CHICAGO’S FREE WEEKLY SINCE | NOVEMBER
‘The big house and the picket fence’
Tonya Crowder still dreams that she and her fi ance, Roosevelt Myles—who’s been in prison for decades fi ghting what he says is a wrongful conviction—will one day build a life together somewhere “nice, quiet, and simple.” By M C 7 THIS WEEK CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER | VOLUME NUMBER
IN THIS ISSUE T R - CITY LIFE television sitcom has a show and THEATER @ 03 Sightseeing Travel tips for more arts and culture happenings 20 Review Dennis Začek stages Chicago for the World’s Waiting for Godot again years Columbian Exposition yes you a er his fi rst time an academic P T B should tip your servers debate becomes a racially charged E C S K K H D E K S confl agration in The Niceties C L SK NEWS & POLITICS 22 Plays of note The Nutcracker D P J R 05 Joravsky | Politics Imagine returns to House with a few twists a 30 Shows of note High on Fire M E P M T D K R covering Madigan and Foxx the woman explores her limits in Queen Young MA Las Cafeteras and C E B W way Republicanrun media cover of Sock Pairing and Why Torture more this week A E J L Trump Is Wrong and the People Who 32 The Secret History of S W D I BJ MS Love Them is a brutal sendup of Chicago Music Pieces of Peace S W M D L G FEATURE American paranoia cut most of their brilliant soulfunk E A SN L 07 Criminal Justice Tonya 16 Comedy Korporate Bidness turns for other people’s records L C S C -J C EB N B Crowder still dreams that she to YouTube to hilariously highlight 35 Early Warnings Airborne L C M DL C and her fi ance Roosevelt Myles what BlackChicagoBeLike Toxic Event Kiss Keith Fullerton J F S F J H who’s been in prison for decades Whitman and more justannounced I H C M J M K S K fi ghting what he says is a wrongful concerts N DL J L convictionwill one day build a life 35 Gossip Wolf Local noiserock M M A M -K together somewhere bands Den and Salvation drop new JRN JN M O M S C S albums this week Epworth United ------Methodist hosts an experimental D D J D music festival and more D P E &P K K S M C J G FILM OPINION M P C 24 Review Marriage Story Noah 36 Savage Love Dan Savage Y D Baumbach’s latest fi lm about off ers advice on how not to be that A A T A 18 Festival Furries aren’t all divorce doesn’t pick sides professor ADVERTISING fetishiststhey’re members of 24 Movies of note Tom Hanks -- - @ a supportive community who continues to prove he can do no CLASSIFIEDS C @ sometimes don costumes to feel wrong in A Beautiful Day in the 38 Jobs S D P F FOOD & DRINK more comfortable in their own skins Neighborhood Breakthrough 39 Apartments & Spaces V P S A M 13 Restaurant Review Albany Park 19 Lit Chooseyourownadventure examines modernday 39 Marketplace CR M TP has a new Yemeni restaurant from a parody Build Your Own Christmas immunotherapy hero Jim Allison S A R B G L M - veteran Yemeni restaurateur Movie Romance features the best H L S tropes of madeforTV specials C S M W R MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE O I P ARTS & CULTURE 20 Dance Bangarra Dance Theatre 26 Feature Life was just a party J F J ’ N A 15 Listings The fi rst Latina to rekindles Aboriginal heritage Prince’s and Chicago house V M G - - - create write and star in a network music J L SB ------D C [email protected] -- A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER STM READER LLC B P D R L AS YOU MAY have heard this week, the Read- A new nonprofit, the Reader Institute for going monthly commitment at chicagoreader. T E R S J S er, the city’s alt-weekly founded in 1971, will Community Journalism, will be launched in com/donate? A- S V be moving to a nonprofi t model in 2020. The January and purchase the Reader from Elzie The board of the Reader Institute for C C E B nation’s fi rst free weekly newspaper joins doz- Higginbottom and Leonard Goodman, the two Community Journalism will include a mix of ------ens of newsrooms around the country in pur- owners who saved the newspaper in 2018. former and new Reader board members, and R ISSN- suing nonprofi t status as a stabilizing force for Both owners have given extensive support to the company’s leadership will remain in place, STMR LLC SM SC IL the future of the industry. the Reader and have committed to continue including myself and editors in chief Karen -- We couldn’t be more excited about this next their support into 2020. Hawkins and Sujay Kumar. C ©C R phase of the Reader’s history, and we want to Even with their backing, even with our This new model will help the Reader contin- P C IL thank all of you who have gotten us this far. belief in the promise of this path forward, we ue its literary and award-winning journalism A C R R We couldn’t have done it without you. still need you along on this journey with us. by opening up more revenue opportunities. RR T ® We have always been free in print and on- The transition to nonprofi t comes with a lot The Reader has been swift to criticize those line, and we want to remain that way. Commu- of onetime legal and accounting costs, so we who put profi t above public good. Becoming a nity-backed journalism is one way we remain are reaching out to you for your support. Can nonprofi t brings the paper fully in line with its independent, stable, and accessible to all. you help with a onetime contribution or an on- values. —T B 2 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll CITY LIFE EvanstonWhen A Great Deal Subaru Matters, Shop Robin Paddor’s...Skokie Voted “Best Auto DeAlership” By CHICAGO Voters’ Poll 2019 PROJECT 2020 OUTBACK HERO ALL-NEW CHICAGO DESIGN C.A.R.E.
, Subaru of America will donate $250 to IMPROVED RIDE & COMFORT one of six charities with any new Subaru w/Subaru DriverFocus™ purchase now through January 2nd Distraction Mitigation System 2020 SUBARU FORESTER ALL WHEEL DRIVE % GIANT SELECTION 2.99
sightseeing ed at tourists from Germany, noted that visi- 2020 SUBARU ASCENT tors might get by in Chicago speaking only 7OR 8 A trip back in German. Nonwhites might not face the same PASSENGERS % rigid segregation as in the American south, time to the World’s but private businesses such as hotels and LOADED WITH TECHNOLOGY 0.9 restaurants could find excuses to turn cus- Columbian Exposition tomers away. “No sensible white person feels NEW 2020 SUBARU NEW 2019 SUBARU NEW 2020 SUBARU Travel tips for Chicago from 1893 aggrieved when he rides from Van Buren OUTBACK CROSSTREK 2.0i LEGACY (yes, you should tip your servers). street to the Fair grounds . . . on a seat shared 2.99% 2.99% by a decent colored person,” explained one 2.99% * Chicago newspaper in an editorial against a 2020 2020 n November 1893, the journalist Kate Field vaudeville theater that had required Blacks asked what should be done with the build- to sit in a “colored gallery,” which cost three $ PER * $ PER * $ PER * times more than general admission. In her NEW MONTH MONTH NEW MONTH Iings of the World’s Columbian Exposition, DESIGN DESIGN the great majority of which were built as tem- autobiography, Ida B. Wells recalled going to 49 7 9 AUTOMATIC,18 Back-up9 Camera Eye- 1 1 All-Wheel-Drive, , HD Radio, USB AUTOMATIC, Back-up Camera porary structures. “Apply the torch and let it lunch with Frederick Douglass near the close Sight, All-Wheel-Drive Bluetooth, Back-up Camera EyeSight, All-Wheel-Drive NO SECURITY DEPOSIT! 36 month lease. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT! 36 month lease. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT! 36 month lease. go down in a day,” was one reply. Field felt a of the fair. She brought up a nice restaurant $2,995 due at signing. LDB-01 #0292 $2,995 due at signing. KRA-01 #6234 $2,995 due at signing. LAB-01 #3275 twinge of sadness for the millions who hadn’t across the street, one that didn’t serve Blacks. S had the chance to see with their own eyes Douglass grasped her arm and said, “Come, TOP-QUALITY INSPECTED USED CARS & SUV’ “the greatest achievement of the nineteenth let’s go there.” The waiters at the Boston Oys- IMPORTS & DOMESTICS SUBARU FORESTERS / OUTBACKS ‘16 Audi Q3 2.0T AWD Prestige/Navi...Leather, Sunroof, Black, 22181A ....$20,995 ‘18 Outback Ltd...... Auto., Leather, Sunroof, Alloys, Red, P6419 ....$23,995 century.” ter House seemed “paralyzed.” The owner ‘17 Honda CR-V LX AWD ...... Automatic, Full Power, White, 22898A ....$19,995 ‘18 Outback Prem...... Auto., Alloys, Eyesight, Grey, P6418 ....$22,995 If you could go back in time to see the of the restaurant recognized Douglass and ‘16 Toyota RAV-4 LE AWD ...... Automatic, Full Power, Black, P6380 ....$18,995 ‘17 Outback 2.5i ...... Auto., Alloys, Heated Seats, Silver, P6422 ....$21,995 World’s Columbian Exposition, how would greeted him warmly. This was enough to get ‘15 Acura RDX Tech/Navi...... Leather, Sunroof, Kona Coffee, 23315A ....$17,995 ‘17 Forester Prem...... Auto., Sunroof, Heated Seats, Black, P6397 ....$20,995 ‘16 Forester Touring ...... Auto., Sunroof, Leather, Grey, 23151A ....$19,995 you prepare for life in Chicago? Here are some service. ‘16 Honda Civic EX...... Automatic, Full Power, Black, P6378 ....$15,995 ‘18 Toyota Corolla LE...... Automatic, Full Power, Grey, P6288 ....$13,995 ‘18 Forester 2.5i ...... Automatic, Full Power, Silver, P6374 ....$19,795 suggestions drawn from travel guidebooks for ‘12 Acura TL Tech...... Automatic, Leather, 57K, Graphite, 22577A ....$12,995 ‘16 Forester Ltd...... Auto., Sunroof, Leather, 26K, Red, P6414 ....$18,995 Chicago and from advice printed in newspa- Dress practically ‘10 Toyota Prius II...... Automatic, Full Power, Only 31K, Red, 23259A ....$11,995 ‘14 Outback Prem...... Auto., Alloys, Eyesight, Silver, P4891 ....$15,995 pers from around the world. If you want to go back to 1893 to escape slobs ‘14 Toyota Camry LE ...... Automatic, Full Power, Black, 23397A ....$10,995 SUBARU CROSSTREK / IMPREZA wearing shorts, you should know that there ‘13 Honda Civic LX...... Automatic, Full Power, Black, 23297A ....$10,995 ‘16 Crosstrek Prem...... Automatic, Heated Seats, White, 23030A ....$18,995 ‘09 Honda CR-V LX AWD ...... Automatic, Full Power, Blue, 23175A ...... $7,995 ‘14 Impreza 2.0i ...... Automatic, Full Power, Red, 23341A ....$12,995 Brace yourself for a more homogenous city were limits to style in 1893. “There is nothing According to the 1890 census, Chicago was more disagreeable than the dude at the fair. A+ 98.6 percent white. (For contrast, according He is entirely alone in his glory, for nobody RATED to 2018 census figures, Chicago is current- who has any brains at all dresses up for tramp- 847-869-5700 ly 32.7 percent white.) The English-German ing around in the dust with a crowd of at least 3340 OAKTON - SKOKIE • EVANSTONSUBARU.COM *Add tax, title license and $179.81 doc fee. **Finance on approved credit score Subject to vehicle insurance and availability. Guide of the City of Chicago and the World’s 100,000 people,” the Washington Star noted. *Lease on approved credit score. Lease, 10k miles per year, 15 cents after. Lessee responsible for excess wear and early termination of Columbian Exposition, a guidebook target- A correspondent from the Pall Mall J lease. End of lease purchase option; Outback $17,806. Legacy $14,178, Crosstrek $15,094. Ends 12/02/2019 ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 3 MOBILIZE CITY LIFE A series of political engagement events as curated by continued from 3 (“intended for those who desire to eat well Gazette told its London readers to bring and pay well for it”) and the Great Northern galoshes. The English-German Guide con- Café (“without equal in Chicago in the lux- Indivisble IL9 Weekly MLK Kickoff Lighting Women in Green curred: Chicago streets “are dirty to an extent ury of its appointments”). For dessert, there Roundtable Event at Cole Park Building Leadership incomprehensible to Europeans.” Street fash- was Gunther’s, a “palace of sweets” on State November 21 December 1 Luncheon ion in this part of America, the guidebook Street. “The interior is Venetian, the tints rich 12pm-1pm 1pm – 6 pm December 4 maintained, was sehr einfach: very simple. cream-color and gold,” raved Rand McNally. Nat King Cole Park Democratic Party Office - 11am – 1:30pm “Jewelry and loud clothing ought to be avoid- Chicago also had restaurants that served 361 E. 85th St. (85th King Holiday Inn Mart Plaza Edgewater ed, the attention of dangerous characters women exclusively. Rand McNally suggest- Dr.) 350 W. Mart Center Dr. 5539 N. Broadway Ave. being attracted by them.” ed Mrs. Clark Co. Lunch Room, “which, owing to the excellent quality of the food, the good School House on the MPC Roundtable Sunrise Movement Have a fl exible budget service, and the reasonable rates, has become Rocks Toward Universal Chicago- December When the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition a favorite with Chicago women.” November 21 Mobility: Charting Hub Meeting fi rst opened, visitors complained about price 5:15pm – 7:30pm a Path to Improve December 4 gouging. “From one end of the land to the What to see Merchandise Mart Plaza Transportation 6pm – 7:30pm other a protest has arisen against the thieves, Not everyone who visited Chicago in 1893 222 W. Merchandise Mart Accessibilty Chinatown Library Plaza, 1871 Auditorium December 3 2100 S Wentworth Ave. brigands, robbers, and pickpockets who pose cared for the place. “You know the proverb: 12:30pm – 1:30pm as waiters, stall keepers, refreshment contrac- ‘Scratch a Chicago man, you fi nd a Red Indi- Rally on Human Union League Club of Moms Demand tors, hotel proprietors, and railway directors,” an,’” wrote Regnold Reid, an upper-class Rights: Democracy Chicago Action - Chicago NW wrote a correspondent for the Otago Wit- jagoff from Cupar, Scotland. Chicago “is the and Community 65 W Jackson Blvd. - December Social ness, a New Zealand paper. last place I should choose in America to live Control of Police Gathering Though costs decreased over the sum- in.” Even as he decried Chicago as an unfi n- November 22 The Virtual Wall: December 5 mer, it was still easy to blow a fortune at the ished, uncivilized place, Regnold was wowed 7pm – 9pm How the Trump 6:30pm – 9:30pm Columbian Exposition itself. The Santa Fe by the Auditorium Theatre. CTU Center Adminstration Built a Old Irving Brewing Co. Daily New Mexican reported one visitor’s If you’re using a time machine to visit Chi- 1901 W. Caroll St. Wall with Regulations 4419 W. Montrose Ave. deluxe day trip. Paying to be wheeled around cago in 1893, you’ll probably want to skip the and Outsourcing the fairgrounds in rolling chairs and to navi- Auditorium and head to one of many Chica- 13th annual “Feed a December 3 Chicago Climate gate lagoon waters in gondolas, the traveler go’s great lost buildings. With its massive sky- Teen” Thanksgiving 7pm – 9pm Strike “bought catalogues and guidebooks, saw all light and gorgeous mosaics, the Burnham & December 6 Dinner KAM Isaiah Israel the wonders of the Midway Pleasance [sic], Root-designed Masonic Temple at Randolph November 23 11am – 1pm 1100 E. Hyde Park Blvd. had lunch and dinner at the swell cafes and 1pm – 5pm Crown Fountain, and State stood, as Rand McNally exclaimed, Kids Off the Block, Inc. Millennium Park brought innumerable souvenirs.” He shelled “an object of pride to every Chicagoan and a Black Lives Matter & out $30 for the day—a total that when adjust- thing of wondering admiration to the visitor 11623 S Michigan Ave. Beauty Bar 201 E. Randolph St. (between Michigan Ave. and ed for infl ation is about $855. within our gates.” The Wagga Wagga Adver- Constellations not Disciplined time-traveling tourists should tiser, an Australian paper, enthused that its ILVOTE-Chicago Voter Cops: Astrology & Columbus Ave.) Registrar Training be able to get by in Chicago on a reasonable notoriously fast express elevators gave the Trivia to benefit BLM budget. In addition to the hotels charging $6 sensation as “if all the breath were being driv- November 29 December 9 3pm – 4pm 7pm – 10pm to $10 a day for palatial rooms, there were en out of your body.” Board of Elections Beauty Bar Chicago also “cheap (not necessarily also nasty) 50 While Regnold Reid thought that the Chi- Commissioners, 1444 W. Chicago Ave. cent or $1” accommodations, according to cago fire was a godsend for destroying the City of Chicago Rand McNally’s Pocket Guide to Chicago. The “wooden slums” of Chicago, other tourists 69 W. Washington St. St. Louis Globe-Democrat estimated that fru- in 1893 wanted to see the rough side of the gal travelers might get by on $2 a day, though city. The Pocket Guide to Chicago off ers tips it was possible to live comfortably in Chica- for going slumming. Rand McNally describes For more information of listed events please visit persistlist.org go for $3 a day. The English-German Guide the rabble who haunt some of the beer halls claimed that “tipping the employés of restau- of the west side as “longhaired, of alien birth, M I L I Z sponsored by rants or hotels, one of the nuisances of Euro- entirely innocent of honest work or any kind OB E pean countries, does not exist in Chicago.” of bathing.” For “wine, women, and song,” GREEN Rand McNally suggests Engel’s Pavilion, on e l e m e n t Where to eat Clark near Division, “where for the sum of 25 RESALE The Scranton Republican reported that visi- cents or so the visitor can hear comic songs www.big-medicine.org tors might buy a “very nice” lunch consisting amid libations and smoke.” of two ham sandwiches, a pickle, and a slice If, somehow, you do fi nd yourself at Engel’s of cake and pie outside the fairgrounds for Pavilion in 1893, you should pass on the advice 25 cents. On the other end of the scale, Rand given by the English-German Guide. No mat- McNally’s Bird’s Eye Views and Guide to Chi- ter what year it is, always tip your servers. cago recommended the Auditorium Café —J N 4 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll NEWS & POLITICS
Any investigation into Madigan and Foxx is a coup! COURTESY GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND POLITICS STATE’S ATTORNEY’S OFFICE The Republican way Imagine covering Madigan and Foxx the way Republican-run media cover Trump. By B J
s a long-standing liberal reformer, I Like I was, I don’t know, a Republican writer should be outraged by the ongoing for a Republican newspaper. We’ve got one in federal corruption probe that’s en- town. So I have a model or two to emulate. circled key members of my beloved As you probably know, the new standard for Democratic Party. Republican coverage of Trump is that there is AThe probe includes, but is not limited to, Il- no standard. Anything goes. linois house speaker Michael Madigan, former I’m not just talking about abuse of power, state representative Luis Arroyo, state senator with Trump shaking down the Ukrainian Marty Sandoval, Alderman Ed Burke, Alder- president. woman Carrie Austin, etc. Or theft: Trump just pleaded guilty to mis- I should write a few hundred words of using about $2 million from his charity—the righteous indignation, maybe call it the Chi- Donald J. Trump Foundation. Trump took cago Way. And quote someone saying “only in donations from suckers dumb enough to think Chicago.” And connect it to tales of sordidness he’d spend it on helping veterans and used it going back to the days of Boss Daley. to pay o business debts and buy a portrait of But instead I’m going to try something himself for one of his hotels. di erent. I’m going to cover Democratic scan- Barely a word from Republicans about this. dals as though I were a Republican covering What’s the matter, cat got your tongue? Trump’s scandals. And it’s not just corruption. Apparently, J ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 5 AMERICAN SCIENCE & SURPLUS NEWS & POLITICS
Receive 50% OFF continued from 5 bring her down. the Republican Party now sanctions sexual Have any of them been in contact with the OverOver 5050 IncredibleIncredible Gifts!Gifts! assault. In the last couple of years, at least 17 investigators looking into Smollettgate? women have accused Trump of everything If so, let’s see their phone records and from rape to sexual harassment. e-mails. I’ll encourage Foxx to stonewall in- Plus 10% OFF Everything Else Storewide That sound you hear from the Moral Major- vestigators by refusing to comply with their This weekend only! ity is silence. subpoenas and ordering her underlings not to Classic Rotary Phone Anyway, I figure—if it’s good enough for testify. Just like Trump is doing with his White Alarm Clock Lamp Trumpsters, it’s good enough for me. So let’s House aides. $9.75 $19.50 Rick and Morty see what happens when I cover Democratic Let’s see what happens if Foxx plays hard- Spaceship Set corruption the Republican way. ball like Trump. If she does, I’ll just keep my $7.25 $14.50 I will make an exception for Alderman Ed mouth shut about it. Pretend it’s not going on. Burke. I figure he gets what he deserves be- Instead, I’ll make up stuff about Sheila cause he was Trump’s property tax lawyer. As O’Brien, the former judge who pushed for an for the others . . . investigation into Foxx. That’s what a Republi- I’ll attack the accusers and defend the ac- can would do if the roles were reversed. Wacky Reindeer-Blinding cused. I’ll call it a coup. I’ll talk the way Repub- I’ll throw stu against the wall and see what Contraptions Kit Tactical Flashlight licans talk about Adam Schi and Nancy Pelosi sticks. For instance, when the feds leak tape $19.98 $39.95 $10.97 $21.95 and other congressional Democrats who lead of Luis Arroyo allegedly taking a bribe from a the impeachment inquiry. state senator, I’ll want to know who gave the Geneva/West Chicago store: Chicago store: I’ll say they’re trying to accomplish through feds the right to tape Arroyo’s private conver- 33W361 Rt. 38/Roosevelt Rd. 5316 N. Milwaukee Ave. federal investigators what they couldn’t do at sations. What secret underground tribunal Geneva, IL 60185 Chicago, IL 60630 the ballot box—beat Michael Madigan. run by Stalin-like operatives convened to 630-232-2882 773-763-0313 I’ll ignore the mountain of evidence that snatch away Arroyo’s constitutional rights? Not valid with other offers. Expires 11/24/19. In store only. powerful Democrats were swapping this I’ll say we should subpoena the federal for that. Just the way the Republicans have investigators who are subpoenaing the Demo- ignored the mountain of evidence against crats. What secrets are they hiding? Trump. I’ll close by repeating myself—repetition is Instead, I’ll change the subject. I’ll say—let’s the key. As the Republicans have demonstrat- investigate the investigators. Who are those ed. And so . . . federal agents—members of the Deep State— This investigation into Madigan and the who have launched this unwarranted attack Democrats is a coup. A witch hunt. A hoax. The against Madigan? worst abomination of justice in the history of And what are their connections to the Re- the world. As bad as McCarthyism. No, worse. publicans? Any Republicans, at any time. I’ll call it an attempt by Republicans to do Have they donated to Republican cam- by secret federal investigation what they paigns? No? Well, then do they have wives or couldn’t do at the polls: beat Madigan’s alder- husbands or children or uncles or aunts who men or state reps. have donated to past Republican campaigns? I’ll say they can’t beat the Democrats at the And even if they don’t, I’ll keep asking the county or state level. They can’t even beat questions as though they have. You repeat a lie them in DuPage County. So they turned to the enough, and someone will believe it’s true. Deep State to undo our democratically sanc- I’ll publish the names of investigators and tioned elections. whistle-blowers so my followers can intim- I’ll offer Republicans a challenge. Hey, idate them with threatening e-mails and Republicans, you want to get rid of Michael tweets. Madigan? Here’s what you do: Go to the polls I’ll mock the investigators and whis- and vote. That’s how we do things here. tle-blowers with insulting nicknames. I’ll dis- I’ll say until you beat Madigan where it parage them on a daily basis. When they hold counts, stop crying like the little Republican press conferences, I’ll encourage Madigan to babies that you are. issue nasty tweets about the prosecutors. Oh, yeah, it’s fun writing a column like a When the Republicans call that witness Trump-loving Republican. Easy, too. It’s like tampering, I’ll say innocent people have noth- playing tennis without a net or out-of-bounds ing to hide. lines. Why stop with Madigan? Let’s throw Cook You can whack the ball all over the place and County state’s attorney Kim Foxx into the mix. still pretend you’ve scored a point. v Wouldn’t that be fun? On any given day there must be at least four Tribune writers trying to @joravben 6 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll fi led a new petition on his behalf. A November date was set for Cook County judge Dennis J. Porter—the same judge who’d presided over Myles’s original trial in 1992—to fi nally rule on whether to grant him his new hearing. Crowder had learned her fi ance’s case back to front, and she was confi dent they would soon start their life together at home. “According to everything that I see, the only decision that [the judge] can make is either ‘Come home,’ or even if he does continue to start the hearing, they should release him be- cause he was wrongfully sentenced,” she says of her mind-set before last year’s hearing. “So everything said come home to me.” Crowder and Myles’s sister, Sharon Myles-Stephens, made the three-hour trek from Peoria, where they live, to Chicago’s criminal courthouse for the ruling. But noth- ing happened. Porter pushed back his decision again, to December 17. When Crowder re- turned to Chicago in December, Porter delayed the case again. Feeling discouraged, Crowder no longer planned to make Christmas dinner. But Myles encouraged her to cook anyway. So she did, hoping maybe she could thaw the food for Myles in January. Instead, on January 8, Judge Porter delayed the ruling a third time. The following month, Myles was brought into the courtroom in handcuffs; Crowder sat in the audience. But Myles says he knew something was wrong: Porter wouldn’t look him in the eye. In a brief announcement, Porter said that he was deny- ing Myles’s petition for a hearing on his inno- cence claim. He also ruled that there would be PAULA JACKSON no changes to Myles’s sentence. The decision was just one of the many cooking, even though it’s been nearly seven rulings that make up Porter’s regular work- CRIMINAL JUSTICE years since they became engaged. Throughout day as a judge, a job he’s had for 31 years. their relationship—and for 20 years before But for Myles and Crowder the moment was that—he’s been incarcerated, serving time earth-shattering. “You know what the worst for a murder he claims he didn’t commit. He part was?” Myles says of that day. “Coming ‘The big house and says Chicago Police Department detectives— back from the county jail on the highway, com- including a notorious now-retired cop who ing back here, sitting down thinking, and then racked up dozens of complaints and helped reading that order by the judge and saying, ‘I the picket fence’ cover up the Laquan McDonald shooting—co- can’t believe he did this.’ And looking over to Tonya Crowder still dreams that she and her fi ance, Roosevelt erced witnesses into testifying against him. my left I see Tonya in the car passing us. I’m Myles—who’s been in prison for decades fi ghting what he says The Illinois Appellate Court has already supposed to be in that car. So my heart just is a wrongful conviction—will one day build a life together ruled that Myles deserves a new hearing. But broke straight o¢ with her.” somewhere “nice, quiet, and simple.” that was back in 2000. Since then his case has Myles and Crowder talked on the phone languished on the desk of public defenders, every chance they had. She visited him once By M C and the judge and prosecutor have failed to a week; they got into passionate debates but move it along. Even in a painfully slow court rarely fought. He did his best, from prison, to system, that kind of delay is unheard of. act like a father to her children. She knew his onya Crowder is a good cook, and So she drew up a menu: greens, chicken and By fall 2018, though, 53-year-old Crowder case better than anyone in his family. She had last Christmas was extra special. dressing, macaroni and cheese, sweet pota- had reason to believe that Myles might be a wedding dress picked out. Still, the blow of She expected to have her fi ance, toes, pie, caramel cake. home for Christmas. She’d helped Myles get having his petition denied almost broke them Roosevelt Myles, join her at home But Myles never got to eat it. In fact, he still pro bono representation from Jennifer Bon- up. “Without us believing in the Lord and our T for the holiday for the fi rst time. hasn’t had a chance to taste any of Crowder’s jean, a successful civil rights lawyer who’d strength and our love for one another, we J ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 7 continued from 7 tenance custodian worker contracted with cording to a police report completed two days attorney’s o¢ ce charged him with attempted probably would’ve been separated,” Myles the army reserve, later as a tree surgeon for later, Morris fi rst repeated her original story, robbery and murder. says. the Chicago Park District and in the computer then began to cry and said that she did indeed Over the next four years, while Myles Today, Crowder and Myles remain together, room for Helene Curtis, then the maker of know the shooter, and that it was Myles, but awaited trial in the Cook County Jail, Morris making their relationship work as well as they Suave shampoo. He graduated high school she had been too afraid to tell the truth. She once again changed her statement. In 1993, can. His fi ght to prove his innocence is far from and spent some time at Malcolm X College and said that she had been mistaken about seeing investigators for the public defender’s o¢ ce over: last month, Bonjean fi led a brief appeal- DeVry University, studying computer science a second man under the porch. obtained a written statement from Morris that ing Porter’s decision. “I’ve never been more and prelaw, but he couldn’t afford to stay That evening, Wojcik and another officer Myles was not the shooter, and that she had confi dent in a reversal,” she told me in a phone enrolled. arrested Myles and drove him to the Area 5 Vi- consistently told police—and her mother, who interview. In the meantime, with all the credit Soon Myles tried his luck selling marijuana olent Crimes Unit, headquarters for detectives verified this account—that the shooter was that he’s accrued for good behavior, Myles and PCP. “That was the beginning of an era tasked with solving crimes on the city’s west light-skinned (Myles is dark-skinned). She could fi nish his sentence early next year. that I never want to go back to,” he says. His side. In 2012, Area 5 was closed as a cost con- said she had only named him because police “I don’t know what’s at the end of the rain- time on the streets led to arrests on drug solidation measure, and in recent years, Rey- kept coming to her house and bothering her bow. It started off so sweet. It’s just been a charges and a three-year prison stint. Still, he naldo Guevara, one of the o¢ cers who worked about whether Myles was the shooter. long process,” Crowder says. “But at the end, it remained close to his family. “He kept me com- out of Area 5 in the 90s, has been exposed as At fi rst, Myles didn’t understand why he was could be so sweet. And I don’t want to miss my pany because my husband was a road driver,” having framed at least 51 men for crimes they being fi ngered for the murder, and had a hard miracle. I don’t want to quit before the miracle recalls his sister Patricia Milsap. “He’d come didn’t commit. But at the time the station was time getting information from his lawyer. As happens.” spend time with me and my kids and have fun.” in full operation, its reputation untainted. he learned about his case, it was hard to come By his late 20s, Myles’s life was “spiraling to terms with the amount of prison time he ’ve corresponded with Myles regularly on down,” he says. “Every step I’d take forward, faced if convicted. But once he explained the the phone and through a special prison two would go backwards.” He was in a seri- details of his case—including the fl ip-fl opping Ie-mail service since last spring. It’s not ous relationship, but knew he wasn’t settled “I don’t know what’s witness—to his fellow jail inmates, they began always easy to connect—the prison phone sys- enough for children yet. After getting out of at the end of the to believe in his innocence, and he no longer tem limits calls to 30 minutes, and if I miss the prison, he moved to Peoria, where Myles-Ste- had to worry about beatings from members call there’s no way for me to call back. But over phens lived. One morning when he went to the rainbow. It started of the gang that Brandon, the victim, had time, I’ve learned a lot about Myles’s life and store, he was ambushed by robbers, who took off so sweet. It’s just belonged to. Fellow inmates in the law library what it takes for him and Crowder to main- his ring, watch, and chain and shot him in the showed him how to do legal research on his tain a relationship despite the barriers posed leg. When his mother found out, she insisted been a long process. case. He learned to type and started studying by incarceration and the emotional toll of he return to Chicago, and he came back to live But at the end, it the law on his own. fi ghting a conviction. Over the summer, I was on the west side. But he couldn’t control the behavior of the approved to visit Myles, and allowed to bring a On the evening of November 16, 1992, at the could be so sweet. state’s star witness. In 1996, when she took the recorder and notebook in to sit with him for as age of 32, Myles left home to hang out at the And I don’t want to stand at Myles’s jury trial, Morris fl ipped once long as I wanted in a small windowless room in Dragon’s Den Motorcycle Club. “That was the miss my miracle.” more. This time she again identifi ed Myles as the prison. Afterward, I visited Crowder at her last day I was in the world,” he says. the shooter, and said she’d only changed her home in Peoria. Around 2 AM, 16-year-old Shaharian Bran- —Tonya Crowder story because she was afraid of him. Myles has white hair and a white, well- don, a sophomore at Near North High School There are other witnesses that might have trimmed beard—he says Crowder once accu- and an All-American athlete, and 15-year-old effectively countered Morris’s story, Myles rately described him as a “gentle teddy bear.” Octavius Morris left Morris’s house near says. Three men—Michael Hooker, Derrick The 59-year-old speaks slowly and passion- Washington and Cicero, not far from where And back then, Myles wasn’t especially wary Floyd, and Hubert Floyd—were with him at his ately and can at times get downright poetic Myles’s parents lived, to get something to eat. of the police. Growing up, he’d participated in friend’s house when the shooting happened, in describing his experience. (Tonya, he says, According to what Morris later told police, a the youth “police explorer” program; he had and could have testified on his behalf. But “was my legs when I couldn’t hold myself up. man crawled out from under her front porch, a friend who was a detective. “The people I Myles’s public defender didn’t put any of them She was my voice when I couldn’t be heard.”) yelled “This is a stickup!,” and pulled out a thought would protect me were against me on the stand, for reasons that are still unclear. Roosevelt Myles Jr. was born on the west gun, as another man hid under the porch be- that night,” he says. The jury found Morris’s testimony convinc- side of Chicago, in West Garfield Park, in hind him. The man with the gun shot Brandon, Myles says he was taken to an interview ing, and convicted Myles of attempted armed 1960, when the neighborhood was awash with hitting him twice in the upper chest and killing room in Area 5 on the second fl oor and hand- robbery and murder. He was sentenced to 60 manufacturing jobs. His mother was a cook; him. Morris ran away, hearing more shots ring cu¥ ed to a ring on the wall. Detective Wocjik years in prison, 50 for murder and 10 for the his father worked as a butcher, bricklayer, out. Later, she returned to the scene. interrogated Myles about Brandon’s murder. attempted armed robbery. and insurance salesman. He was close with Myles says he heard the shots when he was Wojcik began beating him with a phonebook his sister Sharon, barely a year older and the leaving his friend’s house blocks away, where and flashlight, Myles says. For 36 hours he tuck inside Stateville Correctional “smart one.” He also spent time with his three he’d been hanging out after leaving the club. was kept in the same room, facing intermit- Center, Myles decided to turn his life half-siblings. In the summers, Myles visited He passed by the crime scene on his way to tent beatings from Wojcik and other o¢ cers Saround. In 1997, he became a Hebrew his grandparents in the south or stayed in Chi- buy cigarettes, and two police o¢ cers stopped as police attempted to get him to confess. He Israelite and quit smoking and drugs. He took cago doing odd jobs in the neighborhood. him and brought him over to their squad cars, refused. The following day, police placed him advantage of every certifi cation opportunity “He was funny and liked to make people where Morris was waiting. Morris said that in a lineup and invited Octavius Morris to available to him from behind bars, including a laugh, and very protective of me,” Sharon Myles was not the shooter. The police released identify the shooter; she picked Myles. paralegal certifi cation course. In his 27 years Myles-Stephens recalls of her brother. “In the him. Finally, on December 9, Myles was trans- of incarceration, he’s become certifi ed in roles neighborhood, he would go around helping all On December 7, three detectives, including ferred to Cook County Jail, where for the fi rst from hazardous waste removal professional to the old people.” Anthony Wojcik, visited Morris at her house time in the 48 hours since his arrest he was apprentice baker, and he’s completed a variety Myles started working at 16, fi rst as a main- to interview her about the crime again. Ac- given food and access to a phone. The state’s of courses, from Healthy Thinking to Keys to 8 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll Personal and Professional Success. cleared. Instead, however, as Melissa Segura had been at, was now dead. The two other weeks, he was transferred to his current home The Illinois Appellate Court upheld Myles’s chronicled for BuzzFeed News in 2017, two witnesses, Hubert and Derrick Floyd, could in the medium-security Illinois River Correc- conviction on appeal. But he still had an ave- decades would pass without an evidentiary not be found. Then, in 2017, Walker died, and tional Center, near the tiny town of Canton, nue to try to prove his innocence. In Illinois, hearing. After the successful appellate deci- the case was transferred to yet another public just a 30-minute drive from Peoria. inmates can file postconviction petitions, sion, Myles was assigned to a public defender defender. At Illinois River, Myles works in a bakery, which allow them to argue that the conviction who was supposed to fi le his next petition, but In the meantime, Myles did his own work making bread and sweets for prisons across violated their constitutional rights. These are as the years went by she didn’t do anything on the case from prison. He wrote letters to the state. For a long time, this meant 12-hour usually fi led from prison, without an attorney. for his case. In an interview with Segura, the agencies and elected o cials, from the Cook days, fi ve days a week, starting at 4 AM. At Illi- In 1999, Myles fi led a postconviction petition public defender, Marienne Branch, admitted County Board president to the mayor to the nois River, he’s tight with the prison sta , who alleging, among other things, that his lawyer that personal issues kept her from devoting governor to the Department of Justice, and support his fi ght to prove his innocence. When had been ine ective when he failed to call the time to her client’s case, and said that the to organizations providing legal represen- we met this summer to talk in the small room, three alibi witnesses to the stand at trial. His public defender postconviction unit was full tation for the wrongfully convicted (none several sta members stopped by to tap on the trial judge, Dennis J. Porter, denied the peti- of burned-out lawyers who didn’t take assign- responded). He fi led Freedom of Information glass and wave hello or goodbye. tion, and Myles appealed. ments seriously. Act request after Freedom of Information Then, on December 29, 2000, the Illinois In 2011—11 years after the appellate court Act request for details on the police officers eanwhile, in 2012, Peoria native Appellate Court reversed Porter and ruled decision—another public defender took over involved in his case, his name filling up the Tonya Crowder needed knee sur- that Myles’s petition had merit. “We con- the case. This lawyer, Jeffrey Walker, prom- record request logs. Mgery. Her nurse at the doctor’s o ce clude that petitioner has presented the gist ised Myles that he was working hard on the After two and a half years in Stateville, was Sharon Myles-Stephens, Roosevelt’s sis- of a meritorious claim of a constitutional case, but, overworked, he had little time for Myles was transferred to Menard Correctional ter. Myles-Stephens and Crowder would talk violation,” the opinion read, “and that he is it. With the help of an investigator, he did suc- Center, far downstate on the banks of the Mis- when she came in, and Crowder was candid entitled to an evidentiary hearing.” The ruling cessfully get Michael Hooker, one of the men sissippi. In 2006, his supervisor at his tailor about her past. “She was very humble about meant that Myles would now be appointed a who’d been with Myles at the time of the mur- job became warden, and Myles, who got along where she’d been and very strong about where lawyer to help him file another petition and der, to sign an a davit saying he’d seen Myles well with the prison sta , asked if he could be she was going,” Myles-Stephens recalls. She present evidence that his conviction should be exit their friend’s house right after the shots transferred to a prison near Peoria to be closer sensed that Crowder might be a good match overturned. were fired elsewhere. The delay had already to family. His sister Sharon had lived there for Myles, so she asked for Crowder’s number This was a huge victory for Myles, and hurt the case, though: Walker learned that since college, and his parents had recently on behalf of her brother, telling her he was seemed to suggest he could soon see his name Ronnie Bracey, the friend whose house Myles moved there too, after retiring. Within two a “good guy who had been put in a bad J
ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 9 continued from 9 had about life and things that we have been position.” through,” Myles says. “I said, ‘Wow, we can “So I was like, ‘Where’s he at? That you’re share each other’s thoughts for the rest of our doing all the talking?’ And she was like, ‘Well, lives.’” he’s incarcerated.’ And I was like, ‘Oh Lord, not After that, Crowder made weekly visits to that,’” says Crowder. But then Myles-Stephens see Myles. They just clicked. They’d dealt with explained that her brother had been insisting similar health problems; they’d both over- on his innocence since he’d first arrived in come struggles with addiction; they seemed to prison. “I was like, ‘Well, I guess it’s just a let- just get each other. They also had interests in ter.’ And I gave her my address.” common, like sports and cooking. Myles wrote to Crowder soon after, in Au- “Sometimes I’d write to her about some- gust 2012. Myles says he was just looking for thing, and the next day I’d get a letter in the
a new friend to correspond with. He’d had ro- mail and she wrote about the same thing,” PAULA JACKSON mantic relationships with women from within Myles says. “So our thoughts cross in the air, prison before, but says his partners weren’t and it’s scary, but it’s good.” daughter. He treats me like nothing but his hours. During that time, which is confined honest with him and those relationships Myles loves that Crowder is smart, outspo- daughter. I can talk to him about anything. My to the brightly painted visiting room, where didn’t feel sustainable. ken, and stubborn—he calls her a “mule.” The biological father wasn’t ever really there, but Myles has to stay seated at an assigned table, When Crowder got his fi rst letter, she was two like to get into passionate debates, but when I met [Myles], he wanted to be there for they chat, play cards, and share a meal from still hesitant about talking to this man she they don’t argue. Crowder appreciates that me no matter what.” the prison vending machine. Over the summer, didn’t know, and she was busy—she’d just Myles doesn’t ask her for money and is family Jenise was hesitant at fi rst, but now she and a few weeks after interviewing Myles and had knee replacement surgery. So she ignored oriented. Unlike other men she’s known, he Myles are close; they talk at least twice a week Crowder in person separately, I joined them the letter. Myles didn’t want to write again if isn’t out to get something from her. He knows on the phone. “He’s very down-to-earth. Very for a visit. It was a hot, blistering day, but the Crowder wasn’t interested, but Myles-Ste- she’s a single mom, and he supports himself. honest,” she says. “You can’t ask for more. He’s air-conditioning in most of the building wasn’t phens told him to try one more time. He At first, Crowder scheduled her visits with a joy to be around.” working; perhaps because Myles is a favorite, reluctantly sent another. Three weeks later, Myles when her three kids—Jenise, Justice, On January 25, 2013—not even two months staff assigned us a table under a fan. Myles Crowder responded. They began exchanging and JaRon—were at school. But soon he asked after they’d first met in person—Myles pro- recounted his recent experience talking to letters back and forth, getting to know one to meet them, and Tonya brought them in for a posed to Crowder during a visit. He got per- investigators from the wrongful conviction TV another. In late fall, Myles started calling visit. While she was heating up food from the mission from a correctional o cer to get down show Reasonable Doubt. We ate microwave Crowder from prison. Finally, in early Decem- vending machines in the visiting room, Myles on his knees to ask for her hand, but he was too pizzas, and Crowder and Myles taught me to ber, Crowder wrote him a one-line letter stat- spoke to each child, asking if they would be OK embarrassed. (“I should’ve done it. I regret play rummy as they jokingly made fun of one ing that she would visit him that Friday. with him marrying their mom. They all gave that right now,” he says.) She said yes. Myles another. When Myles talked about being a “He got the letter like on Thursday,” him their approval. ordered a temporary ring for Crowder in the lifelong Bulls fan, Crowder shook her head and Crowder says. “And he said he was running Because of his incarceration, Myles mail, from a catalog available to inmates o¡ er- called him a “scrub for life.” around like a girl getting ready for date, trying never got the chance to have his own chil- ing jewelry at infl ated prices. Later she picked to get a haircut and a shave.” dren—“They took that from me,” he says. So out her own ring, and Myles paid her back. hen they first got together, Myles The visit went well—they had a lot to talk he’s thrown himself into being a parent to “I’ve never been married because I haven’t encouraged Crowder to learn the about. At the end, Myles walked her to the Crowder’s kids as best as he can. He calls them found anybody on this earth throughout my Wdetails of his case on her own. “He door of the visiting room, and she gave him a regularly. He’s especially close with Justice, lifetime that was marriage material,” Crowder said, ‘Don’t believe anything I say.’ He said, ‘I brief kiss. Then she surprised him by giving Crowder’s middle daughter, who is now 23. says. “And I know that I am a good one. And I can show you everything I’m talking about,’” him a second kiss before leaving. Myles was The two of them both have big foreheads, and just never had a good man. I believe Roosevelt she recalls. “You don’t have to have knowledge impressed. “He was like, ‘When you doubled so they jokingly greet each other by bumping could be that guy.” of the law. Just have common sense.” Once she up on me, I was hooked,’” Crowder says, laugh- foreheads. These days, Myles calls Crowder anytime knew the story, Crowder and her kids became ing. “I was like OK, whatever.” “We connected automatically,” Justice says. he can get to the prison phone, and Crowder warriors on Myles’s behalf. They made fl yers “I thought about the conversation that we “Everybody there really thinks that I’m his usually visits on Friday afternoons for four and T-shirts with information about Myles’s GIFT RESPONSIBLY. Lottery tickets aren’t child’s play.
10 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll case. With access to electronic communication them. And so that was the hardest thing I ever and faster mail service, Crowder helped Myles had to do in this relationship.” reach out to potential advocates and lawyers. Myles was granted permission to view his Crowder also befriended Myles’s family. She mother’s body, which helped him get some learned that her kids had actually known Myl- closure. Crowder read a poem at the funeral es-Stephens’s kids—Myles’s nephews—grow- on Myles’s behalf. A few months after Martha ing up. “Everybody just jelled,” Crowder says. died, Roosevelt Sr., who had been married to After the engagement, her family was always his wife for 55 years, fell ill with a kidney in- invited to birthday parties and holidays with fection, which landed him in the hospital, then the Myles family. a nursing home, where he caught pneumonia. “In the beginning, you know, he said that Crowder spent time with him in the hospital [his release] could be ten years, five years, and was able to get him to eat her cooking—a or in a day. And he felt like at that point that big feat, because Roosevelt Sr. usually only he had a chance at something happening wanted to eat his wife’s cooking. He died in that year. And so I guess in my mind that’s March 2017, just half a year after his wife’s all I heard,” Crowder says. “I never imagined death. I would still be sitting in the same place six The loss of both parents crushed Myles. He years later.” thinks that if he had been out of prison his Crowder still acts as a voice for Myles out- mother would’ve opened up to him about how side the prison—she was the one who reached sick she was, and that he could’ve convinced out to me to let me know about his case. But her to go to the hospital sooner. He also thinks as time went on, the initial fl urry of activity he may have been able to get the nursing home slowed. “When you keep trying and trying and and hospital to take better care of his dad. “I’m trying and trying and nobody seems to listen not going to say I could have prevented what or support, it gets discouraging,” she says. the Lord has planned for you,” he says. “But The years of waiting have led Myles to be some way, somehow I’d be more accepting consistently vigilant, always trying to move to her death knowing that I did all I can. And things forward. But that impulse can some- right now I can’t say that, because I’m here.” times cause tension with Crowder, since he has a tendency to constantly nag and remind n 2017 Myles and Crowder got some good her, whether it’s about something she’s work- news. Myles had read about Jennifer ing on for his case or something personal, like IBonjean, a lawyer who among many other her results from a doctor’s visit. “That’s the victories successfully helped three men over- way he’s had to live,” she says. “But I let him turn their convictions after they were framed know sometimes that just is not necessary in by notorious CPD detective Reynaldo Guevara. our relationship.” Myles wrote to her twice, but didn’t hear back. In August 2016, Myles was having a regular So he asked Crowder to give her a call and pass phone conversation with his mom, Martha, along his files. Bonjean was appalled by the joking about how his dad, Roosevelt Sr., had delay in Myles’s case. She agreed to take him brought her pancakes and sausage on a stick on as a pro bono client starting in July 2017. to eat. Two days later, Myles heard from his After so many years of negligent representa- sister that Martha was in the hospital. He talk- tion, he fi nally had a lawyer willing to fi ght for ed to her briefl y on the phone and could tell him. something was o . Martha passed away from a In June 2018, Bonjean fi led a new postcon- sepsis infection the night before Crowder was viction petition on Myles’s behalf, attaching to visit Myles. “All the way down the highway, the affidavit of witness Michael Hooker. I prayed,” Crowder says. “What am I gonna say Bonjean also argued that the original trial at- to him?” torney was negligent because he should have That day, Myles saw Crowder sitting in the presented evidence that pointed to another small room where he and I did our interview, man, Octavius Morris’s ex-boyfriend, as the rather than the regular visiting room. That perpetrator, since he had previously threat- small room is reserved for press visits or visits ened victim Shaharian Brandon. Furthermore, when there’s a death in the family. “He caught Bonjean presented a litany of evidence, much a glimpse of me. And I looked over and he was of it having emerged in the 20-plus years since like, ‘Hey, baby.’ And he stopped and his face Myles’s original trial, that Detective Anthony just went blank. And he was like, ‘My mom?’ Wojcik had engaged in a “pattern and prac- And I nodded my head yes,” Crowder recalls. tice” of abusing and framing suspects, which “And he just like fell out against the wall. Be- increases the likelihood that Wojcik might cause that was the prayer he prayed the hard- have coerced Morris to testify against Myles. est, was to be able to see his parents and help In the Invisible Institute’s Civilian Police J ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 11 continued from 11 Wojcik’s misconduct was relevant to Myles’s picket fence, to have a life someplace else, Less scrolling. Data Project, which allows users to access case. The state’s attorney’s o ce declined to nice, quiet, simple,” where they can “travel information from complaints against Chicago comment on its position in the case for this ar- and love on the grandkids.” police officers, Wojcik has 44 complaints of ticle, given that an appeal is still pending. (“I’d That dream had seemed close. Now, she misconduct, more than 92 percent of the other love to know how the state’s attorney defends was “back to having my blinders on, walking o cers included in the database. Even before objecting to a hearing when they must have one day at a time, and not trying to suppress Myles’s trial, in 1994, the Office of Profes- known how crooked Wojcik is,” Bonjean said my feelings about the situation.” She did sional Standards, at the time responsible for in an e-mail.) perk up a bit, though, when talking about the investigating police misconduct, sustained a Then Dennis J. Porter made the February color scheme she’s picked out for her wed- complaint against Wojcik for breaking into his 13 decision that devastated Myles and his ding—silver, peach, and green, chosen by her ex-girlfriend’s apartment and beating the man family. In his order granting the state’s motion daughter, Justice. Her “something borrowed” she was with. This is especially noteworthy, to dismiss Myles’s petition, Porter said that for the wedding will be her dress, which was because OPS very rarely found police o cers Wojcik’s misconduct in other cases was not previously her sister’s. “I’m just ready to wear guilty of misconduct. necessarily relevant in this case, and that the it if I’m gonna wear it,” she says. “Let’s do this, Wojcik was also a key player in the Laquan new evidence from Morris could have been man.” McDonald cover-up. In October, Mayor Lori discovered sooner. He added that Michael The wait has been tough for Myles-Ste- Lightfoot released reports from Inspector Hooker’s a davit wouldn’t have helped prove phens too. While she agreed to speak with me General Joseph Ferguson’s 2017 investiga- Myles’s innocence anyway, because Hooker for this story, she admitted that it was hard to tion, which found that Wojcik destroyed and only saw Myles exit Bracey’s house right after feel motivated to talk to a reporter after pre- rewrote police reports from the shooting and the shooting, not during it. And above all, vious attention on Myles’s case has had little “authored and approved” false statements. If Porter ruled that Myles had missed a deadline bearing on what happened in the courts. She’s Wojcik hadn’t retired in 2016, the inspector when fi ling his 1999 postconviction petition, “exhausted,” she told me. “I’m tired of getting More strumming. general would have recommended he be fi red. as a result of which the petition would be in- my hopes up and thinking this is gonna be it As it is, the report recommends Wojcik be valid even if he supported its arguments. and this is gonna be it,” she says. “I’ll just be stripped of his retirement badge and star and Bonjean believes that Porter’s decision con- glad when he gets out.” that he be removed from the Illinois Retired tains glaring errors. Among other arguments, As he waits for a ruling on his appeal, Myles Officer Concealed Carry Program. (A lawyer Bonjean’s appeal alleges that Porter got a date might have an opportunity to get out of pris- for Wojcik did not respond to phone messag- wrong in claiming that Myles’s petition was on before the appellate court even makes a es and e-mails seeking comment on Myles’s too late. And at this point in the legal proce- decision. When he was sentenced, people con- case.) dure, the petition argues, Porter was not enti- victed of murder could shave an extra day o¦ Shortly after his petition was fi led, Myles’s tled to make factual judgments about whether their sentence for every day served with good legal team managed to track down Octavius Myles could have still committed the murder behavior. (That law has since changed.) That Morris. In response to attempts to get in touch if Hooker’s a davit was true; instead, those puts Myles’s discharge date in 2022. But J.B. with her, Morris called Bonjean unexpectedly judgments must be made after the defendant Pritzker recently signed a law giving inmates and said that Myles was not the shooter and is allowed to present evidence at a hearing. who have certain kinds of work experience that she had only testifi ed against him because If Porter had allowed Myles to win a hearing, more sentencing credit. Once in e¦ ect January of pressure from Wojcik. That September, the appeal says, he would have presented evi- 1, the law applied to Myles’s case will mean Morris signed a sworn affidavit reiterating dence that he could not have had enough time that he has finished his sentence and could that information: “Not a day goes by that I to commit the murder and run back to Bracey’s soon be released. He’ll get to witness JaRon’s don’t think about how [Myles] is in prison for house because his knee was still injured from high school graduation and meet Jenise’s new a crime he did not do. The police and prose- the Peoria shooting. baby. But getting out will still require Myles to cutors were not interested in fi nding out the Bonjean, who once clashed with Porter on report to the parole board for a time, and he’ll truth about who killed my friend. This event another case, believes he has a personal inter- still have the conviction on his record. So his Give your digital has nearly ruined my life.” est in claiming that Myles is guilty, in order to fight for his exoneration will continue even life a break. Despite Myles’s alibi witnesses, the evi- avoid questions about how he allowed Myles’s after he leaves prison. dence of Wojcik’s misconduct, and the reve- case to be delayed in his courtroom for so long. For now, Myles and his family are doing Connect over lation from Morris, the Cook County State’s “The judge had an incentive, arguably, to deny their best to be a family. In June, Crowder music, dance & Attorney’s Office has continued to fight for him so he could say, ‘Listen, no harm, no foul,’” finally unfroze her Christmas cooking for a Myles’s conviction, even with progressive Kim Bonjean says. Porter did not return phone Father’s Day visit from Jenise, Justice, and more. Foxx at its head. (Originally, the Cook County messages I left in his courtroom. (Illinois judg- Jenise’s husband and children, who now live in State’s Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit es are forbidden, by Illinois Supreme Court Louisiana. They feasted and held a baby show- New group classes forming now. agreed to review his case, but when nearly six rule, from commenting on pending cases.) er for Jenise, who would soon give birth to her oldtownschool.org months went by without progress, Bonjean When I interviewed Crowder in her kitchen third child. Then on Monday after Father’s moved forward with the regular petition in Peoria this summer, shortly after my visit Day, they had a “two-table” visit with Myles, process.) with Myles, she admitted she’d been feeling meaning they got permission to use two tables The state filed a response to Myles’s pe- “angry, lonely, frustrated, resentful”—feelings in the visiting room for the whole family. It tition, claiming that Morris’s affidavit was that she had also shared with Myles—about wasn’t the Christmas dinner they’d originally not actually new information since she had how long it was taking to get to share a re- hoped for but, Myles says, “it was special.” v already denied that Myles was the shooter in lationship unimpeded by his incarceration. the past, and that not all of the evidence of She’s still dreaming of “the big house and the @maricohen95 12 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll S M H | R W. Foster - - sheebamandihouse.com FOOD & DRINK
RESTAURANT REVIEW Chef Abu Hani is back in the kitchen at Sheeba Mandi House Albany Park has a new Yemeni restaurant from a veteran Yemeni restaurateur. By M S
bu Hani opened his fi rst restaurant in 2000, when he was an ambitious 17-year-old student at Theodore Roosevelt High School. Yemen Restaurant, situated on Athe corner of Lawrence and Avers in Albany Park, was Chicago’s fi rst to serve the food of the southernmost tip of the Arabian Penin- Haneeth chicken sula. But it was more than that. It was a place and mutapq, kind where the small Yemeni community that had of a proto Philly cheesesteak settled in the neighborhood gathered to play MATTHEW SCHWERIN dominoes, shoot pool, drink chai, and just FOR CHICAGO READER hang out—a least until Hani graduated, got married, and found more gainful employment driving trucks. Yemeni restaurants have come and gone in the years since then, and Hani remains the progenitor of the cuisine in Chicago (he dis- couraged me from calling him its godfather, but still). He launched his second restau- J
BOOK YOUR HOLIDAY PARTY — with — 16” ON CENTER
BITE CAFE REVIVAL FOOD HALL 6TH FLOOR REINDEER ROOM MONEYGUN For more info, visit 16oncenterchicago.com/private-events. Mention “reader” when you book! ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 13 Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants FOOD & DRINK at chicagoreader.com/food.
continued from 13 cooked underground or in a clay tandoor oven, rant, Shibam City, in 2009, and ran it till last mounded over simply spiced rice, and eaten year, when he sold it, intending to move on. with fl atbread blistered in the same oven. But some monkeys you never shake off your All these variants are on the menu at Sheeba back. Mandi House, Hani’s latest restaurant. He’d “I wanted to get out, but it pulled me back opened a small spot on Devon earlier in the in,” says Hani, who’s now 36. “Once you’re in summer, but demand was so great he had to the kitchen you never get out.” fi nd a larger space. In early September, Sheeba His fi rst kitchen was his mother’s. Growing took over the onetime Albany Park conve- up in Mayfair, he used to help her cook elab- nience store that most recently housed the orate feasts to break the Ramadan fast. After Indo-Chinese WokNChop. marrying, he and his wife would take annual If you’re new to Yemeni food these heaping months-long trips back to Yemen, where he platters might appear indistinguishable from learned at his grandmother’s side in the city each other. But there are key differences. of Aden, just west of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, According to Hani, the meat-and-rice dish which divides the Red Sea and the Gulf of haneeth takes hours longer to cook than Aden. That position made the port a necessary mandi, and its foundational spice mix, hawaij stop on the historic spice route, exposing the (a blend of a dozen ingredients including country’s cuisine to its two main infl uences: cumin, clove, black pepper, turmeric, carda- the Ottoman and Mughal Empires. mom, and fenugreek), makes it generally more The latter contributed biryani, which in turn complex and variable. spawned a whole family of meaty rice dishes: It’s fenugreek that’s responsible for the zurbian, kabsa, haneeth, and most notably dramatic e ects posed by the burbling bowls mandi—big boney hunks of lamb or chicken of saltah and fahsa, meat and root vegetable stews topped with an aromatic fenugreek foam, a trick hundreds of years older than Fer- ran Adrià. Hani is serving those along with less common stewy dishes such as burr-mah, built on the lamb broth that’s the by-product of mandi, and agda, which has a thicker, saucier base of tomato and onions. Among more common pan-Arabic mezes such as hummus and baba ghanoush, there’s the snacktastic finger food mutapq (some- times spelled murtabak), griddled pouches of thin fl atbread enveloping tomato-sauced meat or eggs dosed with a blend of mayo and melted cheese. At Sheeba the beef version conjures up a kind of proto cheesesteak. If you ask me, Hani could sell nothing but mutapq and the restaurant would still be a destination. As it stands, there’s a fairly broad array of grilled plates built around kebabs, lamb chops, or whole butterfl ied fi sh, with sandwiches at lunch and a breakfast menu that includes the scrambled Yemeni version of shakshuka as well as mashed favas (foul), sauteed kidney beans (fasolia), and meatier sautes such as a liver-heart-kidney organ trio and megalgal, a Sheeba Mandi House; a cup of tea MATTHEW SCHWERIN FOR CHICAGO READER kind of curried shawarma with tomatoes, pep- per, and onions. Desserts ma’soob and arika the signature show are puddinglike blends of bread, honey, cream, NOVEMBER 21ST - 24TH and nigella seeds baked with bananas or dates, airport, though—you can’t access it unless respectively. you have a medallion. Haneeth, saltah, and TICKETS ON SALE NOW: Hani still isn’t content with sitting still in mutapq are much more at home in Albany Park Albany Park. He also operates a food truck that anyway. v chicagomagiclounge.com | 312-366-4500 parks at the O’Hare taxi staging zone. Don’t get your hopes up about your next trip to the @MikeSula 14 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll R READERRECOMMENDEDb ALLAGESF ARTS & CULTURE
COMEDY A lecture on artist Tetsuya Ishida’s work by Hendrix Col- lege president and history professor William M. Tsutsui. Cristela Alonzo: My Affordable Fri 11/22, 6:30 PM, Wrightwood 659, 659 W. Wrightwood, Care Act wrightwood659.org. The stand-up comedian and fi rst Latina to create, write, “My America: Immigrant and and star in a network television sitcom (Cristela) brings Bryan Northup, Sea Refugee Writers Today” her comedy to the Vic. Sat 11/23, 8 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Inside, 2017 COURTESY Sheffi eld, victheatre.com, $29-$59. THEARTIST Visitors will be brought face-to-face with authors who are immigrants and refugees at this interactive video Kyle Kinane: Spring Break and in-person exhibition. Through May 2021, 10 AM-5 It's a homecoming for Kyle Kinane (Drunk History, The PM daily, American Writers Museum, 180 N. Michigan, Standups, Love) as the comedian returns to the city americanwritersmuseum.org, $12, $8 for students and where he cut his teeth to tell plenty of drinking stories. seniors, children 12 and under free. Mon 11/25-Tue 11/26, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport, thaliahallchicago.com, $27-$40. Navi Arts Winter Fest Navi Arts Fest showcases local artists and cra makers. Matt Damon Improv 11/21, 7 PM, the Poetry Foundation, 61 W. Superior, poet- generations of women in one family trapped by a snow- Sat 11/23, 10 AM-3 PM, National Museum of Puerto Rican Matt Damon Improv comprises women of color who ryfoundation.org. F storm in their ancestral Massachusetts home. Sat 11/23, 2 Arts & Culture, 3015 W. Division, nmprac.org. F perform their weekly sets with a guest white person, PM, the Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway, astonrep.com, called a "Matt Damon" if male and a "Lena Dunham" if You’re Being Ridiculous donations accepted. “Sea Inside: Visioning Single-Use female, who can only repeat what the regular cast mem- The live-lit show celebrates its nine-year anniversary Plastic at the Cellular Level” bers have already said in every improv scene. Open run: with readings from Lily Be, Betsy Haberl, Robin Kacyn, VISUAL ARTS Sundays 9:30 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, Matthew Lippman, Lupe Nunez, Jeremy Owens, Julie Large works made out of single-use plastic bags by theannoyance.com, $8. Starbird, and LeeAnn Yops. Fri 11/22, 6:30 PM, the Hide- artist Bryan Northup. Opening reception Fri 11/22, 5:30- out, 1354 W. Wabansia, yourebeingridiculous.com, $15. “Finding Japan’s ‘Lost 7:30 PM. Through 2/16, Mon-Fri 9:30 AM-5 PM, Sat-Sun DANCE 10 AM-5 PM, International Museum of Surgical Science, THEATER Decade’: Tetsuya Ishida and 1524 N. Lake Shore Dr., imss.org, $17, $13 for seniors, Bangarra Dance Theatre the Ambivalence of Economic students, and members of the military, $9 children, Led by artistic director Stephen Page, Bangarra is an Always . . . Patsy Cline members free. v Australian dance and performance troupe composed Ted Swindley’s musical portrait of the friendship Decline” entirely of artists from Aboriginal and Torres Strait between country crooner Patsy Cline and fan Louise Islander backgrounds. See preview for more. Fri-Sat Seger, who took Cline into her home a er a show 11/22-11/23, 7:30 PM, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, one night and struck up a correspondence that lasted harristheaterchicago.org, $35-$140. until Cline’s premature death, gets a production with Firebrand Theatre under Brigitte Ditmars’s direction. Evanston Dance Ensemble Young Through 12/15: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Tue 11/19, 7:30 PM; no performance Thu 11/28, Choreographers Project Den Theatre, fi rebrandtheatre.org, $40 general, $50 Performers with the Evanston Dance Ensemble unveil cabaret, $20 students, industry, and rush. new pieces they’ve created, including a full-company piece by Randy Duncan, a three-time recipient of the The First Deep Breath Ruth Page Award for choreography. Sat 11/23-Sun 11/24, 4 A pastor and his family prepare for a church service and 7 PM, Studio5, 1934 Dempster St., Evanston, studio5. to honor the daughter who died six years earlier. But dance, $18, $12 students and seniors. the return from prison of the son blamed for her death unleashes secrets and skeletons. Lee Edward Colston Everyday People Everyday Action II’s play, developed through the 2018 Ignition Festival of Clinard Dance and Japanese photographer Akito Tsuda New Plays at Victory Gardens, is directed in its world collaborate on this interdisciplinary work combining premiere by Steve H. Broadnax III. Through 12/22: Tue- Clinard’s fl amenco dance and music and Tsuda’s photos Fri 7 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Wed 12/4, 2 of Pilsen in the early 1990s. The event is part of Clinard’s PM; no show Thu 11/28, Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. 20th anniversary celebration. Sun 11/24, 2 PM, National Lincoln, victorygardens.org, $31-$65. Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th, nationalmuseu- mofmexicanart.org, $25, $15 students and seniors. The Simon & Garfunkel Story This immersive concert show incorporates art video pro- LIT jections, photos, and original video footage along with a live band to trace the story of the famous folk-rock An Evening With David Sedaris duo, from their earliest days to their reunion concert in The best-selling author and humorist reads all-new Central Park in 1981. Through 12/8: Tue-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 stories from his latest collection of essays, Calypso. and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM; also 2 PM Fri 11/29; no perfor- The night also includes an audience Q&A and a book mance Thu 11/28, Broadway Playhouse, 835 N. Michigan, signing. Thu 11/21, 7:30 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Ida broadwayinchicago.com, $35-$100. B. Wells, auditoriumtheatre.org, $44-$64. Writer’s Series Poetry Off the Shelf: Cave Canem AstonRep Theatre Company presents its 11th annual a ernoon of staged readings by local writers. This year’s Legacy Conversation off erings include Jasmine Sharma’s Leaving Wonder- Chiyuma Elliott, Gregory Pardlo, and Marilyn Nelson land, which reconfi gures Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Won- participate in a reading and discussion of works con- derland through the lens of a sexual assault survivor, cerning the theme “writing our family’s histories.” Thu and Ellen Wiese’s Two-Legged Ghost, which fi nds three ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 15 R READER RECOMMENDED b ALL AGES F ARTS & CULTURE
Korporate Bidness COURTESY THE ARTIST
happened to you, boa?” After hearing about the incident, he proceeds to force Donovan COMEDY to go back outside and defend himself, saying to him, “If you don’t beat his ass, Imma beat yo ass.” The lingo and mannerisms of each of Turning life the characters is so quintessentially Chicago it’s hard not to laugh if you’re from here. It’s been two years since that video was posted, lessons into a and the momentum it created has yet to be interrupted. “I don’t know why it’s so hard for di¢ erent Korporate Bidness people to capture Chicago correctly,” Price says. “I.e., that Chiraq movie. No shade to The Donovan Price turns to YouTube Chi, but they don’t capture it well either. Not to hilariously highlight what to take away from it being a good show with #BlackChicagoBeLike. good story lines and shit, but if you gon’ call it The Chi, it’s got to be Chicago. And it just ain’t By T N T that.” Seeing shows and movies present such a flawed portrayal of the people, places, and things that make Chicago what it is inspired #BlackChicagoBeLikeTheSeries, which Price started in February. The fi rst season follows hen you were in high school, Donovan as he seeks revenge after a family did you ever sneak into a girl’s member gets shot. These episodes are longer house after school? And did than his #BlackChicagoBeLikeVideos, typical- her dad happen to come home, ly about seven minutes each. after being fired from work, Price says that he’s always had a passion Win the midst of the action? So you hid in the for storytelling and teaching, and each of bathroom, only for him to come in there and his #BlackChicagoBeLike videos as well as poop while you’re hiding behind the shower #BlackChicagoBeLikeTheSeries season one curtain? Well, Korporate has. concludes with a life lesson. Some of the les- “Aw, you wanted to know how I got up out sons are lighthearted—at the end of the video the jam?” he asks. “I channelled my inner recounting his first fight, he says, “Moral of Spidy senses, fuck you talm ’bout.” This is a the story, bro, and I learned this at an early scene from #BlackChicagoBeLikePart49, and prompted him to start uploading short skits to His #BlackChicagoBeLike videos are typ- age: Mu’fuckas that do the most usually ain’t at this point Korporate has somehow wedged Facebook in April 2015. It wasn’t until January ically short, between two to four minutes on shit. On God.” Other videos have more himself between the shower walls and pressed 2016 that he released the fi rst #ChicagoNig- long, and they act much like diary entries as profound takeaways, like the lesson that runs himself against the ceiling. But he makes it out gazBeLike video and began posting on his he narrates the tales like memories. He writes throughout #BlackChicagoBeLikeTheSeries’ alive. And the moral of the story? “If her pops YouTube channel, Korporate Bidness. He later the scripts, records the videos, and edits them fi rst season about gun violence and handling ain’t part of the union at his job, don’t fuck made the decision to change the title of his himself. the aftermath, contemplating whether retali- with her.” videos to #BlackChicagoBeLike. The name, he “I remember what video I posted to You- ating against the initial shooter is really worth You might recognize Donovan Price, better says, is not a reference to race. Rather, he has Tube that triggered the algorithm and allowed it. known as Korporate, from your Facebook time the Black market in mind. me to have a consistent flow of subscribers Since Price started his YouTube channel it’s line or YouTube feed. He considers himself “#BlackChicagoBeLike is meant to show life and views,” he says. “I had a young man play- amassed more than a million subscribers, and an all-around entertainer, much like Childish in Chicago on the other side of Michigan Ave- ing me as a child, and I told a story about when he’s quickly gaining recognition in the city. Gambino, but began his career as a rapper. nue,” he says. The goal of his YouTube videos I had my fi rst fi ght.” During our time chatting at the Starbucks on While starting to post his music to social is to accurately portray life on the city’s south That was #BlackChicagoBeLikePart44, the corner of 71st and Stony Island, it felt as if media, he noticed that established artists he and west sides, areas that are often disregard- which now rests at 7.2 million views. The video everyone knew him—several people stopped followed often posted funny content from ed or inaccurately depicted in the media. He is a two-minute-long skit in which a young him to shake his hand and congratulate him across the Internet in between posts about believes uplifting Chicago is “one of the most Donovan gets hit in the eye by another kid, on his success. It’s proof that the authenticity their careers. important jobs” that he has, so he’s made it a Pooh Man, while walking home after school of his videos has captured the hearts of his “It pretty much came to me, What if that point to partner with fellow Chicago creatives eating Frooties that he refuses to let Pooh viewers and allowed him to truly impact his content that I was dropping in between and consistently promote local businesses in Man have. When Donovan gets home, clearly audience. dropping music was me?” he says. The idea his videos. injured, his older brother asks, “What the fuck He mentioned a comment he’d received on 16 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll B C BLTS R on YouTube youtube.com/user/MrCurrencysAnUrgency ARTS & CULTURE
Instagram not too long ago. The person told Cook County Department of Public Health’s him that “they was basically gon’ get down on administrative body got involved. somebody, cause some type of bodily harm. It “Their administrative body, Cook County was a message in one of my videos that really hospital system, they didn’t understand it. made them reevaluate what they were going They didn’t understand the content,” he to do,” he says. That made him refl ect on the says. “People tend to fear what they don’t loss of his good friend Zack TV, a local jour- understand.” nalist who fell victim to gun violence last year, Cook County Health and Hospitals demand- and the importance of infl uence. ed that he take the video down—at 1.7 million “Allegedly, when he was gunned down, it views. It was a difficult thing for him to do, was three or four people present,” Price says. since this was a major milestone in his career. “When you think about it, if one of those peo- “I really felt a way about that. My feelings ple had stepped up and took the responsibility were really hurt about that video,” he says. of infl uencing the people they were with like, “That had one of the strongest messages that ‘Nah, we tweaking, bro, we gone,’ he’d still be I’ve ever delivered in a video, ’cause that’s here today. They could have saved that man’s real.” Cook County Health and Hospitals life. I realize that with these productions, I didn’t immediately respond to requests for possibly save lives every day, and that means comment. a lot to me.” While that experience and a few other in- Price’s series has gained the attention of stances of the sort have made Price reconsider many large businesses and corporations, some the way that he handles business and what of which have reached out to sponsor videos. companies he’ll work with, his trials have He’s learned, though, that working with these only motivated him to go even harder with large entities can be di cult territory to navi- his projects. Earlier this month he released a gate as a Black creative. A couple months ago, video collaboration with AT&T for its #Code- he had to remove #BlackChicagoBeLikePart72 sofCulture campaign. The video begins with from YouTube because of a complaint by the him reading his T-shirt, which says, “It’s not video’s sponsor, the Cook County Health and Chiraq, it’s Chicago . . . GOOFY!” He had the Hospitals System. He’d initially been con- same T-shirt on when we met up, and he wears tracted to do the video by the Cook County shirts with the same message in many of his BY DAVID SEDARIS Department of Public Health. “They said that videos. ADAPTED BY JOE MANTELLO my demographic is the demographic that they “Bro, you the GOAT, stay with the positive. DIRECTEDBY STEVE SCOTT need to reach to really bring awareness to tak- The world needs it,” reads one person’s com- ing care of yourself and not putting others at ment under that post. Someone else’s says, risk with sexually transmitted diseases,” Price “Need that shirt bro!!! This is so necessary. says. “That video garnered one million views Words have power and we can’t keep speaking in probably like 30 hours.” Chiraq. It’s CHICAGO!!” In the video, his character meets a young Price has also been working on his debut rap woman outside of a club, and she gives him album. He’s already dropped three singles, and a blow job in a car. A week later, he notices the latest, “Real Tears,” features his daughter, that it burns when he pees and his stomach is Brazile Marie, who stars in many of his videos cramping. His grandma tells him he needs to as well. In the song, Price raps about Chicago’s go to the doctor, but he doesn’t think much of unsolved murders, specifi cally those of Black NOVEMBER 29 - DECEMBER 29 it because he and the young lady didn’t have women who’ve been killed and gone missing in penetrative sex. He decides to visit the Cook the city. At the end of the song Brazile sings, Brimming “with Sedaris’ wicked humor” (Chicago magazine), County Department of Public Health, where he “Don’t shoot / I want to grow up.” There’s no this “sweetly snarky holiday treat“ (Daily Herald) is perfect tells the doctor his symptoms and says that he doubt that he’ll continue to drop knowledge in for those who prefer their eggnog spiked. thinks “somebody got down on me . . . sexual- the work that he creates, and there’s no telling ly.” He receives treatment for gonorrhea, and what the next season of #BlackChicagoBe- ends the video with: “Moral of the story: Strap LikeTheSeries will bring. For mature elves only. up. Don’t guess, get checked. On God.” “Season two is definitely on the way. I’m Price says that in the video he depicted an working on trying to bring it to a bigger plat- organic situation that e ectively relayed the form with higher production,” he says. “But if GoodmanTheatre.org message of being on top of your sexual health, it don’t work out, as long as I got YouTube and and that the people who initially contracted the latest iPhone, I’m Gucci.” v 312.443.3800 Groups of 10+ only: 312.443.3820 him to make the video were very pleased with the fi nal product. The problem came when the @vivatyra ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 17 M FF / - / : Thu PM- PM, Fri-Sat AM-midnight, Sun AM- PM, Donald ARTS & CULTURE E. Stephens Convention Center, N. River Rd., furfest.org, $.
FESTIVAL Fur the record Furries aren’t all fetishists— they’re members of a supportive community who (sometimes) don costumes to feel more comfortable in their own skins. By T P
t’s not like we’re saying sex doesn’t happen—when you get adults in a hotel somewhere, stuff’s going to happen,” says Matt Berger, media relations lead Group photo from Midwest FurFest 2015 “Ifor Midwest FurFest. “But sex is defi nitely not JIMYOUNG/COURTESYMIDWESTFURFEST something that’s predominant, especially in While a vast majority of individuals con- sona (rare but possible), or they may decide public spaces.” He’s shrugging o a persistent sume anthropomorphic-related content to forgo a fursona entirely. In fact, 30 to 40 misconception that all furries are sexual fe- at some point in their lives (think: Mickey percent of Midwest FurFest attendees do not tishists who enjoy cavorting about in animal Mouse, Zootopia, Guardians of the Galaxy’s wear a fur suit, according to Berger. costumes. Rocket Raccoon), furries exhibit a focused, For those who do suit up, however, the Mid- and entertainment-based sessions, including This year marks the 20th anniversary of lifelong interest in this world. west FurFest Fursuit Dance Competition is the video and tabletop gaming, a voice-actor Midwest Furry Fandom, Inc., a regional orga- For Berger, fi guring out he was a furry was weekend’s premier event. “Going back nine workshop, kink discussion group (18+ only), nization that supports Midwest FurFest—one a gradual process. “I was defi nitely a Disney years or so, the idea of dancing in a fur suit or various writing workshops, a pie-throwing of the largest conventions in the U.S. celebrat- kid . . . but I also got into it through perform- costume was viewed as kind of silly because seminar, basics of ballroom dancing, travel ing the fandom of anthropomorphic animals. ing,” he says. “I was a volunteer in Canada for of how di cult it would be to manipulate the tips, and sessions on fur suit safety and main- This year, the fur and games take place from the Make-a-Wish Foundation, performing as a suit,” Berger says. “And then it slowly became tenance. New this year is the Quiet Room, a December 5 to 8 at the Donald E. Stephens mascot at various events to help raise funds. more and more interesting, and now, I’d argue, space where attendees can spend time away Convention Center. Midwest FurFest is open Donning a fur suit is a pretty cool experience it is probably one of the bigger things in the from noise, lights, photographers, and other to all ages, though children under 17 may only because it’s something that immediately puts fandom for a lot of people.” convention-related stimuli. attend with a parent or “designated adult” a smile on someone’s face as they’re looking at According to the updated rules for the 2019 Since 2000, Midwest FurFest has grown (children under six must also be accompanied you.” dance competition, both full and partial suits from 388 attendees to more than 10,000, with by a guardian but are not permitted to partake Berger’s alter-ego persona—sometimes are allowed for competitors, but “costumes upwards of $540,000 raised for wildlife- and in any of the fest’s programming or events). known as a “fursona” in the furry communi- should be arranged so that no skin is exposed animal-related charities, including this year’s If furries—who often dress in custom fur ty—is “Kodi,” a gray-and-white husky canine or visible at any point during the performer’s benefi ciary, the local no-kill shelter Felines & suits (a mascot-style costume of an original character he created nearly 15 years ago. showcase.” In addition, all costumes are re- Canines. character)—are not about a romp in the hay, “Fur suiters” claim the costumes are trans- quired to be “free of profanity or inappropri- As the culture of the furries continues to what sets these individuals apart from the formative, allowing the individual to amplify ate accessories.” rise in popularity, members of this community cosplay world? pieces of their personality that are typically “The dance competition is about showman- are starting to feel less marginalized. “Science fiction conventions have fairly more dormant in everyday life. Berger says ship: Can you get the crowd interested? How “The fact that you can just say ‘the furry’ well-drawn boundaries around what’s there, he’s more “happy and bouncy” as Kodi; others complex are your dance moves?” Berger says. and you don’t have to explain to people what what you’re doing, and why you’re there, with become mischievous, silly, fl irty, mysterious, “The judges look at things like how well your that means to the same degree that you used a fan base built largely around predefined or even sinister. Fur suiters typically do not moves relate [to the audience] and impart to means we’re becoming a lot more main- roles,” Berger says. “The defi nition of a furry speak while in costume and rely on pantomime emotions. It’s defi nitely an amazing thing to stream,” Berger says. “As it gets bigger and varies by individual—a furry could be anyone to communicate, which Berger says helps indi- watch someone do a full body fl ip wearing a more accessible to folks, you’ll see more and who has an interest in things like anthropo- viduals shape-shift into character and exhibit giant animal costume.” more of these conventions. We joke there’s a morphic-related animation, artwork, and key traits of their fursona. In addition to the dance competition, Mid- furry convention somewhere in the country performing.” Participants may have more than one fur- west FurFest o ers more than 150 education- almost every weekend now.” v 18 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll ARTS & CULTURE
Riane Konc MICHAEL MATZKO PHOTOGRAPHY LIT on the subject, Konc has become a Hallmark holiday movie afi cionado. She has the most re- Riane Konc wants spect for those movies with puns in the titles, like Snowmance and Fir Crazy. She can easily to help you Build rattle o subgenres and plot details like secret royalty, cookie-baking contests, and ruthless Your Own Christmas condo board associations. While writing, she wanted to cram in every piece of holiday ridic- Movie Romance ulousness she came up with. The choose-your-own-adventure “I could have written a book that was twice parody features all the best as long, because I wanted to have every micro- tropes and treats of made-for-TV plot,” she says. “I wanted to cram in as many of holiday specials. those story lines and twists as possible, but I knew that would be tiresome. The story of ‘the By M S big business lady who hates Christmas but has to learn a lesson’ became the plot, and having that structure helped. Then each choice gave texture and allowed me to incorporate those is the season for cheesy, made-for-TV smaller elements of the other Christmas holiday movies. These fluffy flicks movies.” ’Tappear on the Hallmark Channel, searching for holiday-themed parodies, she “I would hit my word count and sit at my The key was balance. Konc wanted to write Lifetime, and now even Netflix. Each one is sent her best pitch and got the job. Quickly, she desk for a minute and think, ‘What has hap- something that could be enjoyed by everyone loaded with snuggles, slapstick, and secrets started doing research, watching movies like pened here today?’ It was a surprise every from a holiday-loving grandma to a Christmas that threaten the entire town. And at the The Christmas Card, A Christmas Detour, and time,” she says. cynic. heart of every story is a woman who will save It’s Christmas, Carol! It was easier said than Some of the weirder moments included “There are happy endings galore, and cud- everything. done in the middle of springtime. Chrissy and her mother discussing strains dly moments of Christmas cheer for anyone That formula drives Riane Konc’s book Build “At that time, these movies weren’t largely of peppermint as if they were talking about who is looking. If you want to read someone Your Own Christmas Movie Romance (Ul- available to stream, so I would check out a weed, conversations presented without con- ruthlessly satirizing a genre, that’s also there,” ysses Press). The Cincinnati-based humorist stack of ten made-for-TV Christmas movies text in the middle of scenes, and the invention she says. “If you love Hallmark movies, you and Second City instructor’s debut follows a on DVD from the library in March, April, and of a “Grinch snake”—the only venomous snake can read this without feeling bad about your- businesswoman named Chrissy. In the book, May,” Konc says. “I was always avoiding eye active in the midwest during Christmas break. self. They’re being made fun of by someone readers decide the fate of Chrissy’s hectic holi- contact with librarians. I felt like I needed to “I thought there was no way they would who has watched as many as you.” v days—whether she’ll answer phone calls from tell them that everything was fi ne, that I was publish this book,” Konc says. her candy-cane-farming mother, return home OK.” From someone who once had no opinions @MatthewSigur to Candy Cane Falls, or ditch the fam to ski Further stress came from a frightening with a terrible ex-boyfriend—and craft their patch of writer’s block that Konc couldn’t own cheesy Christmas movie. shake. But with each day of watching, study- NAMED ONE OF THE “PLAYS OF THE CENTURY”! Before this year, Konc had only passively ing, then writing, she slowly developed a watched such fare. But when she saw a job rhythm that lifted the block. Still, she felt the NOW PLAYING! CHICAGO PREMIERE posting from California-based Ulysses Press material might be too weird. “TAUT and POTENT; you will be much involved throughout!” Chicago Tribune by GITHA SOWERBY directed by MECHELLE MOE
A MARVELOUS PLAY, ALIVE WITH “ HUMAN PASSIONS AND TYRANNIES – New York Post ”
NOW PLAYING 773.281.8463 TIMELINETHEATRE.COM 847-242-6000 I WRITERSTHEATRE.ORG Pictured: Ayanna Bria Bakari and Mary Beth Fisher. Photo by Michael Brosilow. ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 19 B D T Fri / , : PM, Sat / , and : PM, Harris Theater, E. Randolph, - - , ARTS & CULTURE harristheaterchicago.org, $ -$ . THEATER
Waiting for Godot CHARLESOSGOOD
Bangarra Dance Theatre VISHALPANDEY
DANCE PREVIEW would share with themselves, empower, con- REVIEW his bowler hat. Then along comes Pozzo—a nect, and rekindle across cultures. We employ man of wealth and importance, judging by Bangarra Dance 18 full-time dancers who are all First Nations, Returning to Godot his imperious attitude, fine attire, educat- and the majority come from the southern end, Dennis Začek stages Samuel ed speech, and the fact that he is led by a Theatre rekindles where they have been disconnected from their Beckett’s classic again—48 years silent slave, Lucky, whom he controls with culture. When they come to Bangarra, they get a er his fi rst time. a leashlike rope tied around Lucky’s neck. A Aboriginal heritage to reconnect.” couple of times a young boy appears to tell The Australian company makes Bangarra will present two works at the By A W Didi and Gogo that Mr. Godot is not coming its Chicago debut. Harris choreographed by Page, Spirit (2004) today—but surely will tomorrow. So they and Nyapanyapa (2016). The latter piece is wait, bantering and bickering. And we watch By I H inspired by the bark paintings of Arnhem Land ritten in the wake of World War II, them wait. Waiting for Godot does not mean artist Nyapanyapa Yunupingu , whom Page with its carnage and cruelty com- anything; it is. angarra Dance Theatre of Australia encountered on multiple occasions when Ban- Wmitted by all sides on a scale pre- Dennis Začek, longtime artistic director of makes its Chicago debut this week at garra toured through Yirrkala, an Indigenous viously unimaginable, Irish writer Samuel Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater, returns Bthe Harris Theater. Founded in 1989 by community in Australia’s Northern Territory. Beckett’s 1949 Waiting for Godot is timeless to the venue he once led as the producer and American choreographer Carole Johnson The dancers respond to fi ve paintings, includ- and of the moment—a bleakly comic portrait director of this solid staging of Beckett’s and directed since 1991 by Stephen Page, an ing one that represents a water bu alo attack of human beings coping with the basic, harsh seminal script. His cast is headed by former Australian dancer and choreographer of Nu- that traumatized Yunupingu decades ago as realities of existence while vainly looking Chicago actor Michael Saad (well remem- nukul and Munaldjali descent, Bangarra has she was hunting for turtle eggs in a bush apple for something “to give us the impression we bered from Začek’s 1975 Victory Gardens been lauded for its celebration of Aboriginal forest. “Painting for her is a meditative pro- exist.” Confounding audiences and scholars rendition of Pinter’s The Caretaker as well and Torres Strait Islander heritage through a cess—a place of refl ection, embedded in her who have debated for decades what Godot as the Organic Theater’s 1970s productions fusion of contemporary dance and Australian life and history. It reminds me of why I started means (or, for that matter, who “Godot” is), First Nations culture. dancing as a young man . . . because it took me this “tragicomedy in two acts” is theatrical W G “Australia was colonized by the British to a safe and spiritual place,” Page has said. poetry that embodies Archibald MacLeish’s R Through / : Wed-Sat Commonwealth in 1788,” explains Page. “Mil- Bangarra isn’t “a university, tertiary, ac- dictum (stated in his 1926 “Ars Poetica”): “A PM, Sun PM; also Sat / , PM; no performance Thu lions of First Nations people died. Millions ademic lecture performance where people poem should not mean / But be.” / , Victory Gardens Theater, survived. The First Nations of Australia are have to understand,” says Page. “People just Two men, Vladimir and Estragon—Didi N. Lincoln, - - , scientifically considered the oldest nations come along—they surrender, they become a and Gogo—pass the time together outdoors, victorygardens.org, $. in the world. And dance is a huge part of our three-year-old child and see this distinctive on a patch of land that is bare except for a kinship system in aboriginal First Nations language of old and new that’s celebrated from leafl ess tree. Dressed in baggy, beat-up suits of Bleacher Bums, The Wonderful Ice Cream culture.” The company was sparked by the our landscape. Their spiritual consciousness and ill-fitting bowler hats, they appear to Suit, and Bloody Bess), who reprises the role curriculum at National Aboriginal Islander is awakened because they know it comes be homeless tramps, or maybe errant mu- of Gogo that he played under Začek’s direc- Skills Development Association Dance Col- from ritual and tradition that is connected to sic-hall comedians. They are “waiting for tion as a student at Loyola University in 1971. lege in Sydney, where students, in addition to the land and to First Nations clans. We’re the Godot . . . or for night to fall,” as Didi explains Saad’s broadly smiling, restless, irritable, training in American and European modern only First Nations company in the world doing to the increasingly restless and impatient and impetuous Gogo is a perfect comple- and contemporary dance, are tutored in Ab- what we’re doing. We want to inspire our glob- Gogo. While they wait, they talk—sometimes ment to Larry Neumann Jr.’s Didi—scholarly, original dance, music, and other traditions al First Nations sisters and brothers. Our work bantering, sometimes bickering. Occa- prim, dourly disapproving, yet prone to from the northern regions of Australia, which is about our thriving resilience of surviving sionally they consider committing suicide sudden bursts of odd pleasure (sometimes did not su er the overwhelming genocide of the 270 years of colonization. You spend your by hanging themselves from the tree; but at the expense of a less fortunate person). the southern regions. “The combination of all whole life decolonizing all that trauma.” v they have no rope, and their belts won’t do. Steve Pickering and Nima Rakhshanifar are these practices became the distinctive lan- Gogo struggles to pull off his boots, com- Pozzo and Lucky, the ruler and ruled, equally guage of Bangarra,” says Page. “First Nations @IreneCHsiao plaining they hurt his feet; Didi fusses with miserable in their symbiotic bondage. v 20 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll R READER RECOMMENDED b ALL AGES F THEATER
The Niceties MICHAEL BROSILOW In Bakari’s ruthlessly intense performance, you can see how exhausted and enraged Zoe is by the barrage of the “everyday awful” of being a Black woman in a world where Janine faults Zoe’s thesis for its lack of history renders her invisible and daily life primary source citations. But those sources makes something as innocuous as going for are difficult—if not impossible—to find. a jog a racially fraught experience. As Janine, Zoe’s paper deals in large part with African Fisher nails the look (and sound) of a white Americans and their role in the American liberal who makes the mistake of believing Revolution. That population wasn’t in a po- that her own (substantial) battles mean she sition to generate the voluminous paper trail understands and can minimize those of a Black left by Washington and Je erson. And even if woman. she could fi nd primary sources, Zoe adds, she With a lesser cast, The Niceties would be doesn’t have time to rewrite. She’s booked more debate than drama. The point-counter- solid with protests, actions against Sandra point structure works because director Marti Day O’Connor and Howard Stern among them. Lyons gets such incendiary performances Janine acknowledges the problem with from Fisher and Bakari. Zoe gets the final sources. But she riddles her language with blistering word with the humbled (or is she?) microaggressions, side-eyes Zoe’s extracur- Janine, but Burgess makes it clear that she riculars, and expresses a ba ed contempt of could wind up paying dearly for her own act of millennials’ “cult of fragility.” Greatness, says revolution. v Janine, can’t be achieved if you spend your life protected by “trigger warnings” and “safe @CateySullivan spaces.” REVIEW Culture clash An academic debate becomes a racially charged confl agration in The Niceties. By C S
n 2015, Yale University was rocked by an unnamed elite Connecticut college, The student activists demanding change Niceties is a blistering battle between Janine within an organization founded on white (Mary Beth Fisher), a Christakis-reminiscent supremacism and still mired in systemic professor, and Zoe (Ayanna Bria Bakari), racism. (Don’t even try. The school was a formidably intelligent undergrad. When Ifounded in 1701 by Connecticut colonists to educate puritanical clergy—in other words, white men only. It was named for a wealthy member of the East India Company, which T N R Through / : Tue-Fri : made fortunes on the backs of slave labor PM, Sat and : PM, Sun and throughout the world. According to Yale’s PM; also Wed / and /, PM; most recent fi gures, Black and African Amer- no performance Thu / or Sun / , PM, Writers Theatre, ican students make up less than 8 percent of Tudor Ct., Glencoe, - -, the student population.) writerstheatre.org, $-$ . The flashpoint for the unrest at Yale was Erika Christakis, a professor who defended the right of students to wear “o ensive” costumes after a memo went out urging Yalies to avoid Zoe comes to Janine for feedback on a thesis cultural appropriation or otherwise poten- paper, things escalate from errant commas tially problematic choices in their Halloween to scorched earth with the speed of a fl ames attire. licking through an archive of 17th-century pri- Eleanor Burgess’s one-set two-hander at mary documents soaked in petrol. Or rather, Writers Theatre looks a lot like Yale. Set at the speed of a viral video. ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 21 THEATER
back to a diff erent kind of normal. OPENING The twist this year is that the family is headed by two dads—Benjamin Sprunger’s Marty and Nicholas The song of Nondumiso Tembe Bailey’s David. Inevitably, the casting choice invites us to Lindiwe has a great star, but the story meditate on how diffi cult it can be for LGBTQ people to overwhelms the music. create families in the fi rst place and in too many places. (It also allows for sly jokes about Fire Island.) The loss Steppenwolf’s long association with Ladysmith Black of their eldest, Fritz (Dwayne Everett), who dies in Mambazo, the legendary South African male a cappella combat on Christmas Eve, sends their daughter, Clara choral group, stretches back nearly 30 years, since Tug (Amaris Sanchez), on a Wizard of Oz-like quest a year Yourgrau’s apartheid-era drama The Song of Jacob later to save Christmas for herself and her dads. She’s Zulu went from the company’s stage to Broadway accompanied by her newly come-to-life toys, including under Eric Simonson’s direction. Simonson subsequently a nutcracker in Fritz’s image, gi ed by her mysterious collaborated with the company on Nomathemba, and Aunt Drosselmeyer (Amanda De La Guardia, in fi ne now he’s written and codirected (with Jonathan Berry) hoydenish form). Lindiwe. The title character, played by the eff ervescent A suitably creepy rat-king puppet from Chicago and vocally magnetic Nondumiso Tembe, falls for Adam Puppet Studio, delicious comic turns from Colin Morgan, (Erik Hellman), a young blues drummer in Chicago, Johnny Arena, and Rachel Shapiro as Clara’s trio of toy while touring with Mambazo and fi nds herself in a few friends, and the earnest tunes combine for a sad-sweet, diff erent kinds of hell—from an ICE detainment center hopeful-heartfelt peek into how to keep the holidays to an a erworld run by Yasen Peyankov’s “Keeper,” who alive—even (or especially) when the people who shared wants to keep her from singing and is willing to use her them with you are gone from this corporeal realm. That’s love for Adam as a bargaining chip to make that happen. a story worth sharing for all families. —K R T Narratively, it’s a messy aff air, and one that doesn’t N Through 12/29: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat really get to the heart of either the blues or Mambazo’s 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Fri 11/29, 3 PM; Sun Oliver! LIZLAUREN traditions, or even why the music means so much to 12/8, 12/15, and 12/22, 7 PM; and Mon 12/23, 7 PM; these lovers. The nine members of the group perform as no performance Thu 11/28, Chopin Theatre, 1543 choral fi gures for the story, which mashes up the legend W. Division, 773-769-3832, thehousetheatre.com, of Orpheus and Eurydice with everything from A Star $30-$50, $20 student and industry same-day tickets character’s ordeal. But what is Jocasta (Kate Collins), proves again and again she’s a singer to be reckoned Is Born (Adam, who’s come to South Africa to be with based on availability. writhing under hot direct light, supposed to do with with: her pipes are strong enough to blow the roof off Lindiwe, resents her rising profi le) to The Good Place. her face, her voice, or her limbs, to get across what the the house. —J H O ! Through 12/29: (Peyankov’s goth-glam Keeper maintains, a la Marc Evan Nowhere to hide words say she is experiencing? There is no such gesture. Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 Jackson’s head demon Shawn in the latter, that humans Court Theatre’s Oedipus Rex blinds us with pain This show inaugurates Court’s Oedipus Trilogy, and 8 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM; also Tue 11/26, 7:30 PM; don’t really evolve.) and decimation. with The Gospel at Colonus (May 2020) and Antigone Thu 12/12 and 12/19, 1 PM; and Thu 12/26, 3 PM; 1 PM The music is glorious, especially when Tembe is (2020/2021) to follow. —M M O R only Wed 12/11 and 12/18; no performance Thu 11/28, singing. But what could be a heartfelt meditation on Montaigne, quoting from ancient sources, describes a Through 12/8: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 2 and 7:30 Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Dr., Lincolnshire, 847- the connections that love, music, and love of music painting of the sacrifi ce of Iphigenia. In it, the victim’s PM; no performance Thu 11/28, Court Theatre, 5535 634-0200, marriotttheatre.com, $55-$60. build between people and across time bogs down with father is shown with a veil hanging over his face, as if S. Ellis, 773-753-4472, courttheatre.org, $37.50-$84. too much self-conscious story and not enough song. to say, Montaigne suggests, that no expression could Games people play —K R L Through 1/5: Tue 7:30 PM, convey what Agamemnon is feeling as he watches his Consider yourself at home R A woman explores her limits in Queen of Wed 2 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 innocent girl go to slaughter. Even though that seems R Marriott’s Oliver! overcomes its age with Sock Pairing. PM, Sun 3 PM; also Sun 11/24 and 12/1, 7:30 PM; no like such a dodge to us now, every play that confronts an energetic ensemble. show 2 PM Wed 11/27; no shows Thu 11/28 and 12/19, the limits of human suff ering, as Court Theatre’s Oedi- With ambitious productions that push the boundaries of Tue 12/24, or Wed 12/25 and 1/1, Steppenwolf The- pus does, needs to fi nd its version of Agamemnon’s veil. Lionel Bart’s musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’s subject matter, Red Tape Theatre continues to evolve, atre, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf. These poor actors cannot be expected to have a face 1839 novel Oliver Twist fi rst premiered on London’s West and its latest, Queen of Sock Pairing by Sophie Weiss- org, $54-$114. they can make that communicates, with the appropriate End in 1960, went on to a Tony Award-winning run on koff , directed by Zach Weinberg, is one of the company’s gravity, “Oh God, my husband is my son.” Broadway in 1963, and in 1968 was made into a hit movie best yet. The story opens with Celia navigating relation- Cracked hearts This production, directed by Charles Newell and that won six Academy Awards, including Oscars for best ships with her boss, Joan, mother of Walden, the boy R The Nutcracker returns to the House with translated from Sophocles by the late former Court director and best picture. But that was a long time ago. she cares for, as well as Cai, her older boyfriend. Joan, a few twists. artistic director Nicholas Rudall, doesn’t believe in veils, And it shows. In Bart’s tunes (full of nostalgic looks back Cai, and Walden speak for themselves, but a Narrator and neither do its performers. The entire cast is onstage to England’s now long-dead music hall tradition), in the communicates Celia’s fi rst lines and feelings. Celia’s fi rst It took me nine years to get out to the House Theatre’s almost the whole time, gyrating in tandem across John melodramatic story (hinging on several unbelievable spoken words, “I’m sorry,” refl ect her disempowerment annual nonballetic staging of The Nutcracker, but a er Culbert’s stark white set under dazzling and sometimes convenient coincidences), and in cringeworthy running at work and with Cai. fi nally seeing it last year, I was eager to make a return blinding light design by Keith Parham. The play conceals gags about nagging wives and poor, beaten-down Celia starts to see beyond her preferred “sub” trip. Created by Jake Minton, Phillip Klapperich, Kevin nothing, wants all of its pain and decimation to happen husbands. role to Cai’s “Dom,” using play to explore their vari- O’Donnell, and Tommy Rapley, the House version imag- publicly. Kelvin Roston Jr., who plays Oedipus, seems Still, the show remains as energetic and entertaining ous proclivities. The show is full of profanity, BDSM, ines a family broken apart by grief and fi nding their way especially bent on making his audience a party to the as you’d expect from a musical with an exclamation mark and fun-bordering-on-abusive role-playing—at one in its title. Bart’s book trims down and speeds up Dick- point, even composting is used as a sexual metaphor. ens’s leisurely newspaper-serial plot. And Bart’s score is Weisskoff succeeds at balancing the diffi cult moments— packed with earworms. Just try to get “Oom-Pah-Pah” the gaslighting, misogyny, and emotional abuse—with out of your head once you’ve heard it. moments of humor. For example, Walden (Scot West, 20% OFF ALL SHOES & BOOTS The Marriott revival, directed by Nick Bowling who also plays Walden’s father) is wonderfully portrayed CHICAGO’S ODDEST FOOTWEAR with music direction by Ryan T. Nelson, is as bright and as a sock puppet. The Narrator (Jalyn Greene) acts as a 843 W BELMONT at clark lively a re-creation of the exploitation of children in buff er, validating Celia’s response and shielding her, as SHOES mid-19th-century London slums as you could hope for. well as the audience, from the line of fi re. LEATHER SILVER The ensemble of triple threats is in general fi rst-rate, Elena Victoria Feliz is magnetic as Celia, at once T-SHIRTS CLOTHING and contains several brilliant standouts. William Brown’s vulnerable and resilient in her journey to empowerment. since 1976 thealley.com 773-883-1800 inspired take on the snake Fagin is by turns charm- She’s a delight to watch, emoting so much with just a
@thealleychicago open 7 days a week ing and dangerous, alluring and repellent. And Lucy look. Brenda Scott Wlazlo (Joan) oozes with self-import- Godinez, playing the good-hearted prostitute, Nancy, ant status while sporting a humorous Ivy League accent.
22 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll THEATER
Aaron Latterell is terrifyingly good as Cai, whose sadism John’s wife, Mary (Rochelle Therrien), who realizes that and artifi ce. Lydia’s sister Elizabeth Darcy (Netta Walker) of paranoid xenophobia, where the characters wonder violates agreed-upon boundaries. Submit to the Queen sometimes the greatest way to eff ect change is from contacts an offi cer in George’s distant army regiment if their Middle Eastern neighbors are terrorists—or just of Sock Pairing! —J F Q S the inside. —M O R and receives a lengthy, plot-resolving missive within angry about injustice like the average Brown person. P Through 12/14: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, S Through 1/12: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, roughly 48 hours. It’s a horse-and-carriage-era problem, Tracey Green plays pushover Felicity, who a er an Mon 8 PM (industry), the Ready, 4546 N. Western, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Fri 11/29, 12/27, and resolved at the speed of e-mail. Moreover, while George evening of blackout drunken debauchery fi nds herself redtapetheatre.org, reservations suggested. F 1/3/20, 4 PM; no performances Thu 11/28 or Wed is the ostensible villain, Darcy (Luigi Sottile) is the kind of married to Zamir, played by the hilarious Siddhartha 12/25 and 1/1, TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. Wellington, privileged jerk who insists his servants are “family” even Rajan. She engages the help of her ex-military father, Succession, Edwardian style 773-281-8463, timelinetheatre.com, $42 Wed-Fri, though he treats them like servants. That’s a problem Leonard (Patrick Thornton), to poke around in Zamir’s A patriarch abuses his off spring in 1912’s $49 Sat evening, $57 Sat and Sun matinees, $25 U.S. never resolved here. But Melcon and Gunderson are nebulous background. High jinks, hilarity, and a dozen Rutherford and Son. military personnel, veterans, first responders, and going for sparkle, not veracity. In that, they succeed. content warnings ensue. Be forewarned: this play is their spouses and family. —C S T W C for lovers of very dark comedy. It brutally sends up For a mostly forgotten 1912 play, written by Githa Sow- P Through 12/15: Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, misogyny, emotional abuse, and the legacy of John Yoo. erby (but presented under a male-sounding pen name Move over, Charles Dickens Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2:30 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 Elaine Carlson brings the house down as Luella, a at the time), this family drama is surprisingly similar to Jane Austen gets a holiday makeover at PM; also Tue 11/26, 7:30 PM, and Sun 12/1, 7 PM; no histrionic housewife who channels a more prim version HBO’s Succession—minus the sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ Northlight. performance Thu 11/28, Northlight Theatre, North of Debra Jo Rupp’s Kitty Forman from That ‘70s Show. roll. This business is glassworks, not a media empire, but Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Luella uses her obsession with theater to defl ect from its patriarch, Rutherford (Francis Guinan), is similarly In commercializing Jane Austen’s enduring appeal, play- Blvd, Skokie, 847-673-6300, northlight.org, $30-$89, inconvenient truths in her own household. A meta third cold, domineering, and cruel to his three children. The wrights Margot Melcon and Lauren Gunderson have $15 students (subject to availability). act that absolutely should not work, and yet does, leaves siblings—who o en blend into the scenery because “the found a surefi re formula for feel-good, o -produced us with a powerful meditation on empathy and how governor” has beat any shred of confi dence or identity holiday hits. Like 2016’s Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pem- Dark Durang we judge people from other countries for expressing out of them—are also challenged to form relationships berley, The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley checks R Eclipse closes out its all-Durang season outdated gender-based viewpoints that we haven’t immune to their unhealthy connection with their father. all the right box-offi ce boxes: clever dialogue that (sort with a brutal send-up of American paranoia. overcome ourselves. Examples of top-shelf legit satire TimeLine’s production, directed by Mechelle Moe, of) gives women a voice, but without diminishing their onstage are few and far between, making this produc- brings a very capable cast to an uneven story whose ladylike demeanor, humor that gently addresses social Christopher Durang’s Why Torture Is Wrong, and the tion a must-see show of the season. —S F pace makes sustained engagement diffi cult. The slow justice issues without ever threatening the status quo, People Who Love Them is the kind of exquisite, biting W T I W P W and gloomy fi rst act is set entirely in the dark, lifeless and—of course—the marquee value of the Austen name. satire that below-average comedians think they have L T Through 12/15: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 Rutherford drawing room. It does reveal subtle glimpses Directed by Jessica Thebus and featuring a faultless created when audiences fi nd them off ensive. Not for and 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM; no performance Thu 11/28, of the play’s subversive social commentary, though. cast, Northlight’s production follows Austen’s beloved the faint of heart, this outstanding version of Durang’s Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935- When Aunt Ann (Jeannie Aff elder) chides Rutherford Bennet sisters through a Downton Abbey-worthy holiday play (the last in Eclipse’s all-Durang season), directed by 6860, eclipsetheatre.com, $35, $25 students and daughter Janet (Christina Gorman), “You always talk crisis—by which I mean a “crisis” that everyone knows Steve Scott, is set in a post-9/11 world caught in the grips seniors. v about he and him as if there’s no one else in the world,” from the start will end in sugarplums (orange cookies Janet responds curtly, “There isn’t.” A later scene where and raisin pudding in this case). The treacle picks up Janet crouches on the fl oor removing her father’s two years a er Austen’s Pride and Prejudice ends, and shoes, all while being called spoiled and ungrateful, is follows the fate of Lydia Wickham, nee Bennet (Jennifer a disconcerting glimpse of how he views his daughter’s Latimore). When Lydia’s adulterous husband, George place in the world. (Will Mobley), crashes the Pemberley party, the festivi- Some redeeming moments come in the second ties become a farcical series of misadventures. Oversee- act, when the siblings rebel against Aunt Ann’s maxim ing all is the true heart of the household, housekeeper that “Being happy will make no porridge.” The most Mrs. Reynolds (Penny Slusher) moving path toward self-determination comes from The cast is grand. The script creaks with contrivance
Queen of Sock Pairing AUSTINDOIE ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 23 M S sss Directed by Noah Baumbach. R, min. Now playing at Music Box Theatre and Landmark’s Renaissance FILM Place Cinema; streaming on Netflix on /
NOW PLAYING A Beautiful Day in the R Neighborhood Tom Hanks continues to prove that he can do no wrong in his latest fi lm, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, where he portrays the beloved Fred Rogers from the children’s television show Mister Rogers Neighborhood. We meet Mister Rogers through the eyes of cranky journalist Lloyd Vogel, Marriage Story who’s struggling to adjust to fatherhood while grappling with the reappearance of his neglectful but well-meaning father. Vogel is played by Mat- thew Rhys and inspired by real-life journalist Tom Junod, who profi led Rogers in 1998 for Esquire magazine. The fi lm is just as sappy as you’d expect, but it manages to carefully walk the line between sentimentality and melodrama. Director Marielle Heller tells this story in unexpected ways, including an almost meta narrative and dream sequences. Fatherhood, masculinity, forgiveness, and death are explored just as they were in the original show, which lasted decades and guided countless children into adulthood. Viewers who are expecting a peek into the intimate life of Mister Rogers may be disap- pointed, though; the story is more about the impact Rogers had on Vogel—whose life begins to change thanks to him—than it is about the legendary man himself. —NDL 108 min. Now playing REVIEW in wide release LA, she takes their son, Henry, with her and Blade Runner: The Final consults high-powered divorce attorney Nora R Cut (Laura Dern). Charlie fl ies out to visit. Divorce Marriage Story Not to be confused with the mislabeled “director’s papers are served, and what was supposed to cut,” this seventh edition of Ridley Scott’s SF mas- be an amicable divorce has now turned into a terpiece (1982) is arguably the fi rst to get it all right, doesn’t pick sides messy fi ght over who gets what furniture, who fi nally telling the whole story comprehensibly. This gets how much money, and, most importantly, visionary look at Los Angeles in 2019—a singular Noah Baumbach’s latest fi lm about divorce shows who gets custody of Henry. blend of grime and glitter that captures both the horror and the allure of Reagan-era capitalism—was both parents not as enemies but as humans. It’s the small moments of sincerity in be- a commercial fl op when it fi rst appeared. Loosely tween the nastier fi ght scenes that truly show adapted from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of By M DL C how complex divorce is; they also help reveal Electric Sheep?, it follows the hero (Harrison Ford) the reality of the love that survives despite the as he tracks down and kills “replicants,” or androids. Much of the fi lm’s erotic charge and moral and loss and death of a marriage. During a meeting ideological ambiguity stem from the fact that these s a child of separated parents, I can at- The film begins with Nicole (Scarlett with their lawyers, Nicole orders food for characters are very nearly the only ones we care test that when you’re younger it’s hard Johansson), an actress, and Charlie (Adam Charlie because she remembers what he likes. about. (We never know for sure whether Ford is a Ato see both sides of the argument. Hell, Driver), a playwright, describing the things After a big fi ght where the two say things they replicant himself.) With Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, Edward James Olmos, Joe Turkel, it’s hard seeing any side that isn’t yours—the they love about each other to a mediator who’s shouldn’t, they both sob, hug, and apologize. and William J. Sanderson. —J R confusion and the pain that come with this helping them get through their divorce. The This complexity and this scene, specifically, R, 117 min. Fri 11/22-Mon 11/25: 11 PM at Logan Theatre transition are stronger than anything you’ve list is meant to remind them of why they chose allow the true range of Driver and Johansson’s felt so far. It’s easy, then, to blame one parent each other as partners, but it also develops performances to shine. Jim Allison: Breakthrough for the fallout over the other. But as you ma- the two as more than just divorcees—they are Because of my personal experience, I almost R If a whiskey-drinking Texan with a taste for outlaw country music and a 2018 Nobel Prize ture, it becomes easier to view divorce with each their own separate persons, with quirks wish Baumbach had made it easy for me to in medicine sounds more like a fi ctional character more sympathy for both parties. This seems and feelings that have evolved and changed as choose a side. But the film works because than an actual person, you haven’t heard of Jim Alli- to be the case for Noah Baumbach. In 2005, he quickly as their eight-year-old son has grown. it makes you see the good and bad in both son—even though his cutting-edge work in immuno- made The Squid and the Whale, a fi lm about It’s soon established that there have always parents. By the end, you’re rooting for both therapy may have played a hand in saving the life of someone you love. Breakthrough takes an in-depth Charlie and Nicole, hoping they fi nd their own his parent’s divorce told almost exclusively been some bumps in their relationship, two look at this modern-day hero, whose passion for from the perspective of the children. Now, 14 of the main challenges being Charlie’s con- happiness despite all the bad things and the curative medicine was ignited a er his mother’s years later, he’s made Marriage Story, a fi lm trolling tendencies and his work-based need pain they caused one another. v death from lymphoma when he was a child. The fi lm about divorce from the perspectives of all to stay in New York versus Nicole’s desire to follows Allison’s journey from his college days in the heart of Austin’s explosive 60s counterculture sides involved. be in Los Angeles. Once she books a pilot in @marndel7 into barrooms (where he’s jammed on harmonica and sat in with Willie Nelson’s band) and across the ssss EXCELLENT sss GOOD ss AVERAGE s POOR • WORTHLESS
24 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll R READERRECOMMENDEDb ALLAGESN NEWF Get showtimes and see reviews of everything playing this week at chicagoreader.com/movies. FILM
country’s leading universities and research hospitals. As it shares the history of immunotherapy, from the not-so-distant past when it was essentially considered a pseudoscience through Allison’s game-changing devel- opment of the fi rst immune checkpoint inhibitor drug, it hits upon the combination of ingenuity, drive, anties- tablishment attitude, and personal sacrifi ce it can take to truly improve the human condition. —J L PG-13, 90 min. 11/22-11/27: Fri 2 and 6:30 PM, Sat 5:15 PM, Sun 3 PM, Mon 7:45 PM, Tue 6 PM, Wed 7:45 PM at Gene Siskel Film Center The Killing Floor Originally broadcast on the PBS series American Play- house, this creaky 1984 drama follows a young Black husband and father from the south (Damien Leake) as he migrates to Chicago during World War I to work at one of the city’s south-side slaughterhouses. The relatively handsome wages (21 cents an hour!) enable him to bring his family north eventually, but a er the Armistice is signed, he’s fi red to make room for white workers return- ing home from France. Written and produced by Elsa Rassbach, the movie is most interesting for its careful Jim Allison: Breakthrough notation of how racial mistrust infected the union strug- gles of the era, though there’s a dutiful feel to the whole thing and the budget restraints begin to pinch especial- ly hard when the story arrives at the horrifi c race rioting The real miracle is that Sturges got all of this past the arch Sturges manner, it’s probably his funniest and most that tore the city apart in the summer of 1919. Bill Duke production-code offi ce in 1944, particularly the arrival of smilingly malicious fi lm. With Eddie Bracken and William (A Rage in Harlem) directed, and the cast includes such Hutton’s blessing, as scheduled on Christmas morning, Demarest. —D K 99 min. Wed 11/27, 7 and 9:30 up-and-comers as Alfre Woodard, Dennis Farina, and in the form of sextuplets. Caustic and chaotic in the PM at Doc Films v John Mahoney. —JR J 118 min. Producer-writer Elsa Rassbach and lead actor Damien Leake attend the Friday-evening screening and both Saturday screenings, which are followed by a panel discussion. 11/22-11/27: Fri 3:45 and 7:45 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 4:45 PM, Mon-Tue 7:45 PM, Wed 6 PM at Gene Siskel Film Center THIS WEEK AT The Life of Juanita Castro Made in 1965, this black-and-white Warhol feature was one of the fi rst of his fi lms to use sound, as well as some erratic camera movements. Scripted by Ronald Tavel, one of the stars, the fi lm also features Marie Menken THE LOGAN as Juanita Castro and Elecktrah as Raoul. On the same program, the earlier half-hour silent and black-and-white short Blow Job (1963), which focuses for all of its running time, and in slow motion, on the face of a young man who is presumably being serviced off screen. —J - R Fri 11/22, 7 PM at the Block Museum of Art Never Lover Come Back BLADE RUNNER One of the queasier Rock Hudson-Doris Day comedies, miss a this 1961 feature has Rock as an advertising executive NOV 22-25 AT 11 PM who keeps his clients happy with booze and broads. show Doris is a prim rival who decides to go a er his new account, unaware that the product doesn’t really exist. again. A gold mine for students of 60s cultural attitudes—why is it that movies from this period look much more dated than the fi lms of the 30s and 40s?—but not much of a picture. Delbert Mann directed; with Tony Randall, Edie Adams, Jack Oakie, Jack Kruschen, and Joe Flynn. —D K 107 min. Sat 11/23-Sun 11/24, 11:30 AM at Music Box Theatre PLANES, TRAINS, & AUTOMOBILES EARLY The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek NOV 26-28 AT 10:30 PM R Preston Sturges’s aff ably blasphemous version of the Nativity, with Betty Hutton as a World War II WARNINGS good-time girl who fi nds herself in the family way a er a dimly remembered night with a soldier whose chicagoreader.com/early name may or may not have been Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki. 2646 N. MILWAUKEE AVE | CHICAGO, IL | THELOGANTHEATRE.COM | 773.342.5555 ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 25 Life was just a party: Prince’s 1999 and Chicago house music The Purple One could hardly have avoided infl uencing a genre whose earliest, most ardent fans were queer Black and Brown kids. By J R
he track starts with a four-on-the-fl oor drum pattern. A sudden keyboard hit buzzes like an electrical wire. Paired vo- calists enter: “We can’t help ourselves,” they coo in harmony. “We all wanna be TPrince.” Chicago producer Felix da Housecat speaks for generations of house musicians on 2009’s “We All Wanna Be Prince,” paying homage to the artist who helped shape the genre during its birth in the early 80s. The track’s color palette is all purple—it borrows shamelessly Prince in 1982, and lovingly from the danceable electronic surrounded by sounds of Prince’s 1999. Just like house music, rare releases and ephemera from that 1982 double album remains vital and in- the extensive fl uential today, and it’ll be reissued by Warner Prince collection Brothers on November 29, remastered and of Chicago house producer Melvin packaged in three increasingly lavish editions Oliphant III, aka that include as many as 35 unreleased live and Traxx ALLEN BEAULIEU/ studio tracks. RHINO RYAN EDMUND FOR Prince’s fi rst album with his band the Rev- CHICAGO READER olution, 1999 was a commercial breakthrough for him—for the fi rst time, he hit the top ten on the Billboard 200, and he sent his fi rst two singles to the top ten on the Hot 100. Still a couple years away from the stratospheric created house music. widely credited with creating the fi rst house hums a few bars of the intro into the phone as fame of 1984’s Purple Rain, Prince was then Prince’s early singles reached Chicago in single, 1984’s “On and On.” “With Chicago proof. Producer and DJ Steve “Silk” Hurley, an enigmatic former wunderkind, refining clubs and on the radio, via WDAI (now WLS- being a disco kinda market, it fi t in very well. who’d go on to top the UK singles chart with and expanding his sound five albums into FM, it switched to a disco format on the fi rst You could play ‘Soft and Wet,’ ‘Sexy Dancer,’ the J.M. Silk track “Jack Your Body” in 1987, a Warner Brothers contract. But beginning day of 1979) and Herb Kent’s early-80s WXFM all that kind of stu¤ in your set.” bought the 1980 Prince album Dirty Mind at with his debut, For You, in 1978 and continu- show Punk Out (which played to the South Prolific producer and music entrepreneur the recommendation of a high school friend. ing through 1999 and beyond, Prince’s early Loop juice-bar crowd with a mix of punk, new Vince Lawrence, who wrote “On and On” with He had to borrow money to a¤ ord it, because albums left a mark on a generation of Chicago wave, and R&B). “A lot of his songs in those Saunders, says “I Wanna Be Your Lover” (a at the time his budget only allowed for 45s. musicians—and they took inspiration from days were very four-on-the-floor anyway,” single from the 1979 album Prince) was one Prince’s brazen, androgynous sexuality his sexuality and his synthesizers when they says DJ and producer Jesse Saunders, who’s of the fi rst songs he learned on piano—and he was key to his persona from the start, and it 26 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll 3730 N. CLARK ST METROCHICAGO.COM @ METROCHICAGO
TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS 2020 WITH BLACK DRIVE-BY MARBLE TRUCKERS HOOPS FRI MAR 13 SAT JAN 18
AJJ XIU XIU SQUAREPUSHER (W/ SPECIAL GUEST FRI APR 17 JONATHAN MEIBURG) EMPEROR X THU MAY 21 Oliphant with a live Prince recording made in Vienna, Austria, in May 1987; Chicago house producer and music entrepreneur Vince Lawrence RYAN EDMUND FOR CHICAGO READER TYLER CURTIS
SMARTBARCHICAGO.COM 3730 N CLARK ST | 21+
SATURDAY JLIN 11.30 CQQCHIFRUIT made him irresistible to Chicago’s youth—his III, aka Traxx, wants to do the same thing as SOLD earliest hard-core fans were queer Black and a DJ that Prince did as a performer, and he’s Brown kids, but very shortly the mania was blunt about what it is: “l want you to fuck,” he general. “Every adolescent teenager was into says. “That is how serious it is for me, because the oversexualized lyrics of Prince,” says Law- that is what he did, and no one really talks rence, laughing. “Do Me, Baby,” “Let’s Pretend about that.” While touring Europe in the 90s, We’re Married,” and “Head” played at all-ages Oliphant amassed a large collection of Prince clubs and house parties. When producer and bootlegs and other rarities. When he met the songwriter Harold “Big Ed” Matthews, a house man himself at a Paisley Park party in the head from the early days who started making early 2010s, Oliphant says, the Purple One was his own tracks in the 90s, fi rst heard the term impressed enough by what he’d heard about “house music,” the only meaning he knew for the collection to pass along more music from TICKETS AVAILABLE VIA METRO + SMARTBAR WEBSITES + METRO BOX OFFICE. NO SERVICE FEES AT BOX OFFICE! it was music too risque for the radio—music his vault to Oliphant via a mutual friend who you would only hear inside. worked as a caretaker for Prince, looking after Chicago house producer Melvin Oliphant his stepmother and his doves. J ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 27 continued from 27 Oliphant always includes Prince in his sets, specifi cally cuts from his archive of unreleased material. “It was Prince who taught us what Prince and ‘fuck’ is,” he says. “‘Fuck’ is what we all hope his band the to achieve in this life, when you break us down Revolution during the to our core. So when I say ‘fuck,’ I mean Prince 1999 era; Vince was literally the embodiment of ‘fuck.’” Lawrence’s fi rst Prince’s easy openness about sexuality is group, Z Factor, photographed also at the core of house music’s pursuit of in summer 1982 pleasure, manifest in classics such as Jamie in a park near Principle’s “Your Love” (especially the 1987 his mother’s home, with future version produced by Frankie Knuckles). In house pioneer harmony with singer Adrienne Jett, Principle Jesse Saunders moans, “I need your touch / Don’t make me second from le wait for your love,” sounding like he’s rushing and Lawrence at far right closer to climax. In 2016, Noisey called it “one ALLEN BEAULIEU/ of the sexiest songs in the annals of electronic RHINO VINCE LAWRENCE music” and “one of the most enduring.” In case the libidinousness of his work didn’t make the connection clear enough, singer and lyricist Byron Walford had chosen a pseud- onym that pointed to his chief infl uence: a ref- erence to one of Prince’s many aliases, Jamie Starr, combined with a surname that literally had “Prince” in it. “Jamie Principle was so Prince-like in his mannerisms and demeanor that we idolized him too,” Lawrence says. With his eyeliner and high-heeled boots— and a sexuality miles from the macho sleaze of similarly glammy hair-metal stars—Prince anticipated by decades the inclusive attitude about queerness and gender variance dis- played in much of today’s mainstream pop. And house music, like Prince and like disco, originally caught on with queer Black and Lat- inx audiences, building to critical mass at leg- endary Chicago clubs such as the Warehouse and its successor, the Muzic Box. Word spread fast: soon even straight fans like Matthews and his friends were staying out past dawn at widely used by recording artists in the early like, ‘What the fuck are they doing to these Est.Est.1954 1954 Celebrating over gay clubs, because the music was better there 80s, Prince manipulated its preloaded drum drums?’” Lawrence says. “That drove us to try 6165 years of service service to Chicago! than anywhere else. samples, sometimes with guitar pedals, to ar- playing the Mattel Synsonics drum machine— 1800 W. DIVISION Chicago singer Jermaine Stewart, a friend rive at distinctive tones that were organically which was a toy—through the PA.” (773) 486-9862 of Lawrence’s, released a Prince-influenced funky while clearly synthetic. Such was his “I remember I searched high and low trying synth-pop single in 1983 called “The Word Is ability to program grooves with the Linn that to figure out how he made that sound, and Come enjoy one of in 2016 Spin commented that he’d mastered it found out he was using a Linn drum machine, Chicago’s finest beer gardens! Out,” whose lyrics about a clandestine rela- tionship convinced plenty of folks that it was “like Miles Davis did the trumpet.” which I already had,” says Saunders. “All he FEBRUARYSEPTEMBERJANOVEMBERNUARY 11...... 20 23 21 ...... MIKEDA AMERICANVID QUINN FLABBY FELTEN TROUBADOUR HOFFMAN SHOW NIGHT 8PM SEPTEMBERJANOVEMBERNUARY 12...... 21 22 .....WAGNER TOURS AMERICAN& MORSE DRAFT describing a same-sex couple. “The word is The LM-1 and its successor the LinnDrum did was turn the side-stick all the way down,” FEBRUARYSEPTEMBER 22 24 .....THE .....THEDADY RKNAMOSPURCELLSROOM MEN JANUARY 13...... PATOIS DJ SKID LICIOUS out that you and I are lovers,” he sang, “that became highly desirable to house artists in detuning the machine’s sampled cross-stick SEPTEMBERJANOVEMBERNUARY 14...... 23 23 ....WHOLESOMERADIO THEWHITEWOLFSONICPRINCESS POLKAHOLICSTONY DO DJRO NIGHTSARIO GROUP MURPHYLETTERBOMBMOJO THOMPSON 49 9:30PM you and I been getting it on.” As Lawrence re- Chicago, but for most they would remain rim hit into a deep knock. Once Saunders JANOVEMBERNUARY 17...... 24 MIKE WHOLESOMERADIO FELTENJAMIE WAGNER DJ & NIGHT FRIENDS JANOVEMBERNUARY 18...... 25 RC BIG MIKE BAND FEL 7PMTON FEBRUARYNOVEMBER 25 27 .....WHOLESOMERADIOTHE THE RON MAD AND POETS RACHEL SHOW DJ NIGHT calls, “Jermaine said a lot of his strength came out of reach—few were made, and new they mastered the e¡ ect on his own Linn, he used it SEPTEMBERJANOVEMBERNUARY 19...... 24 29 .....RC SCOTTY BIG BAND SITU “BAD 7PMATION BOY”DAV BRADBURYID FEBRUARY 26 .....RCBIRDGANGSAND BIGJONMAXLIELLIAM 9:30PMBAMCDONALDND 7PM ANNA from Controversy. Prince saying ‘Am I black or cost $10,000 to $18,000 in 2019 dollars. “We on several tracks he produced or coproduced JADECEMBERNUARY 20...... 2 TITTY PROSPECT CITTY FIRST FOURWARD 9:30PM PROBLEMS DECEMBER 4 MORSE & WAGNER 6PM white, am I straight or gay?’” couldn’t wait to get a LinnDrum,” Lawrence in the mid-80s, including “Funk You Up,” FEBRUARYJADECEMBERNUARY 21...... 28 5 .....PETERDUDE SMILIN’ SAMETO BOBBY CASANONY DO ANDROVASARIO THEQUARTET CLEMTONES GROUP 8PM SEPTEMBERJADECEMBERNUARY 22...... 26 6 .....PETER BK READ CASANOVA RC AND BIG QUARTETBATHEND UNDERACHIEVERS 7PM Prince also shaped the sonics of house says. “We wanted that side-stick sound and “Love Can’t Turn Around,” and “Real Love” MARCHSEPTEMBERDECEMBER 1...... SMILIN’ 27 7 .....DORIAN UNIBROWTAJ BOBBY AND THE CLEMTONES JADECEMBERNUARY 24...... 8 HEISENBERG PETER CASONOUNCERTAINTYVA QUARTET PLAYERS 7PM music. On 1999, he debuted a sound that would the smashing, detuned snare drum like from (a version of which featured Chicago DJ and SEPTEMBERJADECEMBERNUARY 25...... 28 9 ..... TO RCURS BIG THE BAND WICK 7PM MARCH 2...... ICEBULLY PULPITBOX AND BIG HOUSE JANUARY 26...... PROSPECT THEHEPKATS FOUR 9:30PM become his signature: a distinctly Prince-ifi ed 1999.” producer Farley “Jackmaster” Funk scratching SEPTEMBERDECEMBER 29 10 .....SOMEBODY’S FLABBYSKIPPIN’ HOFFMAN SINS ROCK SHOW MARCHDECEMBER 3...... CHIDITAROD 11 FEATURING ELIZABETH’S JOE LANASA CRAZY AND TALITTLERRINGTON THING 10PM JANUARY 27...... FEATURING THE STRAY JAKE BODEWARLTS 9PM Linn LM-1 Drum Computer. It’s audible from Prince radically tweaked the sound of with Prince records). MARCHSEPTEMBERDECEMBER 7...... 30 12 .....OFF FLABBYJA THEMIE VINE WAHOFFMAN 4:30PMGNER &SHOW FRIENDS 8PM JADECEMBERNUARY 28...... 13 NUCLEAR STRAY WHOLESOMERADIO JAZZBOLTS QUARKTET 7:30PM DJ NIGHT the very start of the album, its knocks and his preferred equipment, though, so at first Oliphant hears plenty of Prince in “It’s EVERYEVERY TUESD TUESDAY (EXCEPT 2ND) 2ND)ATAT8PM8PM bumps cascading through the title track’s hardly anyone knew he used a Linn. “We were About House (O¡ Beat Acid Mix),” a 1989 cut OPENOPEN MIC ON MIC TUESDAY HOSTED BYEVENINGS JIMIJON (EXCEPT AMERICA 2ND) iconic synth fanfare. Though the machine was trying to get the Prince sound, and we were by Trax Records group J.R.’s House Co. with
28 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll found out Prince did everything himself,” he says. “They fashioned themselves after that. A do-it-all type of artist.” Prince was already a profound infl uence in Chicago during the days of Lawrence’s first group, Z Factor, active from 1981 till ’83. “You Oliphant spins Prince records can very easily find group photos of Z Fac- at his home in Rogers Park. tor—you can just see it,” he says. “You can see RYAN EDMUND FOR CHICAGO READER all these poor Black kids trying to be Prince. That’s just what it was.” Prince dabbled in house music throughout its commercial peak in the 90s, releasing house remixes of several songs (“1999,” “My Name Is Prince,” “The Future,” “Do Your Dance”), and he continued recording new material until his death in 2016. In a 2012 e-mail interview with Time Out Chicago, the Purple One refl ected on his early-80s shows at the Uptown Theatre Felix da Housecat on keyboards. It’s driven itual negativity following a bad experience on to escape all that.” and Park West. “We’re not 1 2 reminisce, but by a relentless barrage of hi-hats and steady, ecstasy, which was peaking in popularity as a Prince’s greatest impact on Chicago may we always got the audience we deserved and powerful kicks and snares from a Linn. “The club drug at the time.) Instead Prince released have been to remind it that a young Black that time was pretty wild. Chicago is a music song was made with a bass guitar, which is un- Lovesexy, and The Black Album existed only man in a deindustrialized midwestern city town,” he said. “My father spoke of it often as heard of in Chicago house music at this time,” as a bootleg until its belated o cial release in could make music that reached around the being one of the places he liked 2 play best. Oliphant says. He considers it a descendent of 1994. world. “Big Ed” Matthews took inspiration They have seen the best and expect nothing the extended fi lm version of “Let’s Go Crazy,” Hurley saw no use in pursuing credit for a from Prince’s end-to-end talent: he wrote, per- less.” v with its long instrumental breakdown. “Who- song that wasn’t generating any on-the-books formed, arranged, and produced his own work. ever the producer was took the ideas of what revenue. “Sometimes patience plays a part in “People in the business, even in house music, @jackriedy Prince was doing and made it sound sicker getting what you deserve, not aggression,” he than ever.” says. His forbearance paid o a few years later, For both Prince and house producers, the when he was contracted to remix Prince’s 1991 Linn drum machine serves the same purpose: single “Gett O ” in his signature house style. a pulse that hints at transcendence through While remixing an artist he idolizes, Hurley physicality, whether on the dance floor, in says, he likes to play their vocals alone, so he church, or in the bedroom. can pretend he’s in the room with them. Once Steve “Silk” Hurley was inspired by the he arrived at the remix’s pulsing organ line, Oberheim synthesizer work of Prince and his the rest of the track came quickly. It eventually former proteges Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. got its own video, quickly incorporated into Hurley played an Oberheim OB-8, a model MTV’s rotation. “I was like a fan sitting in they’d all used, on his 1987 hit “Jack Your there, listening to him singing over my track,” Body.” Hurley says. That same year, Hurley got a call from Cat To this day, Hurley isn’t sure why Prince Glover, a Chicagoan who’d joined Prince’s chose to use a rap he’d written on The Black entourage as a dancer and vocalist. She was Album. “Maybe because the rap was saying excited to share the news that Prince’s forth- ‘Music is the key to set yourself free’—that’s coming project, The Black Album, would in- what happened with him and what happened clude her rendition of a rap written by Hurley, with me,” he says. “I was kind of a lost soul, be- originally from J.M. Silk’s 1985 single “Music cause I wasn’t a great student. I was very quiet Is the Key.” It would appear on a song called during my fi rst two years of high school, but “Cindy C.” came out of my shell when I was around music. On The Black Album, Prince dabbled in and I found myself through DJing, and played key- sometimes reacted against hip-hop and house, boards in a show. I didn’t really know what I and it’s compelling to hear him work with wanted to do with my life, and I found myself genres he himself influenced. Hurley looked through music. forward to the royalties he’d get from a contri- “I was talking about the song could set you bution to a major-label superstar’s song, but free, and you could be away from the world his hopes were dashed when Prince abruptly right now when you listen to the song,” Hurley withdrew the album just before its release. continues. “But I was also talking about DJing (A probably apocryphal story in Per Nilsen’s and the culture of house music in general. 2004 Prince biography Dance Music Sex Ro- When people went to the house-music parties, mance claims he connected the record to spir- there weren’t a lot of fi ghts. People were there ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 29 Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of November 21
MUSIC b ALL AGES F
eler”—these are arguably Cohen’s strongest songs PICK OF THE WEEK THURSDAY21 yet. Onstage she plays her hushed music as quietly as it demands, confi ning her showiness to the fab- Itasca Matchess and Glyders open. 9:30 PM, ulous 70s trousers she always seems to wear—this On her debut album, New York rapper Young Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $12, $10 in sure-to-be intimate performance should warm our M.A sets her sights on hip-hop’s crown advance. 21+ already winter-frozen souls. —S K Under the name Itasca, Kayla Cohen has released some of the most sublime under-the-radar singer- N av Schoolboy Q headlines. 7 PM, Aragon songwriter sounds of the decade. As a teenager, Ballroom, 1106 W. Lawrence, $40-$215. b Cohen picked up the guitar to explore the experi- mental strains of music she liked, and soon her own The world was introduced to Nav by his featured tunes began to bubble to the surface. In 2012, she verse on “Biebs in the Trap,” off Travis Scott’s land- moved from New York to Los Angeles and released mark 2016 Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight. In its her fi rst cassette, Grace Riders on the Road, which alarmingly candid tale of drug abuse and the party showcases her breezy, sepia-toned vibrations in life, Nav proved a good complement to Scott while sparse, mostly instrumental pieces that occasion- leaning into the disaffected, robotic rap-singing ally veer into fuzzy psychedelic drones. She found that the psychedelic trap mastermind had popu- her niche on 2014’s Unmoored by the Wind, bring- larized. Nav comes from the same Toronto hip-hop ing dreamy, melancholic melodies to the fore- scene as Drake and the Weeknd, so “glassy-eyed front in a style that recalls 70s German downer- confessional” is very much his zone, but the mate- folk chanteuse Sibylle Baier. The following year, rial on his past few releases has felt like he’s trying Cohen put out an all-instrumental cassette of sub- to play catch-up to his hometown peers with shal- tle acoustic-guitar ruminations, Ann’s Tradition, and low but catchy forays into empty excess. Not until in 2016 she made her full-band debut with Open this spring’s Bad Habits did Nav seem to hit his to Chance—released on killing-it label Paradise of stride for the fi rst time: the album is full of undeni- Bachelors. Cohen’s laconic vision blossoms on the able choruses and raw, bleak lyrics, and even when full-band album: she comes across like a wisened, he starts to lose steam, he keeps things moving with weary troubadour against a backdrop of drums and appearances from some of hip-hop’s current crop of pedal-steel guitar, and her material echoes the mel- greats, including the Weeknd, Young Thug, and the low, introspective Topanga/Laurel Canyon sound master of fucked-up-and-sad rap himself, Future. of early 70s songwriters such as Judee Sill, Car- Though Nav will never overtake Drake as Toronto’s ole King, and Joni Mitchell. Cohen wrote her latest king of emotional hip-hop, it’s exciting to see him album, Spring (out November 1), in an adobe house start to carve out a proper spot for himself in the in rural New Mexico, and though it’s loosely based city. —L C on her experiences living in the southwest, it fea- tures contributions from several Chicago musicians, including Cooper Crain (of Bitchin Bajas and Cave) URochromes Show Me the Body headlines; and Jim Elkington (who adds string arrangements). Urochromes, Buggin Out, and Bruised open. Her Bandcamp page describes the album as “atmo- 7:30 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $15. 17+ spheric,” “tranquil,” and “sun-dappled,” and I can think of no better terms to describe the gorgeously A er Urochromes posted the video for their fraz- subtle and yearning “Blue Spring” and “Only a Trav- zled ripper “Hair So Big” to YouTube this spring, a
ANDREW BOYLE Y M A Fri 11/22, 7 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, sold out. b
WHENNEWYORK rapper Katorah Marrero, contextualize a Ferris Bueller quote turned aka Young M.A, released “OOOUUU” in 2016, meme), but hip-hop races along in hyper- its low-key braggadocio, minimal instru- drive, and the time Young M.A spent out mental track, and easy, in-the-pocket fl ow of the spotlight working on her album has quickly made it inescapable—and turned felt like an eternity. Fortunately, her perfor- Young M.A into one of the most celebrated mances on Herstory in the Making prove she names in hip-hop. The next year, she includ- put those years to good use—she infuses ed the song on the 2017 EP Herstory, and even her iciest, fi ercest lines with emotional she’s spent most of the past two years work- depth. The record’s 21 tracks total nearly 70 ing on her debut full-length, Herstory in the minutes, and instead of focusing on an obvi- Making (M.A. Music/3D), which dropped in ous single, Young M.A has made sure every
September. Life moves pretty fast (to mis- second counts. —L G Las Cafeteras RAFA CARDENAS
30 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard. MUSIC
Fran REILLY DREW
commenter promised, “Before I die I will give Gil- enous themes and melodies, European stringed bert Gottfried a Urochromes record.” I like to think instruments, and African call-and-response vocals Gottfried came up because Urochromes’ debut per- and syncopated rhythms. It took root in U.S. cities formance (captured on the band’s 2016 compilation in the 80s and is now being transformed by new Anthology) features front man Jackie “Jackieboy” generations of musicians—including Los Cafeteras, McDermott unloading some harsh screams that who are committed activists and second-generation sound ripped from the famously obnoxious com- Americans with experience navigating the multiple ic’s throat. Jackieboy launched the two-piece band cultures of immigrant children. They certainly don’t in western Massachusetts in the mid-00s, and his stay in folkloric territory, instead adding hip-hop, original concept for the group is basically perfor- Spanglish pop, R&B, funk, punk, and rock to give mance art: he’d wanted to play the part of a Jew- their tunes a fierce, raucous energy that crosses ish comedian from New York who’d stumbled into musical borders with abandon. In their exhilarating the role of singer for a neanderthal hardcore band, concerts, Los Cafeteras jam on tunes from their two and to split Urochromes’ sets evenly between music studio releases, which include original material and and stand-up. That plan didn’t quite pan out, but his takes on classic protest songs, among them a Mexi- comedic sensibility nonetheless manifests itself in can folk-rock version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Urochromes’ puckish energy, manic drive, and out- Is Your Land” and a hip-hop twist on “La Bamba” sider fl air. Backed by a drum machine (far from the titled “La Bamba Rebelde” in which they declare, norm in the hardcore scene), Jackieboy sings while “Yo no creo en fronteras, yo cruzaré!” (“I don’t guitarist Dick Riddick supersizes the band’s vitriol- believe in borders, I will cross!”). The bandmates are ic punches with razor-sharp riff s and colossal feed- all multi-instrumentalists; between them they play back. On this year’s Trope House (Wharf Cat), Uro- several instruments from the son jarocho tradition, chromes tamp down their sonic assault to exper- such as the quijada (a donkey jawbone) and the iment with different kinds of songwriting; on the jarana (similar to a small guitar), as well as keyboard, sedate “Rumshpringa,” Riddick plays with a lacka- bass, drums, and glockenspiel (a surprising addition, daisical charm that’s just as powerful as the band’s but trust me, it works). Several members are also hardest tracks. —L G accomplished dancers, and they always incorporate exuberant zapateado (a traditional dance style that involves intricate percussive footwork on a wood- en platform) into their joyful celebrations of immi- FRIDAY22 grant storytelling and survival. —C M J Las Cafeteras Sonorama DJs and DJ Rebel Betty open. 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $22, $20 advance. 18+ Kai Wachi Sam Lamar opens. 8:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake, $22, $18 in advance. 18+ Chicano indie-folk band Las Cafeteras formed in 2005, a er their members forged friendships while “Wow, this is very 2012 dubstep,” my 16-year-old taking classes in traditional music, dance, and art at quipped when he heard Demigod (Kannibalen), Los Angeles Mexican American cultural center the the latest album from DJ and producer Kai Wachi. Eastside Cafe. The six-piece have built a signature Sure enough, Wachi did get his start that year, and hybrid sound rooted in the Afro-Mexican genre he’s been keeping the faith ever since—which my son jarocho, which employs a rich mixture of indig- son and I agree isn’t such a bad thing. The title J ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 31 MUSIC N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG . .
JUST ADDED ON SALE THIS FRIDAY! continued from 31 Funkadesi • rd Anniversary Concert track doesn’t exactly smash any Skrillex paradigms, with special guests John Doe, Kristin Hersh, but the sound is enormous: synths rev up to thrash- & Grant Lee Phillips: Exile Follies metal speeds and beats drop from great heights to Joe Henry smash open with a screech of fi lthy static. Wachi’s Marty Stuart and His Fabulous rapping on “Level” captures the album’s lyrical con- Superlatives cerns succinctly: alongside the cheerful machine- The Secret Sisters with special guest Logan Ledger gun automation of the hammering electronic pulses, FOR TICKETS, VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG he delivers lines such as “Shoot it / Snort it / Smoke it / Fuck it / I be on another level.” He does stretch himself a bit on “Photograph,” where Claudia Bou- SATURDAY, NOVEMBER PM vette’s sensuous, R&B-pop vocals slide into his fl urry of noise like a rebel ship swooping into the Death Ian Maksin Star. “Heartless,” a collaboration with fellow Boise Album Release Concert for "SEMPRE" native and heavily Auto-Tuned singer-rapper YLTI, is positively mellow, with gentle ambient synths SATURDAY, NOVEMBER & PM and xylophone tones that seem more suited to a hotel lounge than a rave. But the bulk of the album Irish Christmas in (including, unsurprisingly, songs called “Break” and “Kamikaze”) is true to form—loud and frenetic, with America blasting bass. —N B
SUNDAY, DECEMBER : PM Young M.a See Pick of the Week, page 30. The Nut Tapper 7 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, sold out. b Christmas Show Family show SATURDAY23 FRIDAY, DECEMBER PM Fran Tobacco City and Mia Joy open. 9:30 PM, The Bad Plus Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10. 21+
SUNDAY, DECEMBER PM Maria Jacobson, front woman of Chicago indie-rock group Fran, recently did a podcast interview with Funkadesi CHIRP where she talks about how she turned to rd Anniversary Concert with special guests music while attending Bennington College. “Since I grew up doing theater, it was always doing some- one else’s work, and I always felt comfortable doing FRIDAY, DECEMBER PM that,” she says. “There was a shi in college where I really started to resent acting because it felt like I Bettye LaVette was a pawn in someone else’s idea.” When Jacobson
SATURDAY, JANUARY PM Mipso with special guests Bridget Kearney & Benjamin Lazar Davis
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY PM Sam Bush
fi rst picked up music as a creative outlet, she’d play Christine Fellows John K. Samson guitar in private and sketch out pieces of songs, the headlines. 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, way some people jot down thoughts in a journal. sold out. 17+ ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL But in the past few years she’s made her art quite public, and since Fran’s fi rst EP, 2015’s More Enough, It’d be a mistake to call Christine Fellows’s two Killer Ballads: Celebrating Murder Ballads and other Songs of Death she’s helped build the band into one of Chicago’s previous albums “concept albums,” but each has most promising indie-rock newcomers. This headlin- a singular point of inspiration: Femmes de Chez ing set at the Hideout celebrates Fran’s new debut Nous (2011) was born out of the Canadian singer- WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE album, A Private Picture (Fire Talk), whose taut, songwriter and poet’s research into the history of thoughtful songs are further sharpened by a pris- women in Winnipeg (conducted during her resi- Old Town School of Folk Music tine elegance even in their noisiest moments. “Com- dency at Le Musée de Saint-Boniface, a Franco- and Cenzontles present The Cenzontles Indigenous Celebration pany” in particular ties together anxious, fl uttering Manitoban culture museum housed in a former nun- The East Loop passages and raw, ferocious climaxes so masterful- nery). Burning Daylight (2014) is a collection of odes ly that its surges stay cathartic no matter how many to the Canadian north, partly inspired by Jack Lon- times you listen. —L G don stories. On her most recent record, last year’s OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG Christine Fellows LUCKYGIRLPHOTOGRAPHY Roses on the Vine, Fellows shi s focus to a seem- ingly smaller scale: a butterfly emerging from its 32 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard. MUSIC
cocoon, children planning for the future, and other moments of transformation and connection. She’s MONDAY25 joined by a host of veteran musicians, including her longtime collaborators Jason Tait, Greg Smith, and Cherie Currie & Brie Darling White John K. Samson (Samson is also her husband, and Mystery opens. 8 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. plays with Tait and Smith in indie-rock four-piece Randolph, $25-$35. b the Weakerthans). Fellows, Tait, and Samson have been working together since her fi rst solo record, Every few years there seems to be a wave of think 2000’s 2 Little Birds, and Smith joined them two pieces that herald a new age of “women in rock.” years later for The Last One Standing. Roses shows That’s great in principle, but in practice, writers Fellows in peak form. On “Spell to Bring Lost Crea- have o en bolstered their case for the latest wave tures Home,” she expertly reconfigures the work by erasing the many, many women who’ve led the of poet Kathleen Raine in a song that feels like a way for it, which results in an ahistorical mess that haunting blessing underscored by menacing strings. throws generations of women rockers under the The album ends with “The Swimmer,” a gentle trib- tour bus. Cherie Currie and Brie Darling aren’t hav- ute to Faron Hall, a local Winnipeg hero. He saved ing it. Darling made her mark in the late 60s and three people from drowning in separate instances early 70s as the drummer of Fanny, one of the fi rst in 2009 and received several awards for his bravery, all-woman rock bands, before going on to record including the Mayor’s Medal of Valor, but he also with artists such as Carole King, ELO, and the Temp- struggled with homelessness, the lasting eff ects of tations. And in the mid-70s Currie fronted teenage family tragedy (both his mother and his sister were rock group the Runaways, whose members also murdered), and alcoholism; in 2014 he drowned in included Lita Ford and Joan Jett. The two pioneer- Winnipeg’s Red River. In the song’s fi nal moments, ing musicians fi nally met in 2017, when Currie was Fellows off ers a hand to Hall, singing, “You are not invited to sing on the Fanny retrospective album alone / The world is your home / You’ll always ring Fanny Marked the Earth, and they hit it off quick- clear to me.” Though the world that Fellows is sing- ly. In August they released their debut as a duo, ing from—a world that would’ve given Hall the sup- The Motivator, which takes its name from a T. Rex port he needed—isn’t quite here yet, you can almost track. Darling and Currie share vocals throughout see it just before the echoes of her voice fade away . the record, which contains nine well-chosen if not —E B groundbreaking covers of songs by the Rolling J
LIVE MUSIC IN URBAN WINE COUNTRY 1200 W RANDOLPH ST, CHICAGO, IL 60607 | 312.733.WINE
los lobos 12.25 CHRISTMAS FOR THE JEWS FEAT. 12.8-10 UPCOMING SHOWS JOEL CHASNOFF, JASON SURAN, DON’T MISS... SOHRAB FOROUZESH 12.11 Dan Rodriguez 11.30-12.1 BODEANS 11.22+23 heather mcdonald 12.26-27 SHEMEKIA COPELAND 12.12 Kevin Ross 12.3 WHINE DOWN WITH JANA KRAMER WITH KEVIN BURT 11.24 Chicago Philharmonic THE MASH|UP EXPERIENCE 12.13 RODRIGUEZ OF SEARCHING 12.28 FREDDIE JACKSON Brunch Series: Cabernet, FOR SUGARMAN 12.15 Jane Lynch 12.29 BODEANS Clarinet, and Strings 12.19-20 MUSIQ SOULCHILD SWINGIN’ LITTLE CHRISTMAS 12.30-1.1 AVERY*SUNSHINE 11.24 Enter the Haggis 12.21 LEVI KREIS - HOME FOR THE 12.16 Jump, Little Children HOLIDAYS 1.3 PETER ASHER WITH HULA HI-FI 12.2 Nat King Cole Centennial 12.22 CHICAGO PHILHARMONIC 1.4 SPAGA - 2 PM SHOW Holiday Celebration BRUNCH SERIES: MERRY & BRIGHT 1.4 THE CLAUDETTES 12.17 jake clemons WITH NORA O’CONNOR 12.21-23 MICHAEL MCDERMOTT 12.7 Chanté Moore 12.18 stephen kellogg MISCHIEF & MISTLETOE 1.5 JON B. nov nov nov dec 26 25 + 29 4 27 Cherie Currie & Brie Darling Digable Planets Dwele Jane Monheit with White Mystery ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 33 Find more music listings at MUSIC chicagoreader.com/soundboard.
continued from 33 Stones, the Kinks, Stevie Wonder, John Lennon, and Pete Townsend’s late 60s project Thunderclap New- man. But the real selling point here is their three originals, whose spontaneous, lusty feel proves you can be world-weary without losing your joie de vivre. —M K TUESDAY26 Jozef Van Wissem Matt Jencik and Carrier open. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $10. 21+
For the better part of two decades, Jozef Van Wis- sem has been on a mission to challenge the notion that his main instrument is a museum piece. The 57-year-old Dutchman has recontextualized the Renaissance lute by submerging its sound in Mau- rizio Bianchi’s industrial noise, by improvising with guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama, and by engaging in instru- High on Fire COURTESY THE ARTIST mental duels with feedback guitarist and fi lmmaker Jim Jarmusch. But on his latest album, We Adore You, You Have No Name (Consouling Sound), Van Wissem has returned to the gallery. “You Know That I Love You” is modeled on the madrigal that’s being on track. Then in July, cofounder and drummer performed by the boy musician in Michelangelo Des Kensel—whose relentless, thunderous gallop Caravaggio’s 16th-century painting Lute Player— WEDNESDAY27 anchors the band’s signature sound—announced Van Wissem was commissioned by the Hermitage his departure. But High on Fire are unbreakable in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to play the piece during High on Fire Power Trip, Devil Master, and veterans who’ve soldiered through the trenches of an unveiling event for the restored artwork in late Creeping Death open. 7 PM, Metro, 3730 N. metal before (especially Pike, who essentially laid 2017. On another song, “Bow Down,” he sings about Clark, $30, $25 in advance. 18+ down the template for stoner metal as we know it the medieval practice of drinking alcohol because when he cofounded Sleep nearly 30 years ago), so untreated water was so unsafe—and given the ongo- It’s finally happening! High on Fire, the most it takes more than losing a drummer and a few toes ing crisis in Flint, Michigan, it would seem that not beloved heavy-metal band of the modern era, to stop them. This fall Pike and bassist Jeff Matz much has changed since the dark ages. Van Wis- are going on tour in support of their eighth stu- have teamed up with Wear Your Wounds drummer sem last played here in 2013, and since then his dio album and best release yet, last year’s Electric Chris Maggio, who’s previously played in Coliseum other records have added electric guitar, pro- Messiah. They’ve tried twice before, but both times and Trap Them and knows plenty about hammer- Cherie Currie and Brie Darling COREY PARKS grammed beats, and reverb-saturated vocals to they hit roadblocks. In January, the band canceled ing out massive, monster grooves. With its crushing, the sparse, palindromic fi gures he plays on his lute. the second of two tours when singer and guitar- boneheaded riffs, soaring howls, and artillery-fire He only tours with his main instrument, but you ist Matt Pike, who’s battling diabetes, had some of drumming, Electric Messiah is everything that’s can expect to hear him sing a couple tunes at this his toes surgically removed. A few weeks later, the great about heavy metal, past or present—even show. —B M group won the first Grammy of their two-decade without Kensel, it’ll be amazing to see these songs career, and things seemed to be getting back live. —L C v EARLY WARNINGS NEVER MISS A SHOW AGAIN CHICAGOREADER.COM/EARLY
EARLY WARNINGS34 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll NEVEREARLY MISS WARNINGS A SHOW AGAIN NEVERCHICAGOREADER.COM/EARLY MISS A SHOW AGAIN CHICAGOREADER.COM/EARLY CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME
b ALL AGES F EARLY WARNINGS WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK Boys 1/11/20, 7 PM, Schubas Never miss Washed Out DJ Set with Hood a show again. Internet 12/20, 9:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Sign up for the Bob Weir & Wolf Bros 3/11- newsletter at 3/12/20, 7 PM, Chicago chicagoreader. GOSSIP Theatre b WGCI Big Jam 2019 featuring com/early Migos, Dababy, Megan Thee WOLF Stallion, G Herbo, Wale, Jacquees, Yella Beezy, Tink Madball, Old Firm Casuals, A furry ear to the ground of 12/20, 7 PM, United Center b Fear City, Absent Mind 12/13, Keith Fullerton Whitman, John 7 PM, Reggies’ Rock Club, 18+ the local music scene McCowen 2/29/20, 8:30 PM, Magic City Hippies 1/31/20, Constellation, part of the 9 PM, Metro, 18+ AUTUMN IN CHICAGO is a grind of Frequency Festival Makeout 12/12, 7 PM, Reggies’ Jacob Wick solo, Jacob Wick Rock Club b shitty weather and grim anticipation of & Phil Sudderberg 2/25/20, Manchester Orchestra, Foxing enforced holiday cheer, so it always puts 6:30 PM, Museum of Con- 12/4, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, Gossip Wolf in a noise-rock mood. Lucki- temporary Art, part of the 18+ ly, two of the city’s most eff ective practi- Frequency Festival Eve Maret, Coupler 12/23, Wild Rivers, Allman Brown 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle F tioners, Den and Salvation , drop fresh 5/9/20, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on Maverick Sabre 1/20/20, ordnance this week! Den’s new album, sale Fri 11/22, 10 AM, 18+ 7:30 PM, Schubas b Iron Desert, features a trench full of fes- Wolf Parade, Jo Passed Mayhem & Abbath 4/10/20, Niall Horan DEAN MARTINDALE tering, gangrenous grooves such as stand- 2/16/20, 8:30 PM, Thalia 7 PM, Metro, 18+ Hall, 17+ Madison McFerrin 12/13, 9 PM, out cut “Taste for Blood.” They celebrate Wonder Years, Free Throw, Schubas, 18+ at a local DIY venue on Friday, Novem- NEW Bottle, on sale Fri 11/22, 10 AM Meth, Greet Death, Lume Spanish Love Songs, Pool Motet, Exmag 12/14, 9 PM, the ber 22, with Barren Heir, Mayor Daley, Holiday Horror featuring 1/30/20, 8:30 PM, Empty Bot- Kids 3/15/20, 5 PM, Concord Vic, 18+ and Lilac; e-mail [email protected] for Airborne Toxic Event 6/19/20, Vogds, Cae Monae, Gabriel tle, on sale Fri 11/22, 10 AM Music Hall b Mount Eerie, Julie Doiron 12/9, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri Anaya, Alex Grelle, Glamhag, Oh Wonder 4/24/20, 7:30 PM, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ details. Salvation’s new full-length, Year of 11/22, 10 AM b Irregular Girl, Mary Wil- the Vic, on sale Fri 11/22, Ours 12/1, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, the Fly, kicks off with the densely agitat- Oren Ambarchi, Crys Cole liamson, DJ Ariel Zetina, DJ 9 AM b UPDATED 18+ ed cacophony of “Slit My Throat” and only 2/24/20, 8:30 PM, Constella- Bryce Love Fields 12/3, Pan American, Cleared 1/18/20, Over The Rhine 12/7, 8 PM, goes downhill (quite delightfully) from tion, part of the Frequency 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle 7:30 PM, International Muse- Pigface 11/30, 4:30 and 8:30 Maurer Hall, Old Town School Festival Niall Horan, Lewis Capaldi, um of Surgical Science PM, Thalia Hall, 4:30 PM of Folk Music b there! On Wednesday, November 27, they Anchr Magazine’s Third Anni- Fletcher 5/9/20, 7 PM, All- Pulaski Squares (DJ set) show added, 18+ Papooz 2/24/20, 8 PM, play on a stacked Empty Bottle bill that versary Showcase featuring state Arena, Rosemont b 1/18/20, 11 PM, Sleeping Valee, Qari 12/28, 8:30 PM, Schubas, 18+ also includes Ganser, No Men, and Lug- Engine Summer, Burr Oak, In This Moment, Black Veil Village, part of the Tomorrow Thalia Hall, canceled; contact Party Favor 11/30, 9 PM, Con- gage, who release Shi that day. Jungle Green, Sick Day, Brides, Ded, Raven Black Never Knows festival F point of purchase for refund cord Music Hall, 18+ Rookie (DJ set) 1/4/20, 8 PM, 4/11/20, 6 PM, Aragon Ball- Billy Raff oul 3/8/20, 7 PM, information about tickets pur- Kim Petras, Alex Chapman Gossip Wolf hasn’t been inside Edge- Schubas, 18+ room b Schubas, on sale Fri 11/22, chased for 7/18 or 12/28, 17+ 11/27, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre water’s beautiful, bouldery Epworth Baby Rose 2/20/20, 8:30 PM, Hayden James (DJ set) 1/17/20, 10 AM, 18+ b United Methodist Church, but church- Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 11/22, 10 PM, Spy Bar Ratboys, Slow Mass 2/28/20, Sir 12/9, 6:30 PM, Concord es being what they are, the acoustics are 10 AM Kilo Kish 1/18/20, 9 PM, Sleep- 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ UPCOMING Music Hall, 17+ Big Something, Andy Frasco, ing Village, part of Tomorrow Ratt 12/27, 8 PM, Arcada The- Sleep, Big Business 12/31, doubtless majestic. On Saturday, Novem- Kyle Ayers 2/22/20, 9 PM, Never Knows festival atre, Saint Charles b 12th Planet, Dogma 12/27, 10 PM, Thalia Hall ber 23, a slew of local avant-garde and Lincoln Hall, 18+ King Krule 4/15/20, 7:30 PM, Noah Reid, Matthew Barber 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Sleep, Circuit des Yeux 12/29, improvising artists perform there for the Black Crowes 8/15/20, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 3/10/20, 7:30 PM, Park West, Adicts 1/29/20, 8 PM, House of 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Chicago Experimental Music Festival, Hollywood Casino Amphithe- 11/22, 10 AM, 18+ 18+ Blues, 17+ Sleep, Joshua Abrams's Natu- atre, Tinley Park b Kirby Grip, Gal Gun 11/29, Sea and Cake 2/29/20, Arrivals 12/28, 8 PM, Reggies’ ral Information Society 12/30, including self-described “power ambi- Black Lips 3/5/20, 8:30 PM, 9 PM, Empty Bottle 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, on Rock Club, 17+ 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ ent duo” Magick Potion, static-obsessed Thalia Hall, 17+ Kiss 9/12/20, 7:30 PM, Holly- sale Fri 11/22, 10 AM Peter Asher 1/3/20, 8 PM, City Slow Hollows 2/21/20, 9 PM, noise project Malice Coltrane, and violist Basia Bulat 4/4/20, 9 PM, wood Casino Amphitheatre, Slander, Dylan Matthew Winery b Schubas, 18+ Johanna Brock. Tickets are cash only at Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 11/22, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 11/22, 3/21/20, 9 PM, Aragon Ball- Clozee 12/29, 8 PM, Concord Jaden Smith, Willow Smith 10 AM, 18+ 10 AM b room, 18+ Music Hall, 18+ 11/30, 7:30 PM, Riviera The- the door, and the organizers warn that “no Chai 1/25/20, 8:30 PM, Empty Katinka Kleijn, Julian Otis Stander, Dungeon Mother, Cat Clyde, Jeremie Albino atre b backpacks, messenger bags, or bags will Bottle, on sale Fri 11/22, 10 AM 3/1/20, 8:30 PM, Constella- Jordan Reyes, Pepper Mill 12/4, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Snails, Rusko, Kompany, Hi I’m be allowed into the venue.” Cornerstones of Rock fea- tion, part of the Frequency Rondo 12/15, 8:30 PM, Empty Cold War Kids, Overcoats Ghost 12/28, 9 PM, Aragon If you fondly remember Sidekick Kato turing Buckinghams, Ides Festival Bottle 1/25/20, 7:30 PM, Riviera Ballroom, 18+ of March, New Colony Six, Annea Lockwood with Aperi- Harry Styles, Jenny Lewis Theatre, 18+ Social Act, Nicholas Barron from their glory days of all-ages Fire- Cryan’ Shames, Shadows of odic & Nate Wooley 2/28/20, 7/24/20, 8 PM, United Center, Colony House, Tyson Motsen- 12/13, 8:45 PM, Martyrs’ side Bowl shows, or if you missed their Knight 11/30, 8 PM, Arcada 8:30 PM, Constellation, part on sale Fri 11/22, 11 AM b bocker 3/15/20, 7:30 PM, Sofi Tukker 4/11/20, 8 PM, 2018 reunion gig at Chop Shop, you’re in Theatre, Saint Charles b of the Frequency Festival Susto 2/20/20, 8:30 PM, Lin- Lincoln Hall b Riviera Theatre b luck! On Friday, November 22, the Des Charles Curtis 2/27/20, 7 PM, Annea Lockwood’s A Sound coln Hall, on sale Fri 11/22, Shawn Colvin 5/22-5/23/20, Sons of the Never Wrong, Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Map of the Danube opening 10 AM, 18+ 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Katie Dahl 1/12/20, 7 PM, City Plaines “drunk emo” band return to Chop Chicago, part of the Frequen- reception and discussion Rajna Swaminathan & Ganavya Disco Biscuits 1/2-1/4/20, 8 PM, Winery b Shop for another reunion set. Few histo- cy Festival b with Nate Wooley 2/29/20, Doraiswamy 3/1/20, 2 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Sons of the Silent Age, Ready ries of 90s emo mention Sidekick Kato, Julia Eckhardt & Nate Wooley 2 PM, Experimental Sound Chicago Cultural Center, Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, Freddies 1/11/20, 7 PM, Metro, but they had a special place in it, issuing 2/26/20, 8 PM, Bond Chapel, Studio, part of the Frequency Claudia Cassidy Theater, part Neal Francis 12/31, 9 PM, Park 18+ University of Chicago, part of Festival b of the Frequency Festival West, 18+ Allen Stone 3/14/20, 7:30 PM, two albums on vital local label Johann’s the Frequency Festival Reba McEntire, Caylee Ham- F b Jon Langford & Sally Timms The Vic b Face. And 1996’s scrappy 1st Class Chump Foals, Local Natives 6/10/20, mack 4/24/20, 8 PM, Allstate Trampa, Figure, Phiso 1/24/20, 1/19/20, 3 PM, Hideout Svdden Death 1/10/20, 8 PM, has aged better than lots of mid-90s pop 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ Arena, Rosemont, on sale Fri 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Bettye LaVette 12/20, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ punk! —J R NLG Galantis 3/7/20, 9 PM, Aragon 11/22, noon b Trippie Redd 2/8/20, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School Patrick Sweany 12/31, 8 PM, Ballroom, 18+ Buck Meek, Twain 1/19/20, Riviera Theatre b of Folk Music b Reggies’ Music Joint David Gray 7/18/20, 8 PM, Hun- 7 PM, Schubas, part of the Twiddle 2/22/20, 9 PM, Park Lúnasa 3/21/20, 5 and 8 PM, Tama Sumo & Lakuti, Harry Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail tington Bank Pavilion b Tomorrow Never Knows West, 18+ Maurer Hall, Old Town School Cross 12/20, 10 PM, Smart [email protected]. Hembree 2/21/20, 9 PM, Empty festival, 18+ Vulgar Boatmen, Sunshine of Folk Music b Bar v ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 35 OPINION
I’m no longer teaching them, permissible, but what’s advis- tion and reflecting that back and I don’t want my female able. And what you’re doing at you. SAVAGE LOVE and straight male students is crazy inadvisable for all the to feel like second-class reasons you cite: the risk of : I’m a 33-year-old How not to be that professor citizens. On the other hand, promising and hot gay male woman in a nine-year LTR I’m a sex-positive person students misinterpreting your with another woman. Our Pull-no-punches advice to a self-described horndog, and more who believes that happy, interest in them as sexual, relationship hasn’t been consensual banging has its your straight students feeling great in the intimacy By DS own intrinsic value. I tend like they may not be getting department for a long time. to be attracted to younger the full benefit of your atten- We’ve talked it to death, with guys, and I think part of the tion, and your mediocre and no real signifi cant change. I attraction is that they’re less not-hot gay male students— started talking to a woman : I’m a fortysomething gay likely to teach, and two had my younger partners with jaded about sex and more sorry, your mediocre and not online a few states over who male professor at a small graduated. I’m not actually kindness and respect and excited. Fucking them feels conventionally attractive gay is married and in a similar college. I try hard not to violating college policy, observed your campsite rule. less transactional than the male students—interpreting situation with her husband. get attracted to students, which only bans faculty All of these younger guys typical hi-bang-jizz-wipe-bye their failing grades as sexual Things are great between us, and usually succeed. But it’s from getting involved with solemnly swore to keep our Grindr hookup that seems to rejection. but neither of us envisions a tough to resist temptation students they’re currently extracurricular activities be the norm with gay guys I too am a sex-positive per- future where we would leave when you’re surrounded by teaching. I haven’t ever done secret, but still, word might in their 30s and older. I’m son who believes in happy, our partner. My partner is hot, smart, fun, horny young anything on campus or made leak out, and I don’t want to struggling with how I should consensual banging, and I chronically ill and I support guys in a rural area with not the fi rst move—and when one become known on campus feel about these off -campus don’t think what you’re doing her fi nancially, and my many other options. Over of them starts trying to hit as one of “those” professors. romps. We’re all adults, and is immoral. But it is incredi- online GF and her husband the past several years, I’ve on me, I’ve usually mustered Most important, I don’t want we’re not breaking any rules. bly reckless at this particular have young children. I’m ended up having sex with the willpower to ignore him. my queer male students— Obviously the behavior is moment on any American wondering if you know several students. None On rare occasions when I’ve many of whom look to me professionally risky for me, college campus. Power and anything about sustainability of them were students I ended up letting my cock for mentorship—to think I’m probably foolhardy. But is consent are minefields that in a relationship with was currently teaching or do the thinking, I’ve treated grooming them for sex a er it immoral? Above all, what students, professors, and someone online. I’ll admit should I do when future administrators are tiptoe- that sometimes it’s torture to opportunities present ing through, PHD, but you’re not be able to be with her in themselves? —P humping your way across real life. But then there’s the H -D them. Becoming known on question of our signifi cant campus as one of “those” others. Is it OK to keep this A: Can we please not professors—because you are secret if things are good describe one adult subtly one of those professors— otherwise? —MIL and perhaps unintentionally could wind up being the least F telegraphing their attraction of your problems. What if to another adult as your college revises its rules A: Your signifi cant others “grooming”? That term refers while you’re balls-deep in a aren’t questions, MILF, to adult sexual predators student? What if you have a they’re people—and you insinuating themselves into falling-out with a student you don’t intend to leave your the lives of minors, slowly banged and he files a com- person, and your online gaining their trust and the plaint? What if you want to girlfriend doesn’t intend to trust of their family members, move to a different school leave hers. So if you want so they can abuse them that has different rules and to spare your chronically sexually. It means something your reputation precedes ill partner the anxiety of GetYour Swag! very specifi c, PHD, and we and disqualifies you? worrying you might leave her www.chicagoreader.com/shop shouldn’t confuse or cheapen Finally, PHD, it’s fine to be for this other person, then its meaning by applying it to attracted to younger guys. you’ll keep the online GF a your behavior—which, while But if all your experiences secret. But you need to ask not criminal or immoral, is with guys in their 30s have yourself—and your online GF incredibly stupid. been dispiriting and transac- needs to ask herself—if this Yes, these relationships tional, it sounds like you were online relationship/emotional are permissible, in the sense the common denominator in aff air is making you a better, that the school where you a lot of meh sexual encoun- more contented, and more teach permits them. They ters. Speaking from experi- emotionally available partner aren’t against the rules, those ence, I can say that plenty to your IRL partner. If it’s young men were all consent- of guys over 30 are excited making you a better partner ing adults, and you’re honor- about sex and good at it. If to the person you’re actually/ ing the campsite rule (leave every guy over 30 you’ve technically/physically with, them in better shape than been with has been under- then great. But if it’s a you found them). But this is whelming, well, it’s possible distraction that’s causing you an advice column, PHD, and they were picking up on your to neglect or resent your you’re not asking me what’s lack of enthusiasm/attrac- IRL partner, MILF, then you’ll
36 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll OPINION
have to end it. If it’s harming your IRL relationship and you don’t end it, then you’re engaging in shitty, dishonest, slo-mo sabotage. As for the sustainability of online relationships, there 60 MINUTES FREE TRIAL are people out there who’ve maintained online connec- THE HOTTEST GAY CHATLINE tions—intense friendships, romantic, and/or sexual rela- 1-312-924-2082 tionships—for as long as peo- More Local Numbers: 800-777-8000 www.guyspyvoice.com ple have been able to get online. Sometimes online Ahora en Español/18+ relationships run their course and come to an end, just like offline relationships and sometimes the online plat- forms they began on. (There are people out there who are still involved with people they met on Friendster and Myspace.) But offline or on-, MILF, there are always chal- lenges and never guarantees.
: I’m one of your straight male readers. I’ve been seeing a professional Dom for the last year, with my wife’s OK, and it’s been very good for our marriage. I thought I could “give up” bondage when we got married, and then I found myself feeling resentful of my wife, even though it was a choice I made freely. This outlet—a wonderful pro that I see just for bondage, not for sex—solved our problem and even improved our sex life. I’m writing to say thank you. I don’t think we would have been able to discuss this calmly if we hadn’t been listeners of the Savage Lovecast. And, yes, I’ve 24 lumpenradio.com told my wife if there’s ever anything she wants that I 7 coprosperity.org can’t do for her, she only has to ask. —G R N Meet sexy friends A: Thanks for the sweet note, who really get your vibe... GRIN! v Try FREE: 312-924-2066 Send letters to mail@ More Local Numbers: 1-800-811-1633 savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Music, Shows, WLPN 105.5 ON Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. Art Events LP FM AIR vibeline.com 18+ @fakedansavage ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 37 Ragnar Benson Construction Company, Architect Data resumes to careers@ milestones & draft internal Responsible for software an Equal Opportunity Employer, Administration (Foot mdcp.com, reference Job audit findings reports products for NA carriers Locker Retail, Inc.) ID: VP201910. presentable to CIO & CFO. (specifi cally Verizon, AT&T Chicago, IL 60606 – (Chicago, Identify key gaps in go live & USC). Responsible for Sr. Java Developer, Chicago, IL: P: 312-764-6600, is seeking IL): Architect & establish Create and execute full SDLC process during Oracle RFP/Compliance for AT&T, disadvantaged businesses for the sftwr sys to validate data Java based application modules Cloud Implementation Verizon, USC. To apply, go (QA) & identify for product data management and & draft key controls to http://lenovocareers. digital asset management. Review, CTA MC-021 State Street Subway- root cases of data quality test, troubleshoot, enhance and remediation process com/ and search Southbound Track Improvements issues. Reqs a Bachelor’s debug and developed modules solution for Management for Job ID #(78456). degree or foreign to ensure they meet Global review/ action. Plan, Foreign equivalency (FastTracks Program) Project located Data Synchronization Network equiv in Comp or (GDSN) standards and recipient prepare & test Client’s degree accepted. EOE/ in Chicago, IL for subcontracting Electronic Engnrng, Comp standards. Serve as technical Information Technology Affirmative Action Sci, or a reltd fi eld plus lead on Product Introduction General Controls & Employer. (11/14) opportunities in the following areas: (PI) , product data management Concrete Repair and Restoration, crack 5 yrs of exp as a Database platform development. Evaluate Application Controls over Admin or Data Engineer and report on projects to fi nancial reporting for SOX Slalom’s Chicago office repair & Epoxy Injection, Electrical, Rail wrkg w/ lge scale Management and Technology engagements. Review of has openings for Software Teams. BS in CS or related field Track Work and Misc Carpentry. biz sys. Exp must incl: and 5 years’ experience required. functional specifi cation for Engineers: Collaborate developing database Exp. must include off -shore team Oracle Payable module, w/ clients to develop backup and restoration coordination, Agile, APM, Drools Oracle Fixed Assets technical/technology API, Elastic Engine, Java 8/ Subcontracts will be awarded based strategies including J2EE, Open Symphony Workflow module, Oracle General solutions addressing on price and ability to perform work. database optimization and Engine, Oracle, Spring Cloud Ledger Module, Oracle business challenges. TO tuning; utilizing Confi guration, Spring Framework, Inventory module & APPLY: Email resume to All disadvantage businesses should SQL and Struts 2.0. Send technologies including resume to 1WorldSync, Inc. at assessed implementation [email protected] & contact RAGNAR BENSON attention Bash Scripts, MySQL [email protected] risk during R12 upgrades indicate job code RJ002. Kasia Popa at- [email protected] Enterprise Monitor, for Oracle implementation. MySQL Software Developer, Draft key risk in control Parker Hannifin 312-764-6600 to discuss subcontracting Workbench, MongoDB Modernization needed deficiencies with control Corporation seeks an opportunities. Please submit all bids Cloud Manager, & AWS for by Peak6 Group, LLC in gap remediation solution Engineer II in Broadview, no later than November 25th, 2019 at database mgmt; dvlpg Chicago, IL to develop, audit committee review. IL to research, analyze, & planng database build & implement *travel required 20% of design, and test 12PM. The bid will be publicly opened infrastructure; perfrmg fi nancial industry software the time. Mail resumes to: component parts, by CTA on November 26th, 2019 at analysis of MySQL that modernizes & Attn: C Volkening - #1313, processes, or systems 3:00PM. Servers facilitates transactional 1 S. Wacker Dr, S. 800, to develop new and/or & Query optimzatn/tuning; trading processing of Chicago, IL, 60606 improve core products. automatg daily tasks transfer of securities. BS & 2 yrs or equiv. For For more information please contact us utilizg shell scripting/ The position requires Cloud & System Architect full req’s and to apply CLASSIFIEDS at 312-764-6600 or Email python; a Master’s, or foreign (Chicago, IL) Implement visit: http://parkercareers. maintaing SLA for co equiv., in Comp Sci., Info. & maintain Azure ttcportals.com/jobs/ JOBS [email protected]. website to ensure uptime; Technology, or related Kubernetes Service, Azure search Job Reference & providg database field, plus 1 year exp. Virtual Network, and DLP Number: 16005 ADMINISTRATIVE upgrades, maintenance, developing & engineering & IDS solutions. Maintain degree or for equiv & support incl database SW applications for Ruby on Rails codebase Prototype Development SALES & JOBS in Comp Sci, Mgmt Info GENERAL monitorg w/ MySQL financial industry. Exp. & ensure Kubernetes Engineer (SF2019ME001) MARKETING Sys, or Info Tech Enterprise Manager. Send must include dev’t with compatibility. Manage Dsgn, dvlp, & fabricate FOOD & DRINK plus 18 months of exp in res to Foot Locker Retail, SQL, Java, Go, Python, continuous integration prototypes using Need money? We’re the job off ered Inc., Attn: M. Machine Learning, & & deployment pipelines. engnrng prncpls. Eval SPAS & SALONS always hiring! Earn $25 or sub sim pos. Send Grund, Global Mobility Javascript. To apply, Master’s or equiv in techncl spcfctns & reqs BIKE JOBS today in just 5 minutes. resume to Peopleops@ & Compensation mail resume to: K. Hilgart, Computer Science or for prototypes. Dsgn & Text GIG to 31996 or email imanage.com Coordinator, Code Peak6 Group, LLC, 141 related field req. 1 year anlyze mechncl systms GENERAL hello@dominionclarity. (ref. no. L7300) or iManage EOEIICHI, W. Jackson Blvd, Ste 500, of exp req. Req’d Skills: using CAD & FEA sftwre. com for info. No experi- LLC, Attn: Recruiting, 540 330 W 34th St, NY, NY Chicago, IL 60604 Azure Kubernetes & Azure Prfrm strctrl anlyss & ence required. West Madison 10001. Virtual Network, DLP heat trnsfr modeling for Thoughtworks Inc. seeks IT Professional Street, Ste. 300, Chicago, & IDS solutions, Ruby prototype dsgn. Prfrm REAL Illinois 60661. Budo Trading (Chicago, a Senior Consultant/ on Rails, Java, Swift & dgtl fabrication using Software Developer: IL) seeks Information Developer in Chicago, IL Under Supervision Reactjs. Mail resume to CAM sftwre, & manual ESTATE iManage LLC seeks in Technology Analyst (and other U.S. locations) Prevail Health Solutions fabrication using shop of Project Manager, Chicago, IL: Systems to develop software to work on a large- assist in researching, LLC, 1105 W. Chicago tools. Anlyze prototype RENTALS Administrator with applications & model data scale, custom designed, Ave., Ste. 203, Chicago, assmbls & testing. Mntr analyzing, designing, Bachelor’s or for equiv process flow between enterprise-level software FOR SALE testing, implementing IL, 60642 Cloud & System material prfrmnce & eval in Comp Info Sys, Info Cloud service & internal development projects Architect (Chicago, IL) material deterioration. & configuring software Tech, or Comp Sci, IT infrastructure. Position that use object oriented NON-RESIDENTIAL applications in conjunction Implement & maintain Dmstc travel req 2% of plus 3 yrs of exp in the job requires regular work technologies, such as Azure Kubernetes time. REQ: Mstr’s dgree ROOMATES with hardware. Utilize: off ered or outside of standard Java, Ruby, or .NET. Travel SharePoint, C#.NET, Service, Azure Virtual in Materials Eng, Mechncl sub sim pos. iManage will business hours. Submit required (80%) to various Network, and DLP & Eng or rltd fi eld & 6 mnths Java, XML, Javascript, accept a single resumes to dominica. unanticipated client AngularJS, Bootstrap, IDS solutions. Maintain exp in the dsgn & prdctn MARKET- degree or any combination miceli@budotrading. locations throughout Ruby on Rails codebase of prototypes OR Bchlr’s MS Visio, MS Project, of degrees, diplomas, com, reference Job ID: the U.S. Apply at SQL. Job locations in & ensure Kubernetes dgree & 5 yrs’ exp. Exp PLACE professional credentials, Information Technology jobpostingtoday.com Ref# compatibility. Manage must include 6 mnths Park Ridge,IL & various and/or professional Analyst in the subject line. 92124. unanticipated client continuous integration with the foll: CAD sftwre; experience determined to & deployment pipelines. FEA sftwre; AutoDesk GOODS sites nationally requiring be equivalent to Manager, National Oracle relocation & travel to these Madison Dearborn Master’s or equiv in Fusion 360; & CAM sftwre. SERVICES a Bachelor’s degree by a RAS IT Advisory Leader Computer Science or Must have ability to use sites involving short & qualifi ed evaluation Partners (Chicago, IL) – (Chicago, IL) RSM US HEALTH & long term assignments. seeks Vice President related field req. 1 year & operate shop tools, service. Send resume to LLP: Assist w/ various of exp req. Req’d Skills: incldng saws, manual mill, WELLNESS Mail resume to AQL [email protected] to identify/evaluate & internal, external audit Technologies Inc, 2604 E execute investment Azure Kubernetes & Azure & CNCs. Salt Flats, LLC, (ref. no. L8034) or clients by bringing in Virtual Network, DLP 113 N. May St, Chicago, INSTRUCTION Dempster St, #201, Park iManage LLC, Attn: opportunities/monitor depth ERP (enterprise Ridge,IL 60068 the operations of and & IDS solutions, Ruby IL 60607. To apply e-mail MUSIC & ARTS Recruiting, 540 West resource planning) skills on Rails, Java, Swift & resume to Madison St, Ste. 300, provide strategic advice such as oracle. Reqs: NOTICES iManage LLC seeks in to portfolio companies. Bachelor’s degree (or Reactjs. Mail resume to [email protected] with Chicago, IL: Sr. Support Chicago, Prevail Health Solutions reference to job code IL 60661. Frequent travel w/in U.S. equivalent) in accounting, MESSAGES Engineer with Bachelor’s & internationally. Submit LLC, 1105 W. Chicago SF2019ME001 in subject business administration Ave., Ste. 203, Chicago, line. LEGAL NOTICES or related. 5 yrs of exp as IL, 60642 WANT TO ADD A LISTING TO OUR CLASSIFIEDS? a: consultant, assurance ADULT SERVICES manager or related. Motorola Mobility LLC is Groupon, Inc. is seeking a E-mail [email protected] with details accepting resumes for Data Scientist in Chicago, Exp must incl: Review the position of Product IL w/ the following or call (312) 392-2970 & assess Oracle Cloud Specialist in Chicago, responsibilities: Design & implementation’s risk key IL (Ref. #78456). build scalable computing
38 CHICA O READER - NOVEMBER ll systems for collecting, domestic & internat’l no answer, please leave apartment near Loyola mo., heat included. Call the possibility of healing. integrating, & processing travel reqd. Apply at www. your name and number. Park. 1335 W. Estes. Chad 630-776-4030 Call Jolanta: (847)650- large sets of structured exp.com, search for job# Hardwood floors. Cats 8989. 5237 W. Addison & unstructured data 100156 STUDIO OK. Laundry in building. BEDROOM St. Chicago, IL 60641 from disparate sources. $995/month. Heat Large studio apartment UPTOWN, Large 2 Bdrm, ADULT SERVICES Up to 10% travel reqd. near Loyola Park. 1337 W. included. Available 12/1. Rehabbed Vintage. Must live w/in normal REAL Estes. Hardwood floors. (773) 761-4318. www. Formal Dining Room, commuting distance to Cats OK. Heat included. lakefrontmgt.com. Hardwood floors, 4346 Danielle’s Lip Service, Seattle, Chicago, or San ESTATE Laundry in building. Large one bedroom N Clarendon Ave (At Erotic Phone Chat. 24/7. Francisco. Apply at www. RENTALS Available 12/1. $850-880/ apartment near Morse Montrose). Two Blocks Must be 21+. Credit/ grouponcareers.com month. (773) 761-4318. red line. 6824 N. Wayne. from lake. Heat Included. Debit Cards Accepted. by searching keyword Chicago’s South Shore www.lakefrontmgt.com. Hardwood floors. Pets $1475 All Fetishes and Fantasies R22491 Neighborhood quiet BEDROOM OK. Heat included. Are Welcomed. Personal, vintage building. Minutes Laundry in building. Private and Discrete. One bedroom apartment 773-935-4995 exp U.S. Services Inc. away from Metra Electric. near Warren Park and Available 12/1. $1025/ is seeking a Project Call now to schedule month. (773)761-4318. MARKETPLACE Metra. 6802 N. Wolcott. GENERAL Structural Engineer in showing. You must be arwood oors. aundry www.lakefrontmgt.com. Chicago, IL to Perform able to pass credit check. in building. $995-1050/ SERVICES analysis & design of (708) 902-4491 month. Heat included. For rent: 1 bedroom, structural systems for Cats OK. Available 12/1. nd oor apartment near Miracle Message. Obtain all types of buildings & Senior looking for safe, (773) 761-4318. Diversey & California, health, energy and joy. please recycle materials using various secure studio apartment ~700sf, recently Prolong your youth and building codes. Engineer on Chicago’s north side. Large one bedroom refurbished, including new life. Decrease illness with Intern License reqd. 5% $800 (312) 774-4742 If wood flooring. $1,200/ this paper
The Chicagothe Reader Guide platform to Business and Professional Services Now Hiring! BIG “O” MOVERS Drivers & This could Spring & Summer Sale Experienced Movers be you! Call For FREE Estimate (773) 487-9900 (773) 487-9900
Psychic Readings Palm and Tarot DISCOVER If you are worried, troubled, sick or YOUR BLISS unhappy through love, business, Travel Your Way marriage, luck or whatever your SAVE BIG problem may be, I have reunited the ON A NEW HVAC SYSTEM 708-391-9009 separated, healed the sick and help Up to $2,500 savings for a limited time! many people with money problems. -Energy Efficient Where others have failed. I have FINANCING -Innovative comfort features AVAILABLE -Great maintenance contracts succeeded. I will not ask what you -24-Hr Emergency Service came in for. I will tell you. I will call your friends and enemies by name. CREDIT She guarantees to help you. CARS No problem is too big for her. www.intimate-bliss.com ACCEPTED (773)-540-5037 *WARNING: Must be 18 years or older to visit website and/or place order. Call today for a free estimate! www.herreralandscapeschicago.com 1222 E 47th St 773-895-2797 | www.MironHVAC.com
ROOFING BRICKWORK GARAGES ROOFING, GUTTERS & MORE For 40 years, 30,000+ satisfied customers have trusted Second City. To advertise, call 312-392-2970 or SHINGLE ROOFS FLAT ROOFS NEW GARAGES email [email protected] FINANCING AVAILABLE Licensed, Bonded & Insured—IL Roofing Lic. #104.013526
ll NOVEMBER - CHICAOREADER 39 ®
The Chicago Reader is community-centered and community-supported. CHICAGO This SPECIAL GUESTS Saturday! THE NUDE PARTY November 23 OHMME Vic Theatre Friday, November 29 • Riviera Theatre FOR CHICAGOANS
You are at the heart of this newspaper. Founded in 1971, we have always been free, and have always centered Chicago. Help us to continue to curate coverage of the diverse and creative communities of this fabulous city.
Your donation keeps the presses rolling. December 4 Riviera Theatre CHIP IN HERE: www.chicagoreader.com/members
April 15 • Riviera Theatre On SaleThis Friday Friday, December 13 • Park West at 10am!
WANT TO DONATE VIA CHECK? Make checks payable to “Chicago Reader” and BUY mail to Chicago Reader, Suite 102, 2930 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60616. TICKETS AT Include your mailing address, phone, and email—and please indicate if you are okay with us thanking you by name in the paper.