost? What would Moore do said that she felt a “responsibility to come Moore reflected that when he first got into Does he regret sending Rahm that e-mail then? through” for all her supporters and the rest of politics, canvassing was easier. People were asking what he could do to help him deal with “Oh I’ll just curl up in a ball and cry,” he the ward. less distrustful, more likely to open a door or the Laquan McDonald scandal? joked. Then he gave what seemed like an ear- answer a phone call. He claimed that he tries Apparently not. “I felt he was being unfairly nest answer. “I don’t really have a plan B right p on the 7700 block of North Hermit- to knock on doors a couple of times a week; his accused of covering up and I don’t like anyone now, but I do know that I’m a pretty talented age, Moore and longtime political aide campaign manager told me that he’d be out being unfairly accused, no matter who they person, pretty passionate,” he said. “I’m sure U(and off-duty ward employee) Wayne between 4:30 and 6:30 that day. But though I are.” I’ll be engaged in some manner and form but I Frazier huddled in front of a courtyard apart- joined him and Frazier at 6:00, the three build- Why doesn’t he have a weekly ward night? have no idea what that would be as of now.” v ment building entrance. As gusts of icy wind ings I saw with them were they only ones he “I used to do them and they ended up being whipped around, Moore, dressed in a gray suit went to that evening. people coming, to the extent anyone came, @mdoukmas 12 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll B T | R W. Argyle -- FOOD & DRINK
RESTAURANT REVIEW Bingo knows what you need: Taiwanese cheese tea and Malaysian noodles Resistance is futile. By M S
retty soon you’re going to have to confront cheese tea. It’s not as disturbing as it sounds. This successor to Taiwanese bubble tea is relatively new to Chicago, Pbut in its various forms it offers a sensory appeal similar to sipping milky co ee through lip-lathering latte foam. But the word “cheese” is a hang-up in terms of branding. Cheese tea doesn’t involve sus- pending Limburger in Lipton’s. Rather, the dairy aspect of it is an aerated, milky, lightly salted cream cheese raft, ladled atop your tea of choice—primarily black, green, or oolong, though like much of the universe of milk teas, the possibilities seem endless. Chicago’s bubble tea pioneer Joy Yee has adopted this variant, and a Chinese-based chain, Tsaocaa, opened a shop in Chinatown last month. But the pioneer for Chicago cheese tea is a nascent local chain, Bingo Tea, which opened its first outlet last August in Chinatown Square. The principals, long-time friends Al- bert Moy and Bin Chen, say they spent a year in Taiwan, learning the ins and out of the spe- cialty along with a course in baked goods like pillow mango, matcha, durian, and ube breads. Seems like a reasonable pairing that might work in more than a few neighborhoods around town and certain suburbs. But last month when they opened their second loca- Clockwise from top le : chicken curry laksa; mee goreng; penang lobak; Kuala Lumpur pan mee; Malay rojak ELISHA KNIGHT tion on Argyle Street, they had something else in mind: Malaysian food. Up until recently, that was one cuisine—a synthesis of Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, J ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 13 Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants—and add your FOOD & DRINK own review—at chicagoreader.com/food. continued from 13 beans, lychee jelly), but presiding above all is Chicken curry laksa ELISHA KNIGHT and European colonial influences—that was the “milk cap,” or “sea salt milk foam,” which lacking in the city’s culinary fi rmament. After is how the principals behind Bingo have re- Chinatown’s Penang went up in smoke in 2008, branded cheese tea. You can top pretty much you had to haul out to the Arlington Heights any drink with it, hot or cold, but I think its location for your laksa and beef rendang. best expression is its most minimal: slowly Asian Noodle House in Ho man Estates picked descending into one of the black, green, or up some slack, but there have been encour- oolong teas, no sugar added. Don’t poke a aging developments over the past two years. straw through it. Sip through the lid’s aperture First, there was Logan Square’s terrifi c Serai, so the liquid passes through the foam, o ering which reintroduced the city to mainstays like a hint of cheesecake and salt ahead of the tea’s laksa, rendang, and Hainanese chicken. Then tannins. If you’re inclined to post a cheese came Family House (now Tea Leaf Garden) on foam mustache selfi e, you’re far from alone. Devon, offering nearly equal parts Burmese Bin Chen believes in the versatility of cheese and Malaysian food. tea, envisioning Bingo outlets specializing And now there’s Bingo Tea Malaysian Café, in Japanese or Thai food—whatever the hy- which o ers a neat menu of Malaysian noodle, pothetical neighborhood requires (I propose rice, and snacky dishes to complement their cheese tea and egg curry in each terminal at vast tea options. In the kitchen is Sonny Lim, O’Hare). Whichever direction it goes, the folks a former Penang chef, who keeps things some- behind Bingo clearly have an eye for what’s what familiar with chicken or tofu satay with underrepresented around town. After laksa peanut sauce, chicken wings, and roti canai, and mee goreng, it’s probably best to move on the flaky paratha and chicken-potato curry anyway. By the dubious mathematics of cul- combo that turns out to be an ideal partner tural reporting, three Malaysian restaurants for one of the tall, creamy teas. Less common, make a trend. v penang lobak is a kind of deep ground pork and taro sausage marinated in fi ve-spice, with @MikeSula a bean curd casing ideally swiped through searing, funky housemade sambal; and the Malay rojak is a sweet-savory fruit salad of mango, apple, jicama, and cucumber dressed in a thick soy-chili sesame dressing. It seems enough to idle with snacks such as these, but with more substantial platters like cold, poached Hainanese chicken, or nasi lemak, a set of curried chicken and pandan- scented coconut rice, meant to be mingled at your pleasure with hard-cooked eggs, dried anchovies, and sambal, you could make an afternoon of it. Bingo’s ancillary Malaysian menu is dom- inated by noodles, like seafood or shredded laksa drowning in coconut curry, or mee goreng, dry, stir-fried soy-saturated egg noo- dles with fat, just-cooked shrimp. But it’s the Kuala Lumpur pan mee that picks up some of the depth missing from those other dishes: wide fl at noodles bathed in soy, with fi sh balls, ground pork, and shrimp, topped with dried anchovy, all meant to be combined with a murky chicken-anchovy broth served on the side. Still, these dishes are almost afterthoughts to Bingo’s tea menu, which spans fruit teas (dragon, yuzu lemon honey, black grape), milk teas (buckwheat matcha, caramel black), and more subdued honey drinks. All are custom- Dew cheese tea ELISHA KNIGHT Kuala Lumpur pan mee ELISHA KNIGHT izable with a variety of additions (boba, red 14 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll Garcia as a young man, 1948 COURTESY OF JOSE GARCIA
Portrait of my grandfather
Story and Photos B G G
y 88-year-old grandfather Jose Garcia only has two pictures from his childhood. Both are with his M older cousin Carlos, whom he a ectionately calls his brother. Born in Mexico in 1930, my grandfather never met his father, and, when he was still very young, his mother left him in the care of her sister. His Aunt Mar- garita raised him, but it was Carlos who made sure he stayed in school and out of trouble. It was also Carlos whom my grandfather fol- lowed to the United States in 1954 at the age of Garcia in the studio 24 in search of a better life. J ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 15 Garcia and Carlos on the beach in Tampico, Mexico, 1942 COURTESY OF JOSE GARCIA
The fi rst portrait of Garcia Garcia in his bedroom
continued from 15 My grandfather has always been a hard- working man. Shortly after immigrating to San Antonio, Texas, where he met my grand- mother, Mary Zuniga, he moved to Chicago in search of better jobs. She would join him a few months later, right before he was drafted into the navy. He didn’t speak English when he fi rst started working, but he studied by watching American movies on the ship. After his tour, he continued his education while working full-time in the Fisher Body Plant for General Motors in Willow Springs to support his fam- ily. My mother is one of nine children, and all of them were put through private school to en- sure them the best chance of success as adults. This meant seven-day work weeks at the factory were the norm for my grandfather. He was always working. Just work, work, work. My grandmother was the talkative one. Now that she has passed, there is so much about my grandfather that we still don’t know. “I’m a simple guy,” he said, when I asked him to tell me more about his life. “Just work, that’s it.” Maybe he thinks his life is uninteresting. Maybe he just doesn’t remember.
Garcia watching television
16 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll I left my home in North Carolina in 2011 to study photography and stay in the Bridgeport house where my mother was born. It felt strange to live in a home with so much history, to hang out around the same places my mother did when she was my age, and to live with a man whom I knew very little about. I remem- ber when I fi rst moved in, it felt at times that we were more like roommates than family. His kids had moved out and my grandmother passed, so he had grown accustomed to living on his own. We soon began to have late-night talks over wine and weekend brunches, which we still have today. As semesters went by, I learned about the man who my grandfather is now. Still, much of his past remains a mystery. It was not until 2015 that I pointed my camera at my grandfather in an intentional way. He was always a willing subject, and his gaze seemed to pierce through each image effortlessly. Most shoots were impromptu and shot quickly on my phone before posting to Instagram with the title “Portrait of My Grandfather” and a sequence number. He now has hundreds of photographs of himself. The story of his life hidden behind each stare. When I asked him how he felt about this project, he simply said, “It is nice . . . some- thing to remember me by.” v
@GonzGuzPhoto
Clockwise from top le : Garcia at the dining room table doing crossword puzzles; Garcia getting ready for bed; A large photo of Garcia hangs in the living room; Garcia with the family cat, Tigger.
The author with his grandparents, 1992 ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 17 ARTS & CULTURE R READER RECOMMENDED b ALL AGES F
I Know My Own Heart across so naturally and easily that it’s easy to CODY VON RUDEN forget how radical Lister’s perspective was in the society in which she lived. Likewise, as Lister’s lovers, Jessie Ellingsen, Eleanor Katz, and Lauren Grace Thompson find nuance in the various layers of jealousy and support and platonic, unconditional love shared by a group of women very much committed to finding their own way to happiness, judgements and street glares be damned. Onstage, the format Donoghue uses to dra- matize Lister’s written excerpts makes for an inherently more passive theatrical experience than contemporary audiences are used to, and I wonder if all of the simulated sex acts would have been seen as more scandalous during the play’s early-90s debut. Counterintuitively, the action here is less interesting than the straight recitations of journal entries, which feels like a subprime use of the stage as this story’s medium.
I K M O H Through /: Thu-Sat : PM, Sun : PM; also Wed /, : PM, Pride Films and Plays, N. Broadway, --, pridefilmsandplays.com , $-$, $ students, seniors, and military.
THEATER Typically when directors and scenic design- ers place the action in the middle of two blocks The favourites of house seat rows, the view of audience mem- bers across the way is intended to heighten I Know My Own Heart looks back on the life of diarist, mountaineer, and queer icon Anne Lister. the communal sense of reactions and ground them in the live event. But on opening night, By D J Swanson’s staging achieved the opposite effect, instead brightly lighting the three of ast year, the York Civic Trust caused a what, if anything, she’d think about the plaque nists against one another in an 18th century the seven viewers across the stage who were minor stir with its e orts to pay hom- row if she were around today. Based on her Mean Girls dynamic, I Know My Own Heart sound asleep. And I suspect, based on the age to the Yorkshire author, moun- witticisms and unyielding societal defi ance, I follows a different trajectory, one that blurs sounds behind me, that the dozy energy in the taineer, and English queer icon Anne imagine she’d either a) not care one way or the the lines of monogamy and friendship and sex house wasn’t limited to the folks on the other Lister. Outside the church in which, other or b) have quickly and casually written among a community of women who ultimately side of the stage. Lin 1834, she declared a marital commitment— 30 pages of brilliant nonfi ction prose about it. have each others’ backs. Still, there’s much of value here to be with the church’s blessing, remarkably—to Or maybe she’d agree with her girlfriend Mari- And yet, even as Anne blazed her own trail learned about Lister’s outlook and philosophy, Ann Walker, a rainbow-bordered plaque rec- anne’s clunky summation: “Well, you’re sort of when it came to how and who to love, the trap- even if Swanson’s production is more of an ognized Lister as a “gender non-conforming a . . . female gentleman.” pings of heteronormative relationships seep intellectual accomplishment than a visceral entrepreneur.” Some saw the descriptor as Director Elizabeth Swanson’s production in and cause trouble in interesting ways. “It and dramatic one. At its most fun, I Know one that devalued her contributions to the of I Know My Own Heart for Pride Films is strange that the kisses are always best after My Own Heart escapes its stuffy collars and lesbian community. It’s since been updated to and Plays marks the U.S. premiere of Irish- we have quarreled,” Lister observes about one labyrinthian complications of relationships “Lister . . . of Shibden Hall, Halifax, Lesbian Canadian Donoghue’s 1993 drama. Fans of of her many partners. altogether and depicts the joys and solidarity and Diarist.” Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film The Favourite Donoghue admittedly takes sweeping of 19th century women enjoying each other’s After getting to know Lister a bit via Emma may fi nd some satisfying similarities in Dono- liberties with Lister’s biography (including company, having an eye only for the present. Donoghue’s chamber drama I Know My Own ghue’s tribute, which is another semi-fi ction- a complicated intra-family affair), but many It’s there and there alone, Lister tells us, that Heart, which is inspired by Lister’s extensive alized account of badass women undergoing of Lister’s onstage Carrie Bradshaw-style we have any agency at all—in love or anything volumes of diaries (the naughty-bits coded in the messy, exciting venture of rewriting the soliloquies are verbatim passages from her else. v a flamboyantly complicated enigma of sym- uno cial rules of relationships in English high writings. As Lister, Vahishta Vafadari achieves bols and Greek letters), I can’t help but wonder society. While The Favourite pits its protago- a colloquial, confident charm that comes @DanEJakes 18 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll ARTS & CULTURE
St. Nicholas HELEN MAYBANKS
The bombs, though. If the details matter, there actu- and repulsive theater critic abandons his life in Dublin ally were two bombs in Stockholm in 2010, which killed and falls in with a gang of vampires in suburban London. the suspected bomber and a few others. But details only They bestow upon him the eff ortless charm he’s never matter if you care to distinguish one event or person had, and in return he uses his newfound power to from another, and Amor is, before all other details, to ensnare young victims for his hosts. all eyes including (incidentally? consequently?) his own, McPherson’s sinuous-yet-acidic two-act narrative brown. provides a showcase for any actor, and surely Brendan I Call My Brothers is a portrait of the anxiety that Coyle, who played the long-suff ering valet Bates in results from the invisibility and hypervisibility of being Downton Abbey, will be an audience draw for this “other”—the unfair responsibility given to any member Goodman import from London’s Donmar Warehouse. of such a group, the unintended election to said group, But Coyle brings far more than telegenic star power to and the impossibility of simply being an uninfl ected indi- his midlife monster of a writer manqué. Aching hunger vidual, no matter how outré or annoying. Salar Ardebili is drives his actions, from his attraction to a young actress a mercurial Amor, leading a strong cast directed by Abhi in a mediocre production of Salome to a growing reali- Shrestha at Interrobang. —I H I C M zation that the only way out of being undead is fi nding B Through 2/2: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sun 3 and a story of his own. 8 PM, Mon 8 PM, Rivendell Theatre, 5779 N. Ridge, There’s nothing obvious or heavy-handed in Coyle’s 312-219-4140, interrobangtheatreproject.com, $32, performance (directed by Simon Evans), which brings THEATER Premodern drama $16 students and industry. out many witty shades in his dissolute-but-desperate At 400 years old, Fuente Ovejuna shows its age. hack. He’s a clinical and sardonic observer, even—or Rent controlled, out of control Vampires of London especially—of the critic’s own human failings. But he also A black ex-cop’s life veers into disarray in an The challenge with Spanish baroque drama—and other R In St. Nicholas, a self-loathing white man makes us believe that it’s possible to reject the easy apartment Between Riverside and Crazy. putative classics that are not Shakespeare—is how not searches for meaning. path of conscienceless cynicism for the darker, deeper to make doilies out of them. If the peasants in Lope de journey toward meaning. —K R S N Rent-controlled apartments off er a stability rarely seen Vega’s little garrison town of Fuente Ovejuna represent Self-loathing men occupy the center of Conor McPher- Through 1/27: Tue-Wed 7:30 PM, Thu 2 and 7:30 in metropolitan areas. They sure don’t exist in Chicago. a medieval way of life in confl ict with the incursion of son’s world—and he gives them plenty to hate about PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM. Goodman But what happens when an apartment is the only stabili- new values, and if the immoderate brutality and sexual themselves. That’s particularly true for the unnamed Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodman- ty one has? When we meet Pops, we learn the answer is appetites of the Commander of the Order of Calatrava narrator in McPherson’s 1997 solo play, in which a jaded theatre.org, $31-$85 (subject to change). v not much, outside of a safe-ish place to sleep and drink. delegitimize his authority as an agent of Juana and Stephen Adly Guirgis’s play Between Riverside and Alfonso of Portugal, further justifying the imperial reign Crazy, produced by Redtwist Theatre and directed by of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, all of that has to not Rinska Carrasco-Prestinary, has aged poorly since it sound like I just made it sound, which is the sound of won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for drama, particularly in its who cares, get on with it, that crown is made of paper, portrayal of women. what’s he talking about. th eatre Pops (Kenneth D. Johnson), an ex-cop, shares his Despite great energy and ensemble feel, the actors apartment on Riverside Drive in New York with a slew in Terry McCabe’s treatment at City Lit Theater can’t th ursdays of characters, including his son, Junior, and a sobered seem to get a lot of traction with the language or the BREAK THE ROUTINE addict with PTSD, both formerly incarcerated. Pops is narrative. Part of the issue is the translation McCabe with world premiere theatre battling his own demons, and also a court case against is working from, which is such a bone-literal piece of a rookie cop who shot him six times while off -duty and public-domainery that it sounds like it originally existed un-uniformed. But it’s been eight years, and neither the as a crib to help people read the play in Spanish. All in Take pride in the value of black lives nor the consequences for police all, the production ends up, as a great many historical Thursday, January 24 at 6:00PM brutality have increased. Compounded by the recent revivals do, at war with its own baggage: the best laughs HOW TO CATCH CREATION passing of his wife, Pops’s life is in peak disarray—and are off the line; the most endearing moments of acting UNIQUE it shows. are the partially mugged asides that barely relate to at Goodman Theatre - 170 N. Dearborn in the Loop The set, designed by Nicholas James Schwartz, the actual story. —M M F O RISKY immerses the audience in that disarray. The walls of Through 2/17: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon Theatre Thursday attendees are invited to a Pops’s home are lined with off -center family photos. A 2/4 and 2/11, 7:30 PM, City Lit Theater, 1020 W. Bryn BOLD reception in the Alice Center at Goodman Theatre dead Christmas tree skirted with faded newspapers Mawr, 773-293-3682, citylit.org, $32, $27 seniors, $12 new work before the show. Join for appetizers, drinks, and stands in a corner; the kitchen counter is buried under students and military. spilled meds and unopened bills. Part of the audience happening on an artistic conversation about bringing How to sits in the living room, across from the couch, in what Unstable elements Chicago stages Catch Creation to life on stage. becomes an inadvertent splash zone when whiskey I Call My Brothers explores the anxiety of being year-round becomes the choice comfort and weapon. “other.” ABOUT THE PLAY: Four artists and intellectuals in San Francisco struggle to nurture creative The cast is strong, but the women in particular are impulse and establish legacy—in both their professional and personal limited by the script. Almanya Narula, who plays Junior’s Amor is a normal dude living his life in Stockholm—a big Theatre Thursdays is lives. When one discovers the works of a black queer feminist writer from girlfriend Lulu, leans too hard into ditzy and scatter- brother, a cousin, a friend, a man in love, a university NEW every month! a bygone era, their lives begin to intersect in unexpected ways. brained, bumbling around the apartment in revealing graduate. Amor is a chemistry nerd who memorizes the clothes and forgotten responsibilities. Though this periodic table by assigning each element to a person he dated portrayal feels decades old, the guilt and shame knows (he’s ununtrium himself, “a temporary name for Tickets are ONLY $30 (Jan 24 event + show) | Call 312-443-3800 internalized by POC cops is palpable—especially in a an unconfi rmed synthetic element”). Amor is either a Use code THTH at GoodmanTheatre.org/Creation world where they can still be shot without consequence. romantic or a stalker, probably both, creepily obsessed —Y Z M B R for 19 or 20 years with his childhood neighbor Valeria. C Through 2/10: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun She moved away but still takes his calls. If it had not MORE EVENTS: bit.ly/theatrethursday 3 PM, Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773- been for the bombs, Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s I Call My 728-7529, redtwist.org, $35-$40, $30-$35 students Brothers might have been a light piece about who picks @ChicagoPlays and seniors. up when you ring them, set during that brief, heady era #TheatreThursday when people actually talked on their mobile phones. ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 19 B T C ARTS & CULTURE By Mike Norton (Image)
Mitch McConnell is a human soul trapped in an Appalachian apple core doll. Meanwhile, President Obama steals sandwiches off the White House desk while name-dropping the COMICS deep state. Despite the strip’s success, Norton has slowed down on the comic because he’s su ering from a condition more common than It’s a horse! the fl u: Trump fatigue. “The nonsense is so absurd that even mak- ing a joke is not as funny as the actual thing It’s a tank! that’s happening,” says Norton. “So I have to do really weird things like make strange movie or comic book references that nobody is gonna It’s Battlepug! get anyway. So it’s a lot more difficult now. Plus, it’s been three years now, almost, and I’m Mike Norton’s epic tales of just tired of it. I’m tired of this guy.” blood and drool Norton, 45, is originally from Jackson, Tennessee. He studied graphic design at the By M P University of Memphis. He moved to Chicago 18 years ago to work in comics as art director for Devil’s Due Publishing. Three years after that, he was drawing comics full-time and has been ever since. In addition to numerous work-for-hire jobs for Marvel and DC, in 2012 magine a giant, adorable seal demol- Norton co-created the Image horror comic Re- ishing a village and a barbarian killing vival with Tim Seeley, one of his studio-mates an evil version of Santa Claus. Imagine at Four Star Studios in Ravenswood. Steve Bannon and Mitch McConnell hav- That studio is part workplace and part geek ing a face-o in which their faces literally heaven, featuring comics galore, more action Islide o . If you can’t imagine such things, vet- fi gures than a toy store, and some spectacu- eran comic-book writer and artist Mike Nor- lar art, including a massive print from Jack ton can. His Eisner-winning Battlepug will be Kirby’s psychedelic Lord of Light adaptation. available in a massive “Compugdium” January A giant whiteboard sits in Norton’s area, with 23 from Image Comics, which also published a story beats mapped out for the new arc of Bat- collection of Norton’s Trump satire Lil’ Donnie tlepug, much like an upcoming season of a TV IMAGE COMICS
last year. show. (Image will publish the story this year as Battlepug, launched as a webcomic in early a monthly series.) “It’s just a bunch of things 2011, tells the story of the Warrior, a Conan the “I’ve always liked animals,” Norton explains, I immediately put it online, and that’s worked that happen from issue to issue,” Norton says Barbarian type brawler who roams a sword “I babysat when I lived in Memphis. My boss out for me. It’s more of an impulse thing than modestly and also accurately. and sorcery realm populated by enormous bought a pug puppy for his wife for her birth- it is a strategic thing.” Like a lot of artists, Norton has made the animals. His sidekick is a giant pug known to day, and it was supposed to be a surprise. So I Lil’ Donnie has a slightly different origin move to digital art, though Battlepug was readers as Battlepug but to other characters was supposed to keep it for a weekend while story: “It was impotent rage, that’s all it originally done with traditional pencil and as Sprinkles, a name given to him by Bryony, he set the whole thing up. I was in love with was,” Norton says. “I was drawing comics on ink. Making a comic is still a time-consuming a foulmouthed little girl who is also a powerful them after that. I said, I have to have one for election night and watching this stuff come process with many steps, but since he only mage and ally. They fi ght the magic-hoarding myself, just because it is a ridiculous animal. It in, and I just felt a sickness to my stomach. I writes for himself, he feels more free to use beast mage Catwulf and other threats. The literally would not exist in nature without us couldn’t believe what was happening. And it shorthand than he would if he were writing for “Compugdium” consists of the first five vol- interfering, so the idea of this animal being a was just a coping mechanism. Things I wanted another artist: “I don’t write like most writers umes of Battlepug, which Norton considers fi erce, like, warrior-thing just entertained me to yell, and I fi gured if I put it online, people in that I don’t actually write stu . I jot notes “the origin story.” To say there’s no other in my brain. would have to look at it rather than me just down in corners and things like that. It’s pret- comic like this would be an understatement as “I kind of have an absurdist sense of humor,” being grumpy all the time. . . . It’s an exercise ty dumb. It’s the digital version of writing on big as Sprinkles. he adds, perhaps unnecessarily. He also now in creative spite.” legal tablets, I think.” Norton began Battlepug during a career has two pugs: Moe and Ninja. Lil’ Donnie has been a standout in the over- This modesty is characteristic of Norton. crossroads. “I’d been working for years for Battlepug started off as a webcomic; only stu ed genre of Trump satire—it’s like classic Even when he won the Eisner for Battlepug, Marvel and DC doing Superman and Spi- after it caught fi re did Dark Horse Comics and Doonesbury with smoother art and geeky the highest honor for a comic-book creator, der-Man,” he says. “I’d never done anything on now Image publish print editions. This was not references to comic book characters such as he didn’t let it go to his head. His acceptance my own. The fi rst thing that popped into my the result of an elaborate marketing plan. “I Etrigan the Demon and Mr. Myxlplyx. Real-life speech was short and to the point: “This is head was, seriously, Conan riding a pug.” didn’t have the patience to take it to publish- characters are transformed: Kellyanne Con- only going to encourage me to do more of this Why a pug? ers to beg them to print it,” Norton says, “so way is a wraith emerging from a skull, while crap.” v 20 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll COMEDY ARTS & CULTURE
The funniest and use their face as a joke in our PowerPoint,” Harrison explains. “It made us laugh really hard and no one ever liked it,” Cohen adds. “We women alive!!! kept doing it for eight or nine months.” In the ensuing years, the show has strayed It’s a Guy Thing explains from its original premise and now consists everything you ever needed to largely of musical comedy. “We got a lot more know about dudes. confident individually,” Jouhari says, “and that let us have more fun and be more playful By J R as a group.” The song “All-American Guy” is SANDY HONIG
a great example of their collective voice. The trio sings about looking for men who meet atherine Cohen, Patti Harrison, in 2011, and Cohen at Scotland’s Edinburgh Cohen says. “I go, ‘Isn’t it funny to say it’s a the blue-eyed, football-throwing cliche of the and Mitra Jouhari, who all work to- Festival Fringe in 2013. In 2015, she introduced guy thing?’” Harrison stepped in to co-host title, until the song twists into a satire target- gether on the show It’s a Guy Thing, Harrison and Cohen to each other at the when Jouhari was traveling, and soon joined ing the pervasiveness of rape culture: “Statis- consider one another the funniest Annoyance’s now-closed Brooklyn location. the show permanently. tically, he’ll fi nd you.” Cohen credits Harrison women alive. The three of them “Mitra and I fell in love by candlelight in Scot- The focus of It’s A Guy Thing originally as the GarageBand expert behind their back- Chave contributed to nearly every part of the land. Patti and I fell in love instantly at the hewed closely to its title. “The premise is that ing tracks, though they have also used karaoke modern comedy landscape: writing for AMC Annoyance Theatre,” Cohen says. “We were we’re three dum-dum girls who don’t under- tracks pulled from YouTube. “I genuinely, no and HBO, acting in The Big Sick and Broad City, watching hilarious dudes going absolutely stand guy stu and we need people to explain humility here, bring nothing to the table when and performing in East Village cabarets, The o ,” she adds, her voice caked in sarcasm. it to us,” Jouhari says. This format allowed for it comes to music composition,” Jouhari adds. Tonight Show, and now the Hideout as part of Cohen and Jouhari started It’s A Guy Thing a variety of comedy styles, from stand-up and Each show consists of the group’s favorite the Tomorrow Never Knows festival. as a monthly show in Brooklyn in September improv to lectures and slideshow presenta- bits from past performances and one new rou- The trio first crossed paths at comedy 2015. The title was a phrase they used as a tions. One recurring bit was a slideshow called tine written that day. “We have a very intense festivals: Jouhari met Harrison at Bellwether running joke while they were coworkers at a “Guys of the Month.” “It was a vessel to share process where we only meet the day of the Improv Comedy Festival in Columbus, Ohio, mattress store. “I had a phrase in my head,” pictures of random real people that we googled show to write the show,” Cohen says. As J
ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 21 L & N M sss Directed by Antonio Méndez Esparza. min. ARTS & CULTURE Fri / - Thu /. Gene Siskel Film Center. MOVIES
Life & Nothing More continued from 21 their schedules have become crowded with Getting by performances and other commitments, the three comedians have looked forward to Life & Nothing More takes a night. It’s a short scene, but it makes a strong each iteration of It’s a Guy Thing as time long, hard look at a working- impression, showing how the boy is trapped in set aside for collaboration. class woman and her son. a cycle of criminal behavior that started when The comedians recently moved out of he was too young to recognize it. Brooklyn: Jouhari and Harrison to Los An- By B S From here, Life & Nothing More switches geles, Cohen to Manhattan. Although they gears and follows Gina for a while. We learn rarely work in the same physical space, that she works in a diner and earns so little their common sensibility is evident even that she can’t afford to make necessary re- on a cross-country conference call. For the pairs on her car. (During her conversation Chicago show, Harrison says, “there will be with an employee of an auto body shop, we one new thing that we do and then a mil- intuit that even the $55 fee to have the car lion old things that we’ve done ten million towed is a big expense for her.) She lives, it times but we are still unable to remember.” seems, in a permanent state of exasperation. When asked to preview their material, they hough it takes place in Tallahassee, explains that Andrew has been breaking into When a stranger, Robert (Robert Williams), launch into a lengthy list. Harrison promis- Florida, the independent drama Life parked cars. The judge sentences Andrew to appears at the diner one night and begins es laborers building a boat onstage and an & Nothing More might be described probation but makes it clear that he’s on thin making advances toward her, she rejects him enormous puppet operated by Cohen, who as a foreign film. Antonio Méndez ice. Méndez Esparza then cuts to the bus ride fl at out—clearly she doesn’t have the time or counters, “That’s not a puppet, that’s this Esparza, who wrote and directed home, the camera in the same position as the patience for another man in her life. Yet guy I’m seeing.” Jouhari says she will not Tit, is a Spanish émigré who’s lived in the U.S. before, with mother and son already sitting Robert keeps coming back to the diner and be in attendance, preferring to participate for a number of years, and he brings to the apart. gradually wears down her resolve, and the remotely “like a principal on the announce- drama an outsider’s perspective that often For roughly the next 20 minutes, Life two enter into a relationship. This relationship ments.” “I know I’m gonna be really tired,” suggests that of an ethnographer. He likes to & Nothing More centers on Andrew in his becomes the focus of the narrative, eventually Harrison says, “so I’m probably not gonna keep his camera at a slight remove from the nascent efforts to improve himself. Méndez overwhelming the story of Andrew’s fraught stay for the whole thing.” action, resulting in visual compositions that Esparza shows the boy meeting with an adult path to self-improvement. That’s not to say This month’s show will be the fi rst It’s a balance one’s sense of characterization with family friend who stresses that he needs to that Méndez Esparza loses the other plot; Guy Thing in Chicago. The trio is looking a sense of social milieu. The nonprofessional stay out of trouble, doing lawn work with other rather, he shows how Gina, in devoting some forward to performing for a fresh audi- cast improvised all of the dialogue, and their at-risk youth, and attending a class where much-needed attention to herself, loses sight ence since very little of their material has contributions heighten the ethnographic vibe. an o cer instructs a room full of young men of her son. This oversight will catch up with surfaced online. “We’re all three business Méndez Esparza, often employing static long about how they can avoid jail time. In between her in the fi lm’s tragic fi nal act. majors and the one thing we learned in takes, allows vernacular speech patterns to these scenes, we see Andrew caring patiently On a similar note, the film is defined as business school is the best way to sell a shape the action as much as any of the phys- for his three-year-old sister while Gina is away much by what Méndez Esparza doesn’t show product is to make it unavailable,” Harri- ical behavior. Moreover, the dialogue is so at work; however brief, these shots speak of American society as by what he does. The son jokes. “You know how hard it is to get consistently robust that you may not realize to the boy’s inherent good nature. Andrew director shot Life & Nothing More during and things online these days,” Cohen adds. The for a while that Life & Nothing More contains doesn’t seem like a criminal, but at the same shortly after the 2016 presidential election, trio won’t rule out writing a fi lmed project no music. Even the passages of silence, which time, Méndez Esparza doesn’t provide any yet barring a single conversation between together in the future, but their increasing- register as punctuation in the drama, contrib- clues as to the boy’s aspirations apart from Gina and her coworkers about the candidates ly crowded calendars, not to mention their ute to the musicality of the speech. not committing crimes. Viewers might assume and a shot of them watching TV news on elec- geographic distance apart, prevent any The film begins on a bus, where a 30- that he’s simply impressionable, having made tion night, the larger political context remains solid commitments. something woman named Gina (Regina Wil- bad decisions as a result of peer pressure. In outside the bounds of the story. When Gina They’re also eager to bring their show liams) sits with her 14-year-old son, Andrew any case, the adults in his life try to capitalize and her coworkers complain that life won’t to Chicago, though it’s not the first time (Andrew Bleechington). Méndez Esparza on his impressionability, fi lling his head with change for them regardless of who gets elect- in the city for any of them. This show will situates his camera near the driver’s seat lessons on the need to do right. ed, the fi lmmaker suggests this is all we need mark Jouhari’s fourth performance in a and points it back so that we take in all of the Only later, during a scene of Andrew’s to know. These characters see their concerns year at the Hideout, a place she calls “one passengers—it’s only through the dialogue meeting with a school counselor, does Méndez as too immediate to be resolved by change at of the best venues in the world.” Harrison that we realize the mother and son are the Esparza reveal that the boy’s father is in jail the national level—staying financially afloat announces she is in a long-distance open main characters. Gina is upset with Andrew for aggravated assault. Andrew divulges this or out of trouble is more than enough to occu- relationship with the Bean, and she waits for reasons that don’t become clear until the information only when pressured, and even py their attention. In his vivid depiction of the a beat before clarifying “the Millennium next scene; when she demands that he get up then he’s coy about the details—and about characters’ daily lives, which slowly becomes Bean.” Cohen last visited for Pitchfork and move to another seat because she doesn’t the fact that he doesn’t want to maintain a immersive in spite of the detached camera- Festival, where she lost her shoes. “This want to look at him, her anger, presented out relationship with his father. Still, one sees that work, Méndez Esparza invites us to share in trip better be fucking amazing,” she says. of context, is almost comic. We only under- he remains his father’s son when, shortly after their perspective. v “It’s up to you, all of Chicago, to fi x it. And stand why she’s so angry when the director the scene with the counselor, Andrew and to fi nd my shoes.” v cuts to a courtroom where an o screen judge his friends break into another parked car at @1bsachs
@jackriedy ssss EXCELLENT sss GOOD ss AVERAGE s POOR • WORTHLESS 22 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll C W ssss In Polish with subtitles. R, min. Fri /-Thu /: , :, , and : PM. Music Box Theatre. FILM
Cold War
against the rationalism of the Enlightenment, intrigue and some pointed gallows humor as extolled emotion, nature, folk art, individual the lovers try to fl ee detection and Communist freedom, and nationalism, and privileged art- interference. Mostly, it throbs with music and ists over their works. The Romantic ideal of an vitality and is sexy as hell. From the austerity artist was not someone who existed to create of postwar Poland and Soviet concert halls to a commercial product but someone who lived the bop, jazz, and early rock ’n’ roll nightclubs to express him- or herself through creativity. in 1950s Paris, the fi lm feels authentic. It’s a During the Romantic era, political repression story very close to Pawlikowski himself, as drove many Polish artists into exile. Like the it’s based loosely on the lives of the real Zula lovers in Cold War, who repeatedly leave and and Wiktor, his parents, who spent 40 years return to Poland, director Pawlikowski has ex- dodging repression, moving about Europe, perienced exile and celebrates individualism loving, fi ghting, marrying, divorcing, and then and unfettered emotion. His work is consis- remarrying before they died in 1989, just prior tent with the Romantic tradition in that his to the fall of the Berlin Wall. subjects are often deeply personal, and made Most of Pawlikowski’s feature films are in more so by his deliberative methods of fi lm- some way autobiographical and reflect his making, which run counter to industry norms. attempts to process his parents’ legacy, his Even though he won the Cannes Film Festival own life in exile, and his return to his native Best Director prize for Cold War and the Best country. When Pawel was 14, his divorced Foreign Language Film Oscar for his previous mother married an Englishman and pulled her fi lm, Ida (2013), it’s doubtful that Pawlikowski son from his relatively happy life in Poland to MOVIES will ever be a true industry “insider” (or would resettle in the UK; Pawlikowski’s fi rst feature, ever want to be). When he begins fi lming, his Last Resort (2000), is about a dumped Russian screenplays aren’t “locked,” and they are usu- refugee mother and son who are stranded in A passionate Cold War ally much shorter than the envisioned running a small British seaside town. My Summer of time of the completed film. He starts filming Love (2004) follows the doomed passionate Pawel Pawlikowski chronicles a love aff air that blazes across the Iron Curtain. with maybe 60 pages or less, shoots for five lesbian a air between two rebellious English consecutive days, takes a day o to review foot- teens who reject their suffocating family By A G age and recharge his batteries, and then writes circumstances and class distinctions. The some more on the seventh day. He might do as Woman in the Fifth (2011) was fi lmed in Paris ould there possibly be a more composer and musicologist in his 40s, chafi ng many as 30 takes until he gets what he wants. after Pawlikowski moved there from England overworked, banal question of the under Stalinism as he catalogs traditional folk He is constantly revising, discarding, and following the death of his Russian wife, and cultural moment than “What’s your songs and auditions performers for a new resculpting: process is everything. It’s how he concerns a divorced American writer trying passion?” It’s so ubiquitous, from job touring folk troupe. She is one of the hopefuls, remains true to his personal expression. to pull his life back together. Pawlikowksi, interviews to dating apps, that it has a vibrant 20-something scrapper determined That, of course, is not how Hollywood makes who as a youngster was nominally a Catholic, Csupplanted the equally risible “What’s your to escape her dead-end lower-class origins. movies, where a script needs to be fi nal before didn’t find out until later in life that his pa- sign?”—as if anyone could instantly recognize They are mismatched in terms of tempera- shooting begins or else the project risks bud- ternal grandmother was Jewish and died in real passion in a society as corporatized, mon- ment, sensibility, pragmatism, ethics, and get overruns. That’s also why few American Auschwitz; the feature that he made upon his etized, and intimacy averse as ours. (As per- drive, but their sexual connection is so strong movies from 2018 are as strong or innova- relocation to Poland, Ida, deals with a young vasive as social media is, sharing everything that their liaison survives her first betrayal tive as Cold War, which also incorporates a orphaned novitiate’s discovery that her par- with everyone is the opposite of intimate, (when she spies on him for a Communist party half-dozen lacunae between chapters, gaps in ents were Jews killed in the Shoah. which means private and personal.) Actual climber) and the many other disputes and the years between Zula and Wiktor’s sojourns Maybe only those who have lived through so passion is incendiary, all-consuming, noncon- recriminations that follow throughout their across Poland, East Berlin, Paris, Yugoslavia, much trauma, destruction, and reconstruction formist, and frequently antisocial; it can be 15-year-long on-again, o -again relationship. then back to Paris and Poland again. Because have the innate ability—or willingness—to visionary, as in the arts, or self-destructive, as Their tempestuous union, their ceaseless Pawlikowski relishes ambiguity, he expects the self-immolate on the altar of undying love. in l’amour fou, mad love. Polish director Pawel longing for each other—even when, out of viewer to fi ll in the blanks and imagine what Knowing fi rsthand how the fallout of l’amour Pawlikowski’s latest film, Cold War, chroni- expedience, they enter different partner- happened o screen. He claims his inspiration fou can impact innocent bystanders, Pawli- cles—stopping just short of celebrating—one ships—puts them in the company of such mad was Michael Apted’s Up series of documen- kowski is not positioning his Cold War protag- such crazy love, an a air that blazes across a lovers in Romantic literature as Catherine and taries, beginning with Seven Up! (1964), for onists as role models. What the fi lm is doing is postwar European landscape already strewn Heathcli in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights which Apted interviewed a number of British recognizing their indelible life force and orig- with too many ashes, and grimly divided by and the obsessed suitor in Goethe’s The Sor- schoolchildren, then returned to record them inality; it’s a cri de coeur hurled toward an in- the Iron Curtain and closing borders. rows of Young Werther. every seven years thereafter to track how creasingly hidebound and emotionally stunted The attraction is immediate when Zula Romanticism, the hugely influential artis- they’d grown and how society had changed. era of Western civilization, where a word like (Joanna Kulig) and Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) tic, intellectual, and political movement that This might make it sound as if watching “passion” can be reduced to a watered-down fi rst meet in 1949 rural Poland. He’s a refi ned emerged in the late 18th century as a reaction Cold War is work, but it’s not. The movie has cliche, useful only for commodifi cation. v ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 23 T H T J B s The House That Jack Built Directed by Lars von Trier. R, min. FILM Now streaming online.
MOVIES to say. And that we have watched it twice in a row. Because that’s the way it was intended to be screened. Lars von Trier An actor of limited range, Dillon capably depicts the self-aware psychopath. In fact, he underplays the emotionless Jack so thorough- loves women ly that his greatest line is an a rmative “OK,” delivered to his girlfriend/victim Jacqueline, both cast in the fl at, uninspired tones of the more than you 1970s color palette the film is staged in. He calls her Simple as part of his torture regime— it’s also von Trier’s self-aware nod to critics ever will accusing him of misogyny. Von Trier doesn’t filmmaker. Because it is the centerpiece of von Trier wants us to read Jack as the enfant like simplicity. When an early draft of Anti- In The House That Jack Built, he the fi lm, its soul, it satisfi es when it emerges, terrible filmmaker himself, known to create christ was completed, the filmmaker wasn’t argues that he just has a really but we glimpse it only for a second, as if von great scenes of compelling destruction. The satisfi ed with the volume of hate it directed at funny way of showing it. Trier himself were bored by the only moment House That Jack Built is von Trier’s response women, so he sought out an expert on the sub- of ingenuity he’s conjured in nearly a decade. to his critics. ject to push the misogynistic aspects further. By A E M Of course, viewers have by then slogged Yet von Trier is no remorseless killer. In Of course the real experts on misogyny are all through two hours narrated by one of the least fact, the tired Infernoesque structure is the women, so von Trier found misogyny expert ingenious serial killers to ever enter the public fi lmmaker’s way of acknowledging universal Heidi Laura and paid her to offer advice on imagination. The genre is riddled with men— order: there is a right and a wrong, he wants more e ective means of depicting the deeply he centerpiece—soul, even—of usually—and their theories about humanity, us to understand, and certain acts—acts that seated despisement of women in his film. every Lars von Trier fi lm is a scene as well as their plans for its manipulation, he himself has depicted on fi lm and therefore Would a misogynist do that? (It’s a serious of compelling destruction. Breaking control, or extermination. (Films about female has perpetrated in real life in order to film, question.) the Waves (1996), a fi ctional tale, has serial killers do exist, but we generally call and which his critics have called into ques- Simple is, therefore, a smoke screen. Walk Emily Watson on a stretcher believ- them “rape revenge fantasies” and dismiss tion—are profoundly, eternally wrong. Jack through it and you’re left with Jack, who has Ting that the love of her life needed her raped the genre as “emotionally driven” and thus fl aunts his crimes to passersby, to victims, to already killed someone with a tire jack (get and beaten in order to survive himself. In the unworthy of inclusion in the “real” serial kill- on-duty o cers of the peace, yet they contin- it?), and now he’s emotionally moved by and 2003 documentary The Five Obstructions, von er genre.) Von Trier’s titular character Jack, ue. Von Trier has suggested that this is a nod ultimately kills someone he calls Simple but Trier’s real-life mentor Jørgen Leth is served played by Matt Dillon, is no di erent. He be- to Trumpism, but it more basically functions who is really named Jacqueline, the feminine an elaborate meal in the red-light district of lieves he is better than everyone else because as a restoration of order. Von Trier is comfort- version of himself. “If one is so unfortunate as Mumbai. The local poverty serves to highlight he is an artist, beyond morality, gifted with able crossing boundaries when boundaries to have been born male, then you’re also born Leth’s wealth and privilege, of course, but we the ability to elicit aesthetic pleasure and thus are clearly marked. In American culture right guilty. Think of the injustice in that!,” Jack watch something more complex erode in the improve all of humanity. He is a narcissist, like now, however, the boundaries between right even tells Jacqueline. It’s both the big reveal relationship between the two Danish fi lmmak- every other serial killer. and wrong have become quite blurry. Von that the women von Trier abuses in his fi lms ers—respect, maybe, or admiration, and the The fi lm follows a standard Divine Comedy Trier feels the need to remind us of the centu- are all versions of himself and an invitation to combination is gutting and awful. Melancholia plotline: a man confesses his crimes as punish- ries-old distinction between right and wrong imagine what sort of fi lm we might have been (2011) famously depicts the end of everything, ment for them in the afterlife is about to com- so we can properly condemn him for crossing left with had she been granted protagonist full stop, and the film both begins and ends mence. Jack’s Vergil is Verge (Bruno Ganz), those lines. Look at this horrible man! He status in a “real” serial killer fi lm, The House with the most aesthetically pleasing images of and, as in Dante’s original, he is a moral being hated women before the president did! That Jacqueline Built. our own demise yet viewed onscreen. That the who condemns Jack for crimes against women Aesthetic sins, too, unfold: ham-fi sted fl ash- But von Trier didn’t make that fi lm. Instead sites of destruction are often women’s bodies as a class and humans as a race. In fact, the backs, often of events that occurred onscreen he tossed o this puerile attempt to silence his has led to frequent accusations of misogyny fi lm switches genres somewhere amid Jack’s mere moments before they are relayed to critics, using without examination every tired on the part of the fi lmmaker. self-congratulatory reminiscences of the four Verge, are the most grievous. There’s a weird trope from the male serial killer movie genre The House That Jack Built is the story of distinct murders that organize the tale, and recurring bit cribbed from the video for Bob there is, and then layering another trite trip- a man who finds relief from anxiety by kill- we lapse into a filmic essay. Von Trier lobs Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” that to-hell story line over it. The fi lmmaker’s work ing a series of people—women, mostly—in moments from his own work—the Melancho- awkwardly seeks to ally Jack with, I dunno, was interesting—fascinating, occasionally re- increasingly bizarre ways. As his means of lia and Breaking the Waves scenes mentioned super famous people or something. (Von Tri- pellent, but often excellent—when misogyny killing become more elaborate, his confi dence above are included—into the string of images er’s grasp of the U.S., where he has never been, and misanthropy were driving forces. Here, grows, and soon he is straightforwardly tell- of great works of architecture and painting has always been shaky.) The archival footage examined, we’re given instead raw narcissism, ing both intended victims and police o cers and archival footage of Glenn Gould playing is frequently replayed, too, so that by the end humdrum in the end, a soul worth glimpsing that he is a murderer. The scene of elaborate the piano that Jack’s narration alludes to. of the film we are left with the impression only for a second before casting aside. Nothing destruction we build to is entirely predictable The montage also includes “great” works of, that we have just watched a fairly standard to behold. v if you know anything whatsoever about the uh, genocide because, you know, serial killers B-grade horror movie remixed by a fi rst-year architect-turned-serial-killer narrative or the love that shit, but more importantly because art-school student who feels he has something @superanne 24 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies. FILM
Paternal Rites same as in Fink—the fraught relationship between art and commerce—but their key insight is noticeably more mature: a good artist must be in the right place at the right time to succeed, whereas a truly great one makes that time and place his own. With Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, and Justin Timberlake. —JR J R, 104 min. Sat 1/19-Sun 1/20, 11:30 AM. Music Box Theatre Le Trou R Released alongside Breathless and The 400 Blows, Jacques Becker’s 1960 fi lm was the last great fl owering of French classicism; the “tradition of quality” Whiplash here goes out with a masterpiece. It’s a prison-break JAN 18-21 AT 11 PM fi lm, based on a true story, that follows the dictates of the genre almost every step of the way but makes the conventions shine with new life and meaning. The suspense is built slowly and carefully, through fi nely perceived physical details and quirks of character. The MOVIES Groeningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown) and his obvious comparison is to Bresson’s A Man Escaped, but cowriter, Luke Davies (a former heroin user who went Becker has none of Bresson’s taste for abstraction; his Antoine and Antoinette on to pen the Oscar-nominated Lion), help remove the fi lm is rooted in the immediate, the concrete, the human. R Jacques Becker worked for Jean Renoir as stigma of addiction by focusing on the neuroscience With Raymond Meunier, Philippe Leroy, Jean Kerau- an assistant director on six features before coming of dependency. Steve Carell plays New York Times dy, and Michael Constantin. In French with subtitles. into his own as a fi lmmaker, and this 1947 comedy and Rolling Stone journalist David Sheff (author of the —D K 131 min. Sat 1/19, 3 PM, and Thu 1/24, WAITING o en recalls Renoir’s early fi lms in its sweet, sincere eponymous memoir), and Timothée Chalamet is his 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center romance. Antoine works at a printing plant, Antoinette gi ed teenage son, Nic Sheff (author of his own memoir, for Guffman at a department store; their threadbare existence as Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines), a sensitive Loulou JAN 22-24 AT 10:30 PM husband and wife begins to look more promising when lad whose initially casual drug use morphs into a toxic R Maurice Pialat’s 1980 fi lm is a study in erotic Antoine discovers that he holds a winning lottery ticket cycle of lies, guilt, recrimination, and lawlessness. The revolution; in it, sex becomes a force that shatters not good for 800,000 francs. The fi lm is fl eetly, one might leads are superb, buoyed by Amy Ryan as Nic’s mom, only class allegiances and social patterns but even the For showtimes and advance tickets, visit even say frantically, edited, but the characters are so Maura Tierney as his stepmother, and LisaGay Hamilton order represented by traditional narrative structure. thelogantheatre.com vivid that Becker makes all his emotional points cleanly in a moving cameo as a parent whose unconditional love Isabelle Huppert is a model middle-class wife who and eff ectively. Noel Roquevert is wonderful as the couldn’t save her child. —A G R, leaves her possessive husband (Guy Marchand) for odious, mustachioed shop owner who keeps putting the 120 min. Sat 1/19, 7 and 9:30 PM; and Sun 1/20, 4 PM. street tough Gerard Depardieu; he lives off her money, squeeze on Antoinette, and Roger Pigaut and Claire Doc Films but Pialat artfully blurs the line between exploiter and Maff ei are luminous as the title characters, whose great- exploited—it’s hard to say who is using whom. The fi lm, est treasure will always be each other. In French with Don’t Bother to Knock shot largely in handheld long takes, addresses the subtitles. —JR J 86 min. Fri 1/18, 4:15 PM; Sat R Unusually seedy and small-scale for a Fox pic- question of possession—of how much our society, and 1/19, 5:30 PM; Tue 1/22, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center ture of 1952, this black-and-white thriller is set over one even the stories we tell, depends on the notion of one evening exclusively inside a middle-class urban hotel person’s “right” to another. It’s one of the most original At Eternity’s Gate and the adjoining bar. The bar’s singer (Anne Bancro French fi lms of the period, and, I think, a great one. In R Willem Dafoe plays Vincent Van Gogh in this in her screen debut) breaks up with her sour pilot boy- French with subtitles. —D K 101 min. Wed expressive biopic, concentrated on the Dutch painter’s friend (Richard Widmark), a hotel guest. He responds 1/23, 7 and 9:30 PM. Doc Films later years in Arles, France, shortly before his death at by fl irting with a woman (Marilyn Monroe) in another age 37. Director Julian Schnabel, a painter himself, right- room who’s babysitting a little girl (Donna Corcoran), Minding the Gap ly focuses on Van Gogh’s most prolifi c period, in which but the babysitter turns out to be psychotic and poten- R Though it runs just 93 minutes, this cinema- the artist churned out more than 200 paintings in 15 tially dangerous. Daniel Taradash’s script is contrived in verite documentary by Bing Liu manages to feel like an months, with minimal dialogue and striking visual poetry. spots, and the main virtue of Roy Ward Baker’s direction epic. Liu shot it over a few years and in that time got to Other infl uential characters—Van Gogh’s loving brother is its low-key plainness, yet Monroe—appearing here know his subjects so well that he came to consider their and benefactor, Theo (Rupert Friend) and his demon- just before she became typecast as a gold-plated sex entire lives. He also covers a lot of thematic ground—this strative peer, the French painter Paul Gauguin (Oscar object—is frighteningly real as the confused babysitter, is at once an uncommonly sensitive depiction of skate- Isaac)—dri into the fi lm, reminding the painter to soak and the deglamorized setting is no less persuasive. boarding culture, an elegy for urban, blue-collar Amer- up the vivid, quotidian ephemera of his surroundings With Jim Backus as the girl’s father and Elisha Cook ica, and a sobering meditation on domestic violence. when he is, for the most part, living in solitude. Despite Jr. as Monroe’s uncle, the hotel elevator operator. Shot in the director’s hometown of Rockford, Illinois, being in his early 60s, Dafoe is perfect for this role, his —J R 76 min. 35mm. Wed 1/23, Minding the Gap starts when the primary subjects, Keire stretchy, craggy face itself a canvas on which to display 7:30 PM. NEIU/Chicago Film Society (who’s black) and Zack (who’s white), are in their late the artist’s tangled interior life. Dafoe fully commits to teens and early 20s, respectively. The two young men his performance, as does Schnabel to the painter’s vision Inside Llewyn Davis met over skateboarding but discovered they were both and humanity. The result is a conspicuous fusion of actor, R From a distance, this feature by Joel and abused as children and were using similar methods to director, and subject: three souls connecting, wedded to Ethan Coen might resemble the brothers’ 1991 farce cope with it. Liu follows them as they struggle toward art. —L P PG-13, 110 min. Fri 1/18, 2 and 6 Barton Fink: like the earlier movie, it evokes a specifi c adulthood, generating an air of great tragedy while PM; Sat 1/19, 7:45 PM; Sun 1/20, 3 PM; Mon 1/21, 7:45 PM; showbiz milieu (Greenwich Village in the early 60s) grounding the fi lm in recognizable everyday detail. — Tue 1/22, 7:45 PM; Wed 1/23, 6 PM; and Thu 1/24, 6 PM. as it follows an aspiring artist (a down-and-out folkie B S 93 min. Liu and producer Diane Quon Gene Siskel Film Center played by Oscar Isaac) who’s based on a real-life fi gure attend the screening for a Q&A moderated by documen- (singer-guitarist Dave Van Ronk). Yet the broad, black tarian Steve James. Mon 1/21, 7 PM. Music Box Theatre Beautiful Boy humor of the Coens’ early features (Blood Simple, Rais- R Refreshingly, there are few calls to a higher ing Arizona) has ripened over the years into a sadder, Of Fathers and Sons power in this searing, fact-based chronicle of a horrifi c more philosophical brand of comedy (A Serious Man) A Syrian refugee based in Berlin, documentary maker descent into hard drugs. Instead, in their de adaptation that puts them in a class with Billy Wilder and Ernst Talal Derki (The Return to Homs) assumed the guise of two best-selling books, writer-director Felix Van Lubitsch (yeah, you heard me). Their theme here is the of an Al-Qaeda sympathizer and went back to his ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 25 FILM Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.
B native country to make this profi le of jihadist Abu could have been a lot worse. With Nicole Kidman and Osama and his several sons. The resulting fi lm alternates Paternal Rites Golshi eh Farahani. —B S PG-13, 125 min. AMC between scenes of Osama and scenes of the boys, most R Most feature documentaries are expository, Dine-in Block 37, ArcLight, Century 12 and CineArts 6, of whom are under the age of ten and already being designed to educate, provoke, or entertain. Rarely do Chatham 14, City North 14, Ford City, New 400, River trained in the ways of jihad. These latter sequences are we get a nonfi ction movie that is also an art fi lm, such as East 21, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster by far the more unsettling, as the kids blindly accept this investigation of long-buried family trauma by Jules Place 11 whatever they’re told, even bringing a youthful enthu- Rosskam, an alumnus of the School of the Art Institute siasm to their indoctrination. (An early scene showing of Chicago and a transgender male. He begins his per- We Won’t Grow Old Together the boys torturing a bird to death hints at the horrors sonal essay fi lm with a cross-country road trip he and his R Few directors used the jump cut to more potent to follow.) Derki is particularly interested in how Osama partner, Alex, undertake, retracing a journey his parents, eff ect than Maurice Pialat; his fi lms hurtle from one vola- exploits his children’s desires to play and be loved to Marilyn and Skip, made just before Rosskam was born. tile scene to the next, skipping over anything that might make them learn the hateful teachings of Al-Qaeda; As a mnemonic device it’s almost Proustian: Jules and suggest emotional stability in the characters’ lives. This this thematic emphasis on “so power” points to an Alex’s contemporary conversations fl ow over home mov- 1972 drama—his second theatrical release and an unlikely underexplored aspect of how terrorist organizations ies shot during his parents’ trip, punctuated by excerpts commercial success in France—depicts the on-again-off - amass followers. In Arabic with subtitles. —B S from Marilyn and Skip’s old audio-taped travel diaries. again relationship between a brutish aspiring fi lmmaker 99 min. At the Music Box Theatre: Wed 1/23, 4:45 PM. At These trigger Jules’s memories of the elusiveness of (Jean Yanne) and his younger mistress (Marlene Jobert), the Gene Siskel Film Center: Fri 1/18, 4:15 and 8:15 PM; his father, a workaholic whose physical absence was with many of the details drawn from Pialat’s own life. Sat 1/19, 8 PM; Sun 1/20, 3 PM; Mon 1/21, 6 PM; Tue 1/22, 6 compounded by alcohol-induced emotional distance. The fi lm is infuriating by design, focusing almost exclu- PM; Wed 1/23, 8:15 PM; and Thu 1/24, 8:30 PM. As Jules turns to interviewing the present-day Skip sively on the couple’s arguments and reconciliations, off screen, looking for keys to Skip’s obliviousness about yet it never feels predictable, thanks to the acute Owned, A Tale of Two Americas the abuse that went on long ago under his roof, stills, characterization and intimate, seemingly spontaneous There’s a rich archive of documentaries about mid- animation, and hand-painted 16mm fi lm become the can- performances. Though o en painful to watch, this is an century housing policy in America, which simultaneously vas for the director’s musings. At times painful viewing, edifying portrait of codependence mistaken for love. In created suburbs and wealth from home equity for white this brave, unsparing work ends in liberating catharsis. French with subtitles. —B S 102 min. 35mm. people and ghettos and poverty for black people. There —A G 82 min. Rosskam attends both Tue 1/22, 9:30 PM. Doc Films have also been plenty of fi lms about the 2008 housing screenings. Sat 1/19, 5:30 PM, and Mon 1/21, 8 PM. Gene market collapse. But in this 2018 documentary direc- Siskel Film Center ALSO PLAYING tor Giorgio Angelini weaves together both histories, delivering an epic yet digestible overview of the way The Reckless Moment Glass property ownership has both constructed and corroded R This 1949 melodrama from Max Ophuls’s post- Director M. Night Shyamalan combines characters from the wealth and well-being of the nation. Over time war Hollywood period is usually overlooked in favor of his previous features Unbreakable (2000) and Split our racist policies have created monocultures in our the masterpieces he would realize upon returning to (2016) in this sci-fi drama about a superhero who pursues built environments, and monocultures are inherently Europe (Lola Montes, The Earrings of Madame de . . . ). a criminal with multiple personalities. With Bruce Willis, vulnerable. With long intervals of mesmerizing drone But it’s one of the director’s most perverse stories of Samuel L. Jackson, Spencer Treat Clark, Charlayne footage, clever graphics, and timely intercessions from doomed love, with Joan Bennett as a bored middle-class Woodard, James McAvoy, and Anya Taylor-Joy. PG-13, experts and ordinary folks, the lesson doesn’t taste housewife whose daughter accidentally kills her sleazy 129 min. AMC Dine-in Block 37, ArcLight, Century 12 and like medicine. Ultimately, Angelini is reiterating the suitor, and James Mason as an engagingly exotic Irish- CineArts 6, Chatham 14, Ford City, New 400, River East argument that society can’t thrive in a segregated man who attempts to blackmail the mother. Naturally, 21, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Michigan, Webster Place 11 state—and this version feels like something even your they feel a certain attraction. Ophuls spins a network most closed-minded relatives could swallow. —M of fi ne irony out of the lurid material; Bennett is surpris- The Heat: A Kitchen (R)evolution D 83 min. Fri 1/18, 6:15 PM, and Wed 1/23, 8:15 ingly eff ective as a typical Ophuls heroine, discovering A Canadian-made documentary profi ling seven female PM. Gene Siskel Film Center a long-suppressed streak of masochism. —D K chefs. Maya Gallus directed. 75 min. Fri 1/18, 6:30 and 82 min. 16mm archival print. Fri 1/18, 7 PM. Doc Films 8:30 PM; Sat 1/19-Sun 1/20, 2:30, 4:30, and 6:30 PM; Mon 1/21-Thu 1/24, 6:30 and 8:30 PM. Facets Cinematheque The Spirit of the Beehive R A sensitive 1973 mood piece by Victor Erice The Joneses centered on small children in a Spanish village in the Documentary covering fi ve years in the life of a Missis- 164 North State Street 1930s. The extraordinary child actress Ana Torrent sippi family led by transgender matriarch Jheri Jones. $11 GENERAL | $7 STUDENTS | $6 MEMBERS (Cria) made her debut here at the age of fi ve. Much in Moby Longinotto directed. 80 min. Fri 1/18, 7 and 9 PM; MOVIE HOTLINE: 312.846.2800 the fi lm is derivative, but Erice excels in precise evoca- Sat 1/19, 3, 5, 7, and 9 PM; Sun 1/20, 1, 3, 5, and 7 PM; Mon tions of childhood feelings—there is one dumbfounding 1/21-Thu 1/24, 7 and 9 PM. Facets Cinematheque moment of lyrical, joyful horror. In Spanish with subtitles. LIFE AND OF FATHERS —D K 97 min. 35mm. Sun 1/20, 7 PM. Doc Mega Time Squad Films Tim van Dammen directed this New Zealand action- NOTHING AND SONS comedy about a criminal who fi nds a time travel device, “An intrepid, The Upside and plans to use it for a heist. 86 min. Sat 1/19, 7 PM. MORE cold-sweat-inducing A nicely subdued Kevin Hart stars in this American Chicago Filmmakers “A powerful, potent and study of Jihadi radicalization.” remake of the French hit Les Intouchables (2011), playing poignant look at race, class and - Variety family in today’s America” an ex-con who becomes caregiver to a wealthy quad- Shirkers - CriterionCast JAN 18 - 24 riplegic despite having no experience in caregiving. Novelist Sandi Tan’s documentary is about an ill-fated Bryan Cranston plays the employer, and he and Hart 1992 independent fi lm she and a group of friends had JAN 18 - 24 Fri 1/18 @ 4:15 & 8:15 pm; Fri 1/18 @ 2 & 8 pm; Sat 1/19 @ 8 pm; develop an agreeable rapport in spite of Jon Hartmere’s shot in Tan’s home country of Singapore and the disap- Sat 1/19 @ 3:15 pm; Sun 1/20 @ 3 pm; hackneyed script, which abounds in cheap sentiment pearance of a collaborator, who took all of the footage. Sun 1/20 @ 5 pm; Mon 1/21 @ 6 pm; and telegraphs every emotional payoff far in advance. 96 min. 35mm. Sun 1/20, 4:45 PM. Music Box Theatre Tue 1/22 @ 8 pm; Tue 1/22 @ 6 pm; The leads aren’t just charismatic, but nuanced as well; Wed 1/23 @ 6 pm; Wed 1/23 @ 8:15 pm; Cranston makes sure not to let his character’s self-pity Tall Tales Thu 1/24 @ 8:15 pm Thu 1/24 @ 8:30 pm and physical helplessness defi ne who he is, while Hart A wandering musical cricket is framed for the kidnap- brings sly intelligence to what might have been a cliche ping of the queen of a village of insects in this animated WILLEM DAFOE IN JULIAN SCHNABEL’S • AT ETERNITY’S GATE • JAN 18 - 24 role. Director Neil Burger, for his part, moves the story French children’s fi lm. Arnaud Bouron and Antoon along fairly briskly, refusing to let the fi lm’s schmaltzi- Krings directed. 88 min. Sat 1/19, 11:30 AM. Music Box BUY TICKETS NOW at www.siskelfilmcenter.org ness weigh it down. This is nothing remarkable, but it Theatre v
26 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll Two weird sounds that go down easy together Oddball electronic artist Mukqs and outsider rapper Sharkula make a surprisingly approachable collaborative EP. By L G
Mukqs (aka Maxwell Allison) and Sharkula (aka Brian Wharton) ADAM JASON COHEN
ne of Chicago’s most accessibly he and Wharton never subsequently discussed umentary about himself, 2010’s Sharkula: bizarre musical collaborations what their collaboration would sound like, they Diarrhea of a Madman . Because he’s spent so of 2019 began at a Burger King stayed in touch to reassure each other it was long hawking his music directly to fans (or in Evanston. A couple years ago happening. After Allison fi nished the beats—it to people who’d never heard of him before Maxwell Allison, who makes ex- took him about a year—Wharton recorded his but liked his pitch), he can seem strangely Operimental music as Mukqs and helps run the vocals last May in Allison’s basement studio, omnipresent, despite a highly sporadic per- eclectic Hausu Mountain label, was walking finishing every song in a single take. The formance schedule. In 2017 a meme made the past the fast-food joint when he spotted rap- Sharkula x Mukqs EP Prune City comes out rounds online that framed a photo of Wharton per Brian Wharton, better known as Sharkula, February 1 on Hausu Mountain. with the words “When your friend says he’s sitting inside. Allison and Wharton come from different well versed in Chicago rap / But he can’t even Wharton says they cut a deal: he gave Allison scenes—more accurately, Allison comes tell you who this is.” a couple of his CD-Rs in trade for a fi sh-fi llet from the experimental electronics scene and Wharton has stayed underground for de- sandwich, or maybe two sandwiches. Wharton Wharton is an idiosyncratic loner who doesn’t cades, and though he might like to be more doesn’t mention which albums they were, but belong to any single scene at all. Since self- popular, he’s defi nitely not willing to change if they’re anything like the Sharkula CD-Rs releasing his 1997 debut, I Wonder, Wharton his scattered, unconventional, sometimes I’ve bought, each one came wrapped in a sheet has built a career selling homemade CD-Rs o -the-beat fl ow, his anachronistic love for a of photocopied paper densely covered in his hand-to-hand on Chicago’s sidewalks and train grimy boom-bap sound redolent of 90s hip- erratic but detailed cartoons and jumbo bubble platforms. Also known as Thigahmahjiggee or hop, or his fascination with lyrics about bodily letters. Before Allison left, he suggested that Thig and (less frequently) as Dirty Gilligan, functions. He’s also in his mid-40s—hardly the two of them record together—something he’s probably the only rapper still running the age when most rappers break out. But he’d been thinking about for a while. Though that hustle who can also sell you a DVD doc- Wharton’s loose-limbed, unpredictable J ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 27 continued from 27 rhapsodizes about contemporary rappers via rhymes have earned him fans in unexpected Good Willsmith’s insightful and endearingly places: in the past couple years, he’s appeared silly Twitter account. “That’s in my DNA,” he on Hannibal Buress’s Handsome Rambler says. “But of course, it’s harder for me to relate podcast, recorded with legendary rap weirdo to that world without someone like Brian to be Kool Keith , and turned up repeatedly in Gabby there to do it, really—to rap. I don’t rap. I don’t Schulz’s graphic memoir, A Process of Drasti- do that, and I’m not trying to, because I don’t cally Reducing One’s Expectations. think I would add anything.” Allison says he fi rst heard about Wharton in “He’s not Ronald Reagan,” Wharton 2007, when he moved from Elmhurst to Evan- interjects. ston to attend college. In 2012, about a year “I’m not Ronald Reagan, that much is true,” after relocating to Chicago proper, he debuted Allison replies. “I’m not trying to add anything his most notable project to date: the improvis- to the conversation as an MC, ever. That’s not ing noise and ambient trio Good Willsmith, in my life.” which he partnered with Natalie Chami (aka Allison had experimented with hip-hop pro- TALsounds) and Doug Kaplan (aka MrDoug- duction before working with Wharton, but the Doug). He and Kaplan launched Hausu Moun- results never saw the light of day. He also knew tain that same year, and the label put out Good Wharton before the Burger King rendezvous Willsmith’s fi rst physical release, the cassette that led to Prune City—they’d crossed paths Is the Food Your Family Eats Slowly, in July. at concerts and parties. “Brian is a creature of Hausu Mountain, also known as HausMo, has the night—so am I,” Allison says. “I go to three grown into one of the most important new ex- shows a week, no matter what. I don’t really The cover of the Sharkula x Mukqs EP Prune City, released by Hausu Mountain perimental labels in the country: it’s released hang out too much at bars just to hang out at a music by pop-folk-electronica iconoclast bar—I’d go to a show, pretty much.” once Allison had fi nished about 40 minutes of but some of his words are relatively easy to Eartheater, misfi t free-jazz-inspired noise im- Wharton lives in Rogers Park but regularly material (they didn’t use it all), he e-mailed it parse: you can always count on references to provisers Moth Cock, freakout genre collagist commutes to Logan Square (where Allison to Wharton. His bonkers beats include charred bowel movements, for instance, and often he Fire-Toolz, and mesmerizing postrock duo lives) and Wicker Park to sell his music at drums and what sounds like a computer mal- mentions an experience that seems plausibly ROM (Matt Crum and Roberto Carlos Lange, night. I’ve run into both of them along the strip functioning (“Screamin’ on Your Booty”), a autobiographical, such as drinking Red Stripe aka Helado Negro). of bars and venues on Milwaukee between spooky, minimal piano melody cut up with (“Expand Your Mind”), eating at Chicago Diner HausMo has handled subsequent releases California and Fullerton. When the three of us industrial clangs (“Mustache Like Pringles”), (“Hitchhiking on the Mic Device”), or crying in from Good Willsmith too, as well as from the met for this story at El Pecado in Rogers Park, and clean hi-hats slicing into dreamy washes a steam room (“Bigass Beard”). With Wharton solo projects of its members , though it’s not Wharton walked in with a limp—a side e ect of synths (“Expand Your Mind”). as with Allison, you can only predict so much. the only home for any of them. The trio’s other of all the miles he puts in selling his music. “The beats were dope—that motivated “It makes perfect sense to work with Brian, partners include celebrated Mexico City label Last week he was hospitalized overnight due me to come with some tight written verses because he operates from an improvised Umor Rex, which in 2018 dropped Exit Future to fever and exhaustion. “It’s draining,” Whar- and tight freestyles,” Wharton says. “What angle, like, freestyling,” Allison says. “That’s Heart, an album-length collaboration between ton says. “I know that in order for me to keep inspired me a lot was he took me so serious.” totally in tune with what I do with other peo- Good Willsmith and the long-running team my reputation alive, I gotta keep on going.” In May 2018, shortly after Wharton fi nished ple—just improvising. But within the context of composer Takako Minekawa and guitar- The Prune City EP, which is already in stock a brief tour with Kool Keith, he stopped by of this duo, what I bring to the table isn’t ac- ist Dustin Wong. With Good Willsmith and at Galerie F in Logan Square, consists of seven Allison’s Logan Square apartment to record tually improvised. It’s very deliberate, ’cause through HausMo, Allison has begun to break tracks totaling about 33 minutes—its produc- the vocals for Prune City. They spent about the track exists—in that way, the improvising out of the greenhouse of the experimental tion only took Allison so long because he had four hours together, though not all of it was in instinct is coming from him and not from me. scene, attracting press coverage from outlets other irons in the fire. “I always go with the the basement studio. “We drank, like, six Red It’s like, I’m handing it o .” that rarely pay attention to his kind of music, ‘fi rst thought, best thought’ kind of vibe,” he Stripes—three each—and sat in my backyard Wharton rolls with the analogy. “He’s kind including NPR and Fact magazine. says. “Whatever I make up front, I don’t really for a little bit,” Allison says. A neighbor who’d of like the quarterback, and I’m the running Like many experimental musicians, Allison edit it or fuck with it.” been hanging out on his balcony saw them back, and then I might do an option,” he says. always seems to have 19 projects going at once: “Yeah, that’s why we get along,” Wharton together. “The next day he was like, ‘Was that “If I fumble, then he retrieves the ball.” last year he not only released Exit Future Heart says. Sharkula in your backyard?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, “There’s no such thing as fumbling with you, but also two outre-dance cassettes under the “I’m not poring over it and trying to make it dude,’” Allison says. “Sharkula gets recog- dude,” Allison insists. “With you, everything is name Mukqs and the debut of Crazy Bread, his better,” Allison says. “Every beat that I made nized even in an enclosed backyard.” loose. If you fumble, it doesn’t matter.” duo with guitar maestro Ryley Walker, titled for this album, even though it took me like a Throughout Prune City, Wharton zips back “We all win,” Wharton agrees. “Mistakes are Vocoder Divorce. As varied and strange as his year, they were all single sessions for each and forth between sturdy, bite-size bars and golden.” output has been, though, it hasn’t had much track. I would take a couple days to work on amorphous, nonlinear freestyles, sometimes “If you approach it where there is no such overlap with hip-hop, which he describes as one—” giving words to the moods that Allison cre- thing as a mistake, that’s the best way to do it,” foundational to his perspective. “Hip-hop was “I feel really special,” Wharton says. ates with the music. On the EP’s lead single, Allison says. “This is cliche as hell, but it’s like some of the earliest shit I ever listened to,” During the year or so Allison worked on “Wipe Your Booty With a Bandana,” Wharton jazz—there’s no wrong notes.” he says. “I had an old MP3 player when I was the tracks for Prune City, he’d occasionally responds to the sloshing, oceanic synths with Wharton agrees. “The sloppier the better, growing up—it had ten songs on there, and meet up with Wharton to eat Mediterranean the line, “Ooh shit, I’m stranded on an island, basically.” v they were all Snoop Dogg, Jurassic 5.” Allison food or drink beer at Cole’s or the Owl. They the water.” In song as in conversation, his swears by Three 6 Mafi a in particular, and he never talked about their collaboration. But train of thought can be hard to keep up with, @imLeor 28 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll ®
N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG . .
JUST ADDED ON SALE THIS FRIDAY! Judy Collins John McCutcheon - nd show added! Sam Bush Darlingside FOR TICKETS, VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG
SATURDAY, JANUARY PM Doug Martsch
(of Built to Spill) SPECIAL GUESTS MODERN VICES SUNDAY, JANUARY :AM ILLITERATE LIGHT
Justin Roberts & This Saturday! The Not Ready for January Family Naptime Players concert 19 Park THURSDAY, JANUARY PM West Saturday, January 26 Sammy Miller and Park West January 29 • Riviera Theatre The Congregation
THURSDAY, JANUARY PM
Kasey Chambers Campfi re Tour USA • with guest Carly Burruss
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY :PM SPECIAL GUESTS THE AMERICANS WBEZ Podcast Passport Presents Friday, April 5 • Park West NPR'S Embedded On Sale This FRIDAY, FEBRUARY PM Friday Friday at 10am! February 15 Dead Horses with special guest The Brother Brothers • In Szold Hall Park West
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY PM Masters of Hawaiian Music: George Kahumoku Kr., On Sale This Nathan Aweau & Friday Kawika Kahiapo at 10am!
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY PM Mariachi Los Camperos
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY PM
Kitka In Szold Hall
ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL September 17 • Riviera Theatre On Sale This Friday at 10am! Global Dance Party: Salsa Congress On Sale This Friday at 10am! Saturday, September 28 • Riviera Theatre WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE Beppe Gambetta BUY TICKETS OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG AT ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 29 Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of January 17
MUSIC b ALL AGES F
THURSDAY17 Deca Showyousuck opens. 8:30 PM, Empty PICK OF THE WEEK Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12, $10 in advance. 21+ Denver-born, New York-based MC and producer Chicago pop mastermind Deca wallows gleefully in the loopy psychedelic end of hip-hop. His past records have owed debts to the Native Tongues collective (groups who were Victor Cervantes knows members, including De la Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, get frequent shout-outs), but on last year’s how the future sounds instrumental album Flux (Beulah) he draws equally on loungey trip-hop. Some tracks feel like they could be outtakes from classic Dan the Automator records: On “Space Dust” Deca combines laid-back beats, dri ing horn samples, and corny inspiration- al snippets of announcements and dialogue into an IN MARCH , local pop wunderkind Victor ode to expanded chemical and spiritual conscious- Cervantes, aka Victor!, sold out the first run of his ness. “On the Clock” rocks like a woozy metro- self-released debut CD-only EP, Glitter98. Now 18, he’s nome, clicking and bubbling off “into the silence, into the light” (as a disembodied voice declaims at doubled down on his music career, transforming it from the track’s conclusion). Flux also contains a num- an extracurricular activity to his main focus—in fact, he ber of remixes; on “Skyward,” a reworking of a 2017 left high school early in order to pursue his art (per the track (for which he released a wonderful video in the vein of Yellow Submarine), Deca put an ominous Chicago Tribune, he’s been working toward receiving beat beneath his wry, slippery rhymes about grasp- his GED). The labor Cervantes has poured into his cre- ing for—and missing—enlightenment. “God bless ative output has paid o , and his distinctive approach the poet proletariat,” he raps, then mourns “strange beautiful things losing their wings” before sliding along with the harmonious way he blends genres in his improbably into a chorus about a whale’s stomach most recent tracks makes it feel like he’s hit upon the lining. Like his hip-hop heroes, Deca makes you gig- shape of music to come. He hits the sweet spot with his gle and think simultaneously—it’s boom-bap to feed your head. —N B falsetto hook on the dreamy, limber funk single “U Got My,” and his genuine nature comes through beneath the woebegone keys, warped vocals, and bone-dry percus- Victor! See Pick of the Week at le . Still Woozy headlines; Victor!, Monster Rally, sion on “Portra 400.” In concert, Cervantes is charming and Jordanna open. 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. and occasionally impish. When he performed the lacka- Southport, sold out. 18+ daisical “Tinder Song” while opening for Ric Wilson at Lincoln Hall in June, he opened Tinder on his phone and Grails, Helen Money, Black Duck proceeded to swipe through the app without looking— 8:30 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, but even his search for new romance didn’t distract him $15. 21+ from nailing all the notes. —L G Postrock, psych rock, western film scores, CHRISTOPHER MOLINA Krautrock, heavy dirges . . . there’s little Grails S W V! M R J can’t deliver stylistically, and they always deliver Thu 1/17, 8 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, sold out. 18+ their music well. For their most recent album, J
LINCOLN HALL SCHUBAS 01/17 - CAVE + WAND 02/07 - CORY WONG 01/18 - PETAL 02/02 - ROLE MODEL 01/18 - SARAH SHOOK & 02/09 - CHROME SPARKS 01/19 - YOKE LORE 02/04 - DAN MANGAN THE DISARMERS 02/16 - THE SUFFERS 01/20 - S. CAREY 02/05 - YOSHI FLOWER 01/19 - MNDSGN 02/17 - DEERHUNTER 01/23 - WINGTIP 02/08 - JOSHUA HEDLEY 01/20 - SPORTS 02/19 - CURRENT JOYS 01/24 - ALWAYS NEVER 02/10 - GIANNI TAYLOR 01/24 - MINERAL 02/20 - ADRIANNE LENKER 01/27 - ELLEY DUHÉ 02/11 - MÉLISSA LAVEAUX 01/26 - KING TUFF 02/21 - MOTHER MOTHER 01/29 - TOMMY NEWPORT 02/12 - SPENCER SUTHERLAND 01/31 - RIPE 02/23 - ROBBIE FULKS 02/01 - MALT COUTURE LIVE 02/13 - SHAD LH-ST.COM TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS JAN 16-20/TNKFEST.COM
30 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll ON SALE NOW TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE CHICAGO THEATRE BOX OFFICE OR msg.com tedeschitrucksband.com The Chicago Theatre provides disabled accommodations and sells tickets to disabled individuals through our Disabled Services department, which may be reached at 888-609-7599 any weekday from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Ticketmaster orders are subject to service charges.
Don’t Miss UPCOMING SHOWS 1200 W RANDOLPH ST, CHICAGO, IL 60607 | 312.733.WINE 1.24-25 RANDY BACHMAN (OF THE GUESS WHO & 1.20 Great Moments in Vinyl: The BACHMAN TURNER OVERDRIVE) Beatles with Strings -12 PM 1.27 CHICAGO PHILHARMONIC CHAMBER PLAYERS: CAFÉ CULTURE 1.20 Jodee Lewis & Jonas Friddle THE HOT 2.6 MARCUS JOHNSON WITH KATHY KOSINS 1.21 Let Freedom Ring, Chicago! A 2.8 MARC ROBERGE (OF O.A.R.) Musical Celebration of Dr. Martin Luther 1.23 SARDINES 2.10 FOX CROSSING STRINGBAND - 12 PM King Jr. featuring Lynne Jordan, Jeannie 2.10 ANITA WILSON Tanner and more! 2.11 RUEN BROTHERS 1.28 Trey McLaughlin & The Sounds SUSAN 2.12 HUDSON TAYLOR WITH CRAIG STRICKLAND of Zamar 2.13 PATRIZIO BUANNE 1.27 WERNER 2.17 KANDACE SPRINGS 2.3 3rd Annual Happy Birthday 2.18 DONAVON FRANKENREITER Langston Hughes: RACHAEL 2.19 VICTOR GARCIA A Celebration in Poetry, Prose & Song YAMAGATA 2.20-21 PROCOL HARUM 2.4-5 Ms. Lisa Fischer & Grand Baton 2.22-23 BOBBY MCFERRIN & GIMME5: CIRCLESONGS 1.29-30 With RADNOR & LEE 2.24 THE FOUR C NOTES - 2 PM SHOW 2.9 ANDERS OSBORNE 2.24 FUNKADESI ALEJANDRO 2.25 -26 STEVE EARLE WITH SHANNON MCNALLY 2.14-16 10,000 MANIACS - 2.27 ANN HAMPTON CALLAWAY annual valentine’s day run ESCOVEDO With DON ANTONIO BAND 3.1 WE BANJO 3 1.31-2.2 The Crossing Tour 3.3 JD SOUTHER & KARLA BONOFF ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 31 MUSIC
Fran continued from 30 ALEXA VISCIUS 2017’s Chalice Hymnal (Temporary Residence), the Portland band pare down to the core trio of Alex John Hall, Emil Amos, and William Zakary Riles and crawl deep into dusty post- Americana, library music, gnarly psychedelia, and Eastern motifs. With a few touring members in tow, the multi-instrumentalists hit Chicago as part of Lincoln Hall and Schubas’ Tomorrow Never Knows festival, and they’re joined by two other exceptional instrumental acts. In the main support slot is rock cellist Helen Money, who boosts her dark, somber, and powerful minimalist arrangements with effects pedals and percussive backing. Her latest album, 2016’s Become Zero (Thrill Jockey)—an ode to her deceased parents— fi nale to “Parking Lot.” Jacobson’s taut, serene sing- contains some of her starkest work to date. It’s also SUNDAY20 ing acts as a guiding light, and while her voice never her most sonically versatile, with added elements fl ies free of the music’s gravitational tug, I’d follow it such as piano, electronics, and MIDI sounds. Open- Fran S. Carey headlines; Wild Pink, Gold Star, even if it did. —L G ing the show is Black Duck, a new trio featuring and Fran open. 7 PM, Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, some of Chicago’s most exciting postrock and jazz $20. 18+ songwriters and improvisers: guitarist Douglas Jungle Green Ornament headlines. 8:30 PM, McCombs (Tortoise, Brokeback), guitarist Bill Mac- In a 2017 interview with Sixty Inches From Center Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $5. 21+ Kay, and drummer Charles Rumback. Together, the contributor (and Reader staffer) S. Nicole Lane, three cra alternately groove-based and free-form Fran front woman Maria Jacobson talked about Last winter singer-songwriter Andrew Smith posted psych-rock improvisations. If you like emotional- her nightly routine of playing her acoustic guitar fl yers around Chicago to promote the oh-so-sweet ly resonant instrumental music, it’s hard to top this just before she goes to bed. “A lot of times I still solo recordings he’d made as Jungle Green, and he’s show’s lineup. —S M will use it kind of in response to things that happen since completely transformed his bedroom project in my life,” she said. “If I’m overwhelmed with into a six-piece band. The lineup is fleshed out anxiety or trying to unwrap some emotion, I’ll kind with friends Smith made as a student at Columbia of take to the guitar. Which sounds like, I dunno, College, including Mattie McCall, Adam Miller, SATURDAY19 melodramatic or something, but it really helps. It’s Adam Obermeier, Alex Heaney, and Emma Collins— very therapeutic.” Perhaps Jacobson’s relationship each of whom plays an assortment of instruments. atomic 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, with her guitar is the inspiration behind the balmy Smith released Jungle Green’s full-band debut, $15. 21+ quality of Fran’s debut EP, 2017’s More Enough Space Cadet, via his Atlantic City Melodies imprint (Lake Paradise). The band, which is rounded out by in October. On the EP, Smith and his pals punch Scandinavian quintet Atomic first convened in guitarist Mike Altergott, drummer Raul Cotaquispe, up some of the sickly-sweet, lovelorn ditties he 2000, and even after nearly two decades, they and bassist-keyboardist Atticus Lazenby, plays released on his own into richer, meatier songs and never have trouble generating material in-house. easygoing indie rock with patience and warmth, deliver some new material; the whole record is built Saxophonist and clarinetist Fredrik Ljungkvist, creating a mood that prevails even through the EP’s on lean rhythmic backbones, gently upbeat rock trumpeter Magnus Broo, pianist Håvard Wiik, roughest and loudest passages, such as the sped-up melodies, and the occasional warmhearted vocal bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and drummer Hans harmony. As a front man, Smith keeps the vulnera- Hulbœkmo (who replaced original drummer Paal ble, lovey-dovey essence of his intimate solo record- Nilssen-Love in 2014) are all fluent improvisers ings intact, such as when he stretches his voice into in free and structured settings. Both Wiik and its upper register during his tender turn on the for- Ljungkvist write involving, multipart compositions lorn “It’s Raining Outside.” Live, Jungle Green churn that reconcile the contrasting energy levels, out the simple, catchy songs, keeping each melo- rhythmic imperatives, and structural ambitions dy tight while allowing space for Smith to wander of contemporary classical music with the post- vocally and physically; when I saw them play the bebop jazz continuum. The 2018 album Pet Varia- Logan Square Food Truck Social in August, he sang tions (Odin) is the band’s fi rst of tunes by outside the Velvet Underground-inflected ripper “Happi- composers, and while the choice to play pieces ness” while meandering around on the pavement written by the likes of Jimmy Giuffre, Jan Gar- in front of the stage and playing hacky sack with barek, Olivier Messiaen, and Brian Wilson shows omnipresent festival personality Matthew Churney their musical roots, the ways they recast them sug- (aka “hacky sack guy”). —L G gest that Atomic are as good at finding hidden possibilities within someone else’s music as they are at creating their own; in 1964 Paul Bley played Carl Testa’s Sway 8 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. “Walking Woman,” which was written by his then- Diversey, $10. b wife Carla Bley, as a frantic post-bebop pile-up, but Atomic ease the tempo and add just enough People o en talk about machines taking over soci- space to reveal the elegance of the tune’s design. ety like it’s a bad thing, but Connecticut multi- The droning bass and gently insistent rhythm they instrumentalist Carl Testa envisions a relationship add to Edgard Varèse’s “Un Grand Sommeil Noir” in which musicians and computers coexist just fi ne. draw deep-blue tragedy out of an already mourn- Testa plays double bass and electronics with band- ful melody. And they transform the Beach Boys’ leaders such as Anthony Braxton and Tyshawn “Pet Sounds” from a scrap of fey psychedelia into a Sorey, but in his own groups he likes to focus on brawny, swinging anthem. —B M playing his strings while computer processing adds dynamics to the sound. Testa has developed a Ayanna Woods KYLE JONROBERT PICHA PHOTOGRAPHY series of computer systems that analyze the play- ing of his collaborators and respond to it by J
32 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll Est.Est.1954 1954 Celebrating over 6165 years of service service to Chicago! 1800 W. DIVISION 3730 N. CLARK ST (773) 486-9862 METROCHICAGO.COM @ METROCHICAGO Come enjoy one of Less scrolling. Chicago’s finest beer gardens! ON SALE FRIDAY! FEBRUARYSEPTEMBERJAJANUARYNUARY 11...... 20 17 23 ...... MIKEDA MODESTVID QUINN FLABBY FELTEN JOHNSON HOFFMAN SHOW 8PM SEPTEMBERJAJANUARYNUARY 12...... 21 18 .....WAGNER THE ACOUSTIPUNKS AMERICAN& MORSE DRAFT STEPHEN FEBRUARYSEPTEMBERJA NUARY 13...... 22 24 .....THE .....DIRTYDADYRKNAMOS DJGREENRO SKIDOM LICIOUS MEN SEPTEMBERJAJANUARYNUARY 14...... 23 19 ....WHOLESOMERADIO FORWHITEWOLFSONICPRINCESS PILOTSTONY DO DJRO NIGHTSARIO GROUP MALKMUS THE DRUMS JANUARY 20 MURPHY TONYMOJO THOMPSONDO 49 ROSARIO 9:30PM GROUP WED MAY 1 JAJANUARYNUARY 17...... 21 MIKE PROSPECT FELTENJAMIE FOURWAGNER 9PM & FRIENDS & THE JICKS JANUARY 23 BUDDY DAMEN AND THE LAST CALL 8:30PM / 18+ FEBRUARYJANUARY 18...... 25 .....WHOLESOMERADIOTHE RON MIKEAND RACHEL FELTON SHOW DJ NIGHT DEHD SEPTEMBERJA NUARY 19...... 24 .....RCTWICE BIG BAND SITU REMOVED 7PMATION DAVID JANUARY 24 JIGGERY-POKERYMAXLIELLIAM ANNA WED JAN 23 / 8PM / 18+ FEBRUARYJANUARY 25 26 .....RCBIRDGANGS SKIPPIN’ BIG 9:30PMBAROCKSND 7PM JAJANUARYNUARY 20...... 26 TITTY STRAY CITTY FIRST BOLTSWARD PROBLEMS FEBRUARYJAJANUARYNUARY 21...... 27 28 .....PETERDUDE WHOLESOMERADIO SAMETO CASANONY DO ROVASARIO DJQUARTET NIGHT GROUP 8PM ON SALE FRIDAY! ON SALE FRIDAY! SEPTEMBERJAJANUARYNUARY 22...... 26 28 .....PETER RC BIG CASANOVA RC BAND BIG QUARTETBA7PMND 7PM MARCHSEPTEMBERJA NUARY 1...... SMILIN’ 24...... 27 .....DORIANRICK TASHANDLING PETERJ BO CASONOBBY ANDDUOVA 9:30PM THEQUARTET CLEMTONES SEPTEMBERJAJANUARYNUARY 25...... 28 30 ..... TOURS AJ ROSALES THE WICK MARCH 2...... ICEBULLYJET PULPITNEDSONBOX AND BIG HOUSE PUP JAWBOX JA NUARY 26...... DAVID THEBRAVOS HEPKATS SAT MAY 4 SAT JUL 27 SEPTEMBER 29 .....SOMEBODY’SSKIPPIN’ SINS ROCK MARCHJANUARY 3...... CHIDITAROD 31 FEATURING SUNNDOG JOE LANASA AND TARRINGTON 10PM 7:30PM / ALL AGES 7:30PM / ALL AGES SEPTEMBERJAFEBRUARYNUARY 27...... 30 1 .....OFF AMERICAN THE VINE THE 4:30PM STRAY TROUBADOURBOLTS NIGHT MARCHJAFEBRUARYNUARY 7...... 28...... 2 NUCLEAR THEJAMIE NEW WHOLESOMERADIO JAZZWA NEW QUARKTETGNER RAMBLERS & 7:30PM FRIENDS DJ NIGHT EVERYOPENEVERY MIC TUESD TUESD HOSTEDAY (EXCEPT BY MIKE 2ND) 2ND) &ATAT MIKE8PM8PM OPENON TUESDAY MIC HOSTED EVENINGS BY JIMIJON (EXCEPT AMERICA 2ND)
More strumming.
FRI Zydeco Dance Party! 18 CJ CHENIER & HIS RED HOT LOUISIANA BAND SAT FUNDING FUTURES BENEFIT 19 Supporting Down Syndrome Research
WED 16 CHICAGO SINGER SPOTLIGHT SideBar Jazz w/ MITCH PALIGA SEXTET THU ERIN EDMISTER & 3 TONS 17 plus David Quinn FRI 18 BENEFIT FOR MATT CREEDON SAT Noon - 5: UNITY FESTIVAL 19 Funk / Soul 9pm - Lots of Horns! THE BUSINESS In The SideBar - IAN LEITH Thu, Jan. 31 - Neal Francis SMARTBARCHICAGO.COM Give your digital 3730 N CLARK ST | 21+ Thu, Jan. 31 - Country Night In Berwyn (SideBar) life a break. Fri, Feb. 1 - Rico Connect over Lake Effect with Sat, Feb. 2 - 5th Annual Washington Island Fish Boil Sun, Feb. 3 - The Legendary Count Basie Orchestra music, dance & MOOD II SWING more. Fri, Feb. 8 - The Bad Examples DJ HEATHER Sat, Feb. 16 - Patrick Sweany / The Greyhounds New group classes forming now. Saturday Sun, Feb. 17 - Teflons / Sunny Side Up oldtownschool.org January 26th Tue, Feb. 19 - Sean Rowe Thu, Feb. 21 - Mary Lane & The Static Blues Band Fri, Mar. 1 - Bono Brothers
Sat, Mar. 2 - Marcia Ball / Sonny Landreth TICKETS AVAILABLE VIA METRO + SMART BAR WEBSITES + METRO BOX OFFICE. NO SERVICE FEES AT BOX OFFICE! ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 33
MUSIC
continued from 32 saxophonist and clarinetist Aaron Getsug, guitarist imposing changes in amplitude, reverberation, and Christopher Riggs, and contrabass clarinetist Ale- decay on each musician’s output. In Sway, the sys- jandro Acierto. The day before the concert, Testa tem he’ll use tonight, the musicians have control will join Dan Derks and Meredith Johnston to dis- over the notes they play, but though they impro- cuss and demonstrate hybrid acoustic/digital sys- vise, they’re not completely free. Instead, they tems. —B M have their instruments plugged into the comput- er and must accommodate what the program does to their sound. Sway gives the computer the com- Ayanna Woods ZRL and Yadda Yadda open. bined role of live-dub remixer and composer: using Fulton Street Collective, 1821 W. Hubbard, prearranged criteria, it can evaluate what a musician donation suggested. b is playing and nudge them to move on by changing their sound. Provided the computer running it has If you’ve ever heard of Chicago composer, singer, enough speed, memory, and microphone inputs, and multi-instrumentalist Ayanna Woods, it might Sway can be used by any number of players; tonight have been at Constellation, where groups such as Testa and vocalist Anne Rhodes (who is married to Fifth House Ensemble and ZRL have performed him) will be joined by violinist Hanna Brock, tenor her works. Or maybe her music has streamed
through your headphones while you were listen- which they recently recorded (due out on vinyl this ing to Eve Ewing’s new podcast Bughouse Square. spring through Homeroom’s Physics for Listeners Woods’s songs, including “Has to Be,” have also series). Woods will close out the show with her song- been featured in the webseries Brown Girls, and in writing project Yadda Yadda, which will release its 2017 she appeared alongside Ewing and poet Nate debut record this fall. The mix of artists and medi- Marshall in the live-action Manual Cinema fi lm per- ums presented in tonight’s program is a testament formance No Blue Memories—The Life of Gwendo- to Woods’s diverse influences and unique musi- lyn Brooks. With her history of such varied creative cal journey; she grew up singing in Chicago’s Chil- endeavors, it’s tough to guess where Woods will dren’s Choir and the gospel choir of her church focus her talents at any given moment, but we do before earning her BA in music composition at know what she’ll be up to tonight— s howcasing her Yale, and she’s since collaborated with a number vocal-instrumental works, a few small-scale choral of contemporary music ensembles. Woods arrangements, and some excerpts from No Blue describes her music as “wildly improvisational and Memories at Fulton Street Collective. She’ll be mathematically rigorous,” and that’s an apt overview joined by E’mon Lauren, Chicago’s fi rst Youth Poet of Triple Point, her recent quartet piece for Third Laureate, who will give a reading, and ZRL, who’ll Coast Percussion, which fuses her classical training perform Woods’s new work It Bears Repeating, and minimalist pop sensibilities. —K O’B
34 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard. MUSIC
WEDNESDAY23 Formed in La Quinta, California (“the Gem of the Desert”), in 1986, Yawning Man are largely con- Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks Dehd sidered the fathers of the desert-rock movement. opens. 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $28, $26 in The band’s now legendary “generator parties”— advance. 18+ all-night drug-fueled jams held in the middle of nowhere and named for the equipment they’d The music of Stephen Malkmus can roughly be use to power the shows—are still spoken about divided among his three main bands: Pavement, as life-changing moments by members of groups the Jicks, and Silver Jews. For better or for worse, that emerged out of the same scene, including Pavement tend to overshadow the other two—their Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age. Yawning rough, fuzzed-out music and enigmatic, humorous Man recorded 30 or 40 demo tracks in the late lyrics made them alt-rock darlings during the 80s, but due to a series of musical distractions— genre’s 90s heyday, and their stamp on indie rock they reinvented themselves as free-jazz-inspired has been felt ever since. But though Pavement were punk group the Sort of Quartet, and founding done with making music in 1999, Malkmus was not. members Mario Lalli and Larry Lalli formed a par- Soon after the band split up, he formed Stephen allel desert-rock band, Fatso Jetson—they didn’t Malkmus & the Jicks, and he’s been consistently release an album until 2005’s Rock Formations releasing albums with them ever since. Pavement (Alone). Yawning Man make instrumental tunes Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks JAMES REXROAD is known for its raw sound and classic indie-rock that are way spacier and prettier than much of the conventions, but in the Jicks, Malkmus gets away music that’s come from the stoner-rock genre they from any self-imposed limitations and constrictions, trast between smooth electronics and rock grit. kle Hard shows how a songwriter can evolve over helped kick off . On their third proper full-length, with vintage synths, strings, and winds making more “Solid Silk” has a much more somber and melanchol- the course of 30 years. But even if I didn’t fi nd that July’s The Revolt Against Tired Noises, they per- frequent appearances than they did in his earlier ic atmosphere—while the funky 80s-style synths on progression fascinating, I’m still a sucker for any art- fectly showcase their mystical, psychedelic, and band. For Malkmus, his era with the Jicks is one of the track might sound a bit jarring on their own, the ist who unexpectedly and tastefully uses Auto-Tune. acrobatic stargazing in what are undoubtedly their exploration, and the group’s seventh album, May’s lush string arrangements and warm, swirling guitars —I Y best songs yet. Opening tonight’s show are Virgin- Sparkle Hard, effectively captures that spirit. On that accompany Malkmus’s lilting vocals give them ia band Freedom Hawk, who formed the same year “Rattler,” Malkmus’s Auto-Tuned vocals float atop a diff erent context. By incorporating a slew of new Yawning Man fi nally released a record and are sty- pulsing and fi ltered synths before they’re interrupt- and old sounds from across Malkmus’s career as Yawning Man Freedom Hawk opens. 8:30 PM, listically indebted to their stoned-out desert-rock ed by overdriven guitar lines that play up the con- well as fresh changes in energy and dynamics, Spar- Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12. 21+ brethren. —L C v
ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 35 CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME
EARLY WARNINGS b ALL AGES F WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK Turnover, Turnstile 5/2, 6 PM, Never miss Concord Music Hall, on sale a show again. Thu 1/17, 10 AM b Whitechapel, Dying Fetus Sign up for the 4/25, 5 PM, Concord newsletter at Music Hall, on sale Fri 1/18, chicagoreader. 10 AM, 17+ GOSSIP The Who 5/21, 7:30 PM, Holly- com/early wood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 1/18, WOLF noon Judas Priest 5/25, 8 PM, Rose- Jai Wolf 4/26, 8 PM, Concord mont Theater, Rosemont A furry ear to the ground of Music Hall, 18+ King Crimson 9/10, 8 PM, Audi- Xiu Xiu 5/17, 9 PM, Empty Bot- torium Theatre the local music scene tle, on sale Fri 1/18, 10 AM La Luz 3/22, 9 PM, Sleeping Zveri 5/31, 7 PM, Concord Village IN Gossip Wolf noted the formation Music Hall, 17+ Lemon Twigs 1/25, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ of visionary local drone-song duo Mend- Jeff Lynne’s ELO 6/27, 8 PM, ing, aka crystal-voiced singer Kate Adams UPDATED United Center and sound artist Joshua Dumas . This past Magpie Salute 1/26, 9 PM, August, Mending began releasing a four- John McCutcheon 2/5, 5 and Metro, 18+ 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town Meek Mill 3/8, 7:30 PM, Aragon hour, 40-song cycle called We Gathered School of Folk Music, late Ballroom b at Wakerobin Hollow, whose graceful, show added b Melkbelly 2/2, 8:30 PM, Empty narratively compelling music “follows a Grouper NINA CORCORAN Royal Trux 2/22, 8 PM, Lincoln Bottle family and friends across four decades as Hall, postponed, 18+ Mineral, Tancred 1/24, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall they spread out from their small home- Dodie 9/17, 7:30 PM, Riviera John Moreland 4/6, 8 PM, Bob Mould Band 2/22-23, 8 PM, town until climate instability and author- NEW Theatre, on sale Fri 1/18, SPACE, Evanston, on sale UPCOMING Metro, 18+ itarian government draw them home 10 AM b Fri 1/18, 10 AM b Rivers of Nihil, Entheos 3/5, again,” in the words of the band. On Fri- Aesthetic Perfection 10/5, Jeremy Enigk, Tomo Nakaya- Mudhoney 5/26, 8 PM, Lincoln Acid Mothers Temple, Yaman- 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ ma 4/9, 8:30 PM, Beat Hall, on sale Fri 1/18, 10 AM taka // Sonic Titan 4/13, Todd Rundgren 4/23-24, 8 PM, day, February 1, they release Homeward, Architects, Thy Art Is Murder, Kitchen, 17+ MXPX, Five Iron Frenzy 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Athenaeum Theatre the fourth of the cycle’s nine chapters, via While She Sleeps, 5/25, Damien Escobar 5/11, 7:30 PM, 3/29-30, 8 PM, Bottom Action Bronson, Meyhem Travis Scott 2/21, 8 PM, United Bandcamp; the last is planned for Decem- 6:30 PM, Concord Music Park West, on sale Fri 1/18, Lounge, on sale Fri 1/18, Lauren 2/23, 6 PM, Concord Center ber 2019. On Sunday, February 17, Mend- Hall b 10 AM, 18+ 10 AM, 17+ Music Hall, 17+ So Moon 1/24, 8:30 PM, Thalia Avett Brothers 9/20, 7:30 PM, Ex Hex 4/10, 8 PM, Thalia Nancy & Beth 5/6-7, 8 PM, Baroness, Dea eaven 3/31, Hall, 17+ ing play live on the Que4 Radio show Chi- Huntington Bank Pavilion, on Hall, 17+ City Winery, on sale Thu 1/17, 6:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Supersuckers 3/12, 8 PM, Beat CityLives (online and at 1680 AM). sale Fri 1/18, 10 AM Fatai 3/7, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ noon b Beths 3/6, 8 PM, Lincoln Kitchen Tremaine “Tree” Johnson is one of the Bayonne 4/26, 9 PM, Schubas, Bryan Ferry 8/1, 7:30 PM, Chi- National Parks 4/13, 6 and Hall, 18+ Teenage Fanclub 3/6, 7:30 PM, best rappers to emerge from Chicago this on sale Fri 1/18, 10 AM, 18+ cago Theatre, on sale Fri 1/18, 9 PM, Schubas, on sale Black Queen, Uniform 3/16, Metro, 18+ Ryan Bingham 4/5, 7:30 PM, 10 AM Fri 1/18, noon, 18+ 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ The-Dream 2/28, 8 PM, Lincoln decade, and from his 2012 breakout Sun- Park West, on sale Fri 1/18, 500 Miles to Memphis 3/22, Orville Peck 5/3, 9 PM, Empty Break of Reality 4/16, 7 PM, Hall, 18+ day School till his 2016 collaboration with 10 AM, 18+ 9:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Bottle Schubas b Tourist 2/21, 8 PM, Sleeping producer I.B.C.L.A.S.S.I.C. he released at Blaqk Audio 3/26, 8 PM, Flat Five 4/13, 9 PM, FitzGer- Ben Pirani 3/22, 9 PM, Empty Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Village least one strong full-length or EP every Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 1/18, ald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 1/18, Bottle Angel, Necrot 3/4, 6 PM, T.S.O.L. 5/31, 7 PM, Reggie’s 10 AM, 18+ 11 AM Priests 4/22, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Concord Music Hall, 17+ Music Joint year. Since then, though, he’s been quiet, Boogie T.rio 3/17, 8 PM, Con- Jeff Goldblum & the Mildred Hall b Mariah Carey 3/11, 8 PM, Chi- Tessa Violet 2/14, 7 PM, Beat dropping just a couple singles and mak- cord Music Hall, 18+ Snitzer Orchestra 2/15, Pup 5/4, 7:30 PM, Metro b cago Theatre Kitchen b ing the occasional guest appearance. For- Trace Bundy 6/21, 8:30 PM, 7:30 PM, Park West, on sale Ragbirds, Claudettes 3/7, Neko Case, Shannon Shaw Ben Wendel Seasons Band 2/9, tunately, he’s not about to disappear: late SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 1/18, 10 AM, 17+ 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on 4/26-27, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Fri 1/18, 10 AM b Patty Griffi n 4/16, 7:30 PM, the sale Fri 1/18, 10 AM b Christopher Cross 3/19-20, Wet, Kilo Kish 3/12, 6:30 PM, last month he released the solo EP GOAT, Sam Bush 3/16, 8 PM, Maurer Vic, on sale Fri 1/18, 10 AM, 18+ Eric Roberson 4/25-27, 8 PM, 8 PM, City Winery b Metro b and this past weekend he and prolifi c rap- Hall, Old Town School of John “Papa” Gros Band 3/22, City Winery, on sale Thu 1/17, Daughters, Blanck Mass 3/8, Whiskey Myers 3/29, 8 PM, the per Vic Spencer put out the collaborative Folk Music, on sale Fri 1/18, 10 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on noon b 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Vic, 18+ album Nothing Is Something (due on vinyl 8 AM b sale Fri 1/18, 10 AM b The Rumble with Breakdown, Dave Davies 4/21, 8 PM, City Wicca Phase Springs Eternal Cactus Blossoms 4/6, 9 PM, Grouper 2/15, 7:30 PM, Chica- Death Threat, Damnation Winery b 3/8, 7 PM, Subterranean b later this year via London label Daupe). Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 1/18, go Athletic Association Hotel A.D., Red Death, Xibalba, Dawes 1/29, 8 PM, Riviera Wild Reeds 4/6, 9 PM, Sleep- Trumpeter Will Miller is probably best 10 AM Lily Hiatt 4/5, 8:30 PM, Fitz- Year of the Knife, and more Theatre, 18+ ing Village known for playing in local indie-pop band Ceramic Animal, Spendtime Gerald’s, Berwyn, on sale 4/26, 5:30 PM and 4/27, 2 PM, Dead & Company 6/14-15, 7 PM, Anita Wilson 2/10, 7 PM, City Whitney , but he’s also worked with Lil Palace Fri 1/18, 11 AM Cobra Lounge, 17+ Wrigley Field Winery b 4/4, 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Van Hunt 3/26, 8 PM, City Win- Sasami 4/23, 7 PM, Schubas b Elder Island 3/19, 8 PM, Wisin y Yandel 6/7, 8 PM, All- Wayne, Chance the Rapper, Mac Mill- Laura Cocks & Natacha Diels ery, on sale Thu 1/17, noon b Sneaks 3/27, 8:30 PM, Empty Schubas, 18+ state Arena, Rosemont er, and Twin Peaks —and he writes materi- 3/9, 8:30 PM, Constella- Iceage, Nadah El Shazly 5/7, Bottle Elvis Depressedly 2/28, 6 PM, Chely Wright 1/27, 7 PM, al for a group of his own called Resavoir. tion, 18+ 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Squirrel Nut Zippers 4/13, 7 Cobra Lounge b SPACE, Evanston b Last week, Resavoir dropped the righ- Judy Collins 2/15, 8 PM, Maur- Jawbox 7/27, 7:30 PM, Metro, and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evan- Flesh Eaters 3/10, 8 PM, Lin- Ry X 3/26, 8:30 PM, Thalia er Hall, Old Town School of on sale Fri 1/18, 10 AM b ston, on sale Fri 1/18, 10 AM b coln Hall Hall, 17+ teous two-song digital single Escalator Folk Music, on sale Fri 1/18, Johnnyswim 5/25, 7:30 PM, Riv- Sticky Fingers 3/20, 8 PM, Marty Friedman 2/13, 7 PM, Rachael Yamagata 1/29-30, via International Anthem, and it includes 8 AM b iera Theatre, on sale Fri 1/18, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ 8 PM, City Winery b a mind-blowing live version of the title Rose Cousins 5/16, 7:30 PM, 10 AM b Strand of Oaks 5/3, 9 PM, Steve Gunn, Gun Outfi t 4/19, Yob, Voivod 3/27, 8 PM, Thalia track recorded at Co-Prosperity Sphere SPACE, Evanston, on sale King Buff alo 3/15, 9:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 1/18, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Hall, 17+ Fri 1/18, 10 AM b Hideout 10 AM, 18+ Peter Hook & the Light 11/1, Yoshi Flower 2/5, 8 PM, in June. Fans of Lonnie Liston Smith and Darlingside 4/17, 8 PM, Maurer Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio Aaron Lee Tasjan 4/16, 8 PM, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Schubas, 18+ Rotary Connection should dig Resavoir’s Hall, Old Town School of 4/20, 8 PM, Martyrs’, on sale SPACE, Evanston, on sale Hootie & the Blowfi sh, Bare- You Me at Six 3/2, 7 PM, Bot- humid soul-jazz vibe and irrepressible Folk Music, on sale Fri 1/18, Fri 1/18, 10 AM Fri 1/18, 10 AM b naked Ladies 8/24, 7:30 PM, tom Lounge b grooves! —JR N L G 8 AM b Lavender Country 4/14, 8 PM, Tauk 4/12, 9 PM, Concord Hollywood Casino Amphithe- Yuri & Pandora 3/16, 8 PM, Mac DeMarco 9/28, 7:30 PM, Hideout Music Hall, 18+ atre, Tinley Park Rosemont Theater, Rosemont Riviera Theatre, on sale Mdou Moctar 4/4, 8:30 PM, This Wild Life 4/27, 8 PM, Beat Wanda Jackson 3/14, 8 PM, Zomboy 2/8, 9 PM, Aragon Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail Fri 1/18, 10 AM b Empty Bottle Kitchen, 17+ SPACE, Evanston b Ballroom, 18+ v [email protected].
36 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll NOTICE OF NONDISCRIM- JOBS REAL INATORY POLICY AS TO GENERAL STUDENTS ESTATE Section 1. Nondiscriminatory RENTALS Policy. The Midwest Academy By Dan Savage SAVAGE LOVE Curriculum & Regional Director for Gifted Education (MAGE) - Bach Deg or for deg equiv in On 1/21-1/31 Stone Terrace admits students of any race, Educ, Curric Dvlpmnt or Curric Apartments will be taking ap- color, national, and ethnic origin & Instruc + 1 yr exp in position plications for the 2bdr & 3bdr to all the rights, privileges, pro- or foreign lang curric dvlpmnt; & waiting list at 8440 S. Parnell, grams, and activities generally exp with: foreign lang instruc & unit A4 in the Mgmt. Off . From accorded or made available to accnt mngmnt; ensuring instruc- 1p.m.-4 p.m. To be considered students at the school. It does tional QA; teacher supervision for occupancy, applicants must not discriminate on the basis of & recruitment; & planning & have income at or below HUD race, color, national, and ethnic executing educ mrkting activ- income guidelines. Applicants origin in administration of its ities. Travel to various unantic are screened and must meet educational policies, admissions Fact-checking dick size client sites req’d. May reside the tenant selection criteria. On policies, scholarship and loan anywhere in US. Apply to (incl Februrary 2/15/19, the waiting programs, and athletic and other Ref# 10002) Ms. Grunfeld, Little list will be closed. school-administered programs. Navigating humilition and commitment Linguists Academy, 1915 W Farragut Ave, Chicago, IL 60640 Section 2. Inclusion of Policy STUDIO on Written Materials. Pursuant SALES REP: The Chicago to Revenue Procedure 75- Reader is seeking high-end 50, all printed, written, and sales representative to sell print Large studio near Warren Park. 1904 W. Pratt. Hardwood electronic materials, including and digital advertising for the brochures and catalogs dealing weekly print newspaper and floors. Cats OK. $795/month. Heat included. Available 2/1. with student admissions and : I’m a middle-aged man : “The boy expressed a Now, if he had a history of online products. Base plus com- programs, shall contain the text a mission and benefi ts. Salesforce (773) 761-4318. www.lakefront- mgt.com of the previous section with dating a younger guy. He desire to play out a specifi c bulimia, telling him he’s a “big experience a bonus. Equal Op- the following title: “NOTICE OF wanted to be a “boy” to a scene; he did not request a fat pig” could be harmful; portunity Employer. Email cover NONDISCRIMINATORY POLICY letter and resume to: Patti Flynn BEDROOM AS TO STUDENTS.” (1/17) Dom top daddy, and I was fact-check on his dick size,” likewise, if he had a history pfl [email protected] Vicinity Ada and Ohio One Notice is hereby given, pursu- happy to oblige. The sex said Dr. Reece Malone, of bigorexia, telling him he’s Relativity (Chicago,IL) seeks bedroom with an office. Avail- ant to “An Act in relation to the is amazing, and we click as a board-certifi ed sex a “skinny little shit” could be Sr. Software Engineer to ar- able Feb 1st. Quiet, secure use of an Assumed Business chitect/design/implement & test family building. Good light, Name in the conduct or trans- people, too. Then a couple therapist with a doctorate harmful. Your boyfriend may cloud native software applying good neighbors. NO smoking. action of Business in the State,” best practice software engi- Cats allowed. Internet and as amended, that a certifi cation days ago, he told me he in human sexuality. “The have a distorted idea about neering. Must pass HackerRank cable included. $975 + Heat. No was registered by the under- wanted to explore small boy’s disappointment is average dick size—most likely Coder Challenge pre-interview texts, please leave a message. signed with the County Clerk screening tests. To apply, email 347-633-0005 of Cook County. Registration penis humiliation (SPH). I understandable, especially if distorted by porn—but odds your resume to Recruiting@rel- Number: Y19000321 on January ativity.com. Must include “JOB One Bedroom 11, 2019 Under the Assumed was taken aback—not by he was feeling hopeful that are good he’s one of millions ID: 18-9000” in the subject line.” Large one bedroom apartment Business Name of APARTMENT near Metra and Warren Park. TWO with the business located the request, but because the request would be met of people out there who have Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks 1904 W. Pratt. Hardwood fl oors. CLASSIFIEDS at: 719 N. HOYNE AVENUE his penis is NOT small! It’s with enthusiasm and mutual eroticized their anxieties Technical Lead, Business Sys- Cats OK. Heat included. $975/ APT. #2, CHICAGO, IL 60612 tems and Applications to work month. Available 2/1. (773) 761- The true and real full name(s) not huge, but it’s at least excitement.” and insecurities. So long as closely with various business & 4318. www.lakefrontmgt.com and residence address of the average. And it’s thick! Your boy was probably ner- he isn’t contemplating some IT teams to meet the business owner(s)/partner(s) is: JOSEPH objectives/ensure successful One Bedroom BOTTIGLIERO 719 N. HOYNE I’m not super hung, so it’s vous when he brought SPH dangerous or stupid way to delivery of solutions. Must be Large one bedroom apartment AVENUE APT. #2 CHICAGO, IL Salesforce.com Platform Devel- near red line. 6824 N. Wayne. 60612, USA (1/31) not that he seems small in up, NOSPH, and his reaction make his cock bigger (like oper certified. To apply, email Hardwood fl oors. Pets OK. Heat comparison—I have maybe to your reaction—his com- getting liquid silicone inject- JOBS your resume to Recruiting@rela- included. $995/month. Available Notice is hereby given, pursu- tivity.com. Please include “JOB 2/1. (773) 761-4318. www.lake- ant to “An Act in relation to the an inch on him. When I plaints about feeling patron- ed into his genitals, some- ID: 19-9000” in the subject line. frontmgt.com use of an Assumed Business ADMINISTRATIVE Name in the conduct or trans- pointed this out, he claimed ized, his demand to drop thing that led to the death Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks BEDROOM action of Business in the State,” I was just trying to make the subject—was likely moti- of a gay man in Seattle last SALES & Sr. Software Engineer in Test to as amended, that a certifi cation drive customer confidence by was registered by the under- MARKETING assuring the quality of Relativ- 1701 N. Talman apartment him feel better about his vated by shame. Not shame year), you can engage in SPH Beautiful 2 Bedroom apartment, signed with the County Clerk ity’s current & future core prod- of Cook County. Registration small size! He said I was about the size of his dick, but without doing him harm. FOOD & DRINK ucts. Must pass pre-interview central heating AC, hardwood fl oors, appliances good condi- Number: Y19000288 on January questionnaire, including coding 9, 2019 Under the Assumed patronizing him. He ended shame about this particular “But NOSPH should ask SPAS & SALONS portion & essay. To apply, email tion, laundry, storage available. Close to CTA Blue line. One cat, Business Name of THE SOFT the conversation by saying kink. He was open with you more questions and engage your resume to Recruiting@rela- TOUCH with the business lo- tivity.com. Please include “JOB $1,300/month. Call Fabio 773 BIKE JOBS 988 2073 cated at: 3525 N. RACINE AVE he would drop it, since it about other kinks right away, in a dialogue on how his ID: 19-9001” in the subject line. APT 2W, CHICAGO, IL 60657. was obviously making me but sharing those kinks prob- boy wants the scene played GENERAL UPTOWN, Large 2 bedroom The true and real full name(s) SALES REPRESENTATIVE and residence address of the Radio Broadcasting Group is apt, 2 blocks from lake, 4344 uncomfortable. Honestly, I ably didn’t make him feel as out, and if and how it would North Clarendon Ave ( At owner(s)/partner(s) is: TIFFINY looking for experienced and YATES 3525 N. RACINE AVE am uncomfortable with it. I vulnerable as sharing this one change their sexual dynam- motivated sales people to sell Montrose), rehabbed vintage, hardwood fl oors, heat/applianc- APT 2W, CHICAGO, IL 60657 REAL Radio Airtime by phone for over (1/31) just can’t imagine bringing did. He held SPH back until ic overall,” said Dr. Malone. 500 stations across the country. es included. $1475.00 call EJM myself to go on about how he felt he could really trust “It’s also fair for NOSPH to 1 year + phone sales experience (773) 935 4425 ESTATE required. WE PAY THE HIGH- small his dick is when I’m you. And after he worked up share his own concerns about EST COMMISSIONS IN THE TWO BEDROOM MARKETPLACE RENTALS INDUSTRY!!! 28% - 30% de- actually thinking how much the nerve to tell you about feeding into body dysmor- pending on experience. Work in Large two bedroom duplex GENERAL that thing would hurt if he his biggest turn-on, your phia. He also has the right to FOR SALE a professional, yet comfortable near Warren Park. 1900 W. offi ce setting with paid training Pratt. 2 full bathrooms. Heat FOR SALE were to top me. But my response was to argue with set boundaries or decline the NON-RESIDENTIAL and paid vacations. Call (312) included. Private storage. Cats bigger concern is that doing him about whether his dick scene altogether.” 224-9828 ask for Ernie. (Monday OK. $1,600/month. Available 8 Drop vans 53’ through Friday 9am - 4pm) 2/1. (773) 761-4318. www.lake- 20 aluminum/combo flatbeds SPH might feed into possible is small enough to qualify Agreed! Limits and bound- ROOMATES frontmgt.com 48’ CAMPAIGN JOBS 6 reefers 53’ body dysmorphia. The way him for SPH play. “I think it’s aries aren’t just for subs, bot- Help doctors save lives across 3 conestogas 53’ he reacted to being told important that NOSPH revisit toms, or slaves. Doms, tops, the world. LEGAL NOTICE Int’l 9200, Ford Aeromax, GMC MARKET- Work for Grassroots Campaigns Brigadere his penis wasn’t small was the conversation to examine Masters, and Mistresses get on behalf of Doctors Without Financing available Borders IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF Call Bruce at 815-674-5230 or a red fl ag—it told me this if his reaction felt shaming,” to have limits and set bound- PLACE Earn $12.50-$15.50 per hour. PULASKI COUNTY, ARKAN- 815-842-2888 isn’t just a fantasy. It’s not said Dr. Malone. aries, too. If you can’t go Full-Time /Part-Time/ Career SAS DOMESTIC RELATIONS CALL Robert at (312) 574-3794 14TH DIVISION ADELAIDE SERVICES that he wants to be made “While I appreciate there, you aren’t obligated to GOODS BUCK PLAINTIFF VS CASE NO: 60 DR 2018-4680 DAVID to FEEL it’s small; he really NOSPH’s concerns,” contin- go there. But it might make SERVICES ROLON DEFENDANT WARN- Remodeler. Licensed & in- believes it is small. How is ued Dr. Malone, “SPH scenes you feel better about going ING ORDER The Defendant, sured. Kitchens, bathrooms, HEALTH & David Rolon, is hereby warned additions, attics, & basements. this diff erent from telling a don’t require one to have a there, NOSPH, if you bear in LEAD DATA SCIENTIST (Chi- to appear in the Circuit Court Great references. 26 years in WELLNESS cago, IL). Mail resume to Marc of Pulaski County in Domestic business. Call Howard 773 478 skinny boyfriend what a big small dick. It’s engaging in mind that you can mock his A. Rutzen, CEO, Enodo Score Relations, 14th Division, 401 2500 Redstone Builders Inc. INSTRUCTION Inc., 130 S. Jefferson Street, W. Markham, Little Rock, AR Quality Craftsmanship. fat pig he is? I really like this the role-play itself that’s hot tiny cock (during sex play) Ste. 390, Chicago, IL 60661. 72201 within thirty (30) days guy, and I think this could and exciting. It really is no dif- and reassure him about his MUSIC & ARTS and answer the Complaint of Erotic Massage by Lauren and Grant Thornton LLP is seek- the Plaintiff , Adelaide Buck, and Holly Two or four hand sessions go somewhere. I want to be ferent if a daddy’s skinny boy- cock (during aftercare). If NOTICES ing a Sr. Assoc. – Technology upon failure of Defendant to do with two lovely MILF’s in the GGG, but not at the cost friend wanted to engage in a your boy doesn’t feel like he Solutions – Business Analytics so, the Complaint filed herein Schaumburg area. Please call or MESSAGES in Chicago, IL. Assist in full life will be deemed to be admitted. text for more information. 331 of his mental health. —N fantasy where the thought of has to win an argument about cycle Oracle BI implementation WITNESS my hand and seal 223-3143 LEGAL NOTICES projects. 80% travel required. as Clerk of the Circuit Court of O S being a ‘big fat pig’ was hot how small his cock is to get Please apply at www.gt.com by Pulaski County, Arkansas, this Obsessed with erotic writing, P H ! and exciting for him.” the SPH he wants, he J ADULT SERVICES clicking on the Careers link. 9TH day of January, 2019. (1/31) and fueled by an unrelenting llll JANUARYJANUARY - -CHIC CHICAA O RE O REAADERDER 37 37 B passion, my married chicks long to chat with strangers. Join us, free of charge, at MyMarriedChicks.com
African spiritual healing SAVAGE LOVE and reading Traditional healer helping people ease problems. Financial, health, family, misfortune, marriage, love, job, legal, bad luck, drinking, smok- ing, academic, etc. Call 773 956 0754 Or 872 continued from 37 kids—you can’t have half a kid (not legally)— 888 5108. might be willing to admit—or finally be willing you can hammer out a compromise about VALENTINE’S DAY ISSUE to accept—that his cock isn’t really that small. when to have kids. v You can learn more about Dr. Malone and Want to send a note to someone spe- cial? An old fl ame, a missed match, his work at reecemalone.com. Send letters to [email protected]. or an ongoing partner? The Reader wants to be your destination for love. Download the Savage Lovecast every Call 312-392-2934 or email snlane@ : I’m a gay man in my late 20s fi nishing up Tuesday at thestranger.com. chicagoreadercorp.com to submit 60 MINUTES FREE TRIAL your message. First ten words free, a graduate program and dating a man who @fakedansavage $10 for additional twenty words. is 38. The sex is great. Some context: We THE HOTTEST GAY CHATLINE met on Scruff and dated for a little bit. Then I suff ered a loss in my family—I was sad and 1-312-924-2082 confused, and didn’t want a relationship More Local Numbers: 800-777-8000 www.guyspyvoice.com during this time. We talked again in June Ahora en Español/18+ 2018, we went to Pride in Minneapolis, and we have been together since December 2018. Recently he hinted about children and my attitude toward children. I responded that I want to have children of my own someday. However, in a text, he stated that he wants a child in a year or two. This seemed like an ultimatum to me, one that could make or break this relationship, and I wonder why he kept this from me. I do want children, but I’m still a starving student, a child is a huge responsibility, and I worry about the state of the world. And he texted this information REAL PEOPLE to me! I feel anxious and pressured. What REAL DESIRE do I need to do? —T U M REAL FUN. U L T a: Maybe you need to chill the fuck out, TUMULT. People put their long-term goals on the Try FREE: 773-867-1235 table when they start getting serious about More Local Numbers: 1-800-926-6000 someone—long-term goals like the places they’d like to live or the kids they’d like to have—because if you’re not on the same page Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+ about the big stuff, continuing to make a large emotional investment in the relationship sets both partners up for heartbreak. And while you seem to think he should have brought kids up sooner (or in person, which definitely would’ve been better), people who bring up ADMIRAL kids on the first date don’t get many second ★★ ★★ dates. Six months in is a perfectly reasonable THEATRE time to bring kids up. And where you see an ultimatum, TUMULT, I see an opening—the opening of negotia- tions. Your boyfriend would like to be a parent in a year or two. You would also like to be a parent, but not that soon. So make your coun- teroffer. If two years is too soon, tell him when you think you might be ready. Three years? 3940 W LAWRENCE Four? After you land a job in your field? After Meet sexy friends President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez signs the TO who really get your vibe... Green New Deal into law? OPEN 7PM 6AM All your boyfriend is saying—all he’s tex- ADMIRALX.COM Try FREE: 312-924-2066 ting—is that he sees a future with you and More Local Numbers: 1-800 1-800-811-16331633-811- wants to know if you’re on the same page (773) 478-8111 about the big stuff. It’s a compliment, MUST BE 18 TO ENTER TUMULT, not an ultimatum. And while there’s no compromising about whether to have vibeline.com 18+
38 CHICA O READER - JANUARY llll find hundreds of reader- recommended restaurants Never miss a exclusive video features show again. and sign up for weekly news EARLY WARNINGS chicagoreader.com/food Find a concert, buy a ticket, and sign up to get advance notice of Chicago’s essential music shows at chicagoreader.com/early. ll JANUARY - CHICA O READER 39 Jan Dee’s Retirement Sale! 50% off everything at Jan Dee Custom Jewelry
Sale starts Wed., Jan. 16, and runs through Feb. 2
As Jan Dee’s legendary Chicago jewelry store enters its 45th year, she is announcing her retirement and the closing of her store.
Jan Dee has been a vital part of Chicago’s feminist, small business and social justice communities since the 1970s. She has supported hundreds of charities and donated her time to countless causes.
Let’s show Jan Dee some love for all the love she and her jewelry have shown us.
Stop by during store hours and take advantage of these special retirement discounts.
1425 W. Diversey Pkwy, Chicago (773) 871-2222 www.jandee.com Wed & Sat 10-5PM Thu & Fri 12-7PM Open one special Sunday, Jan. 20, 11-4PM