This Week Chicago Reader | September | Volume Number

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IN THIS ISSUE T R - or two about corruption 26 Streaming Splitscreen theater 36 Records of Note A pandemic @ tears down the digital box can’t stop the fl ow of great music HOUSING and this week the Reader reviews P TB 12 Isaacs | Culture A book looks current releases by Bill Callahan ECS K KH beyond skyscrapers to a neglected Phew Uniform the JuJu Exchange CLR H M EP M bounty of single family houses and more TDKR 14 Dukmasova | Witness Excops 41 Early Warnings Rescheduled C EBW attempted to throw out a Rogers concerts and other updated AEJL SWMD L G Park tenant at gunpoint The listings DI BJ MS police report tells a diff erent story 41 Gossip Wolf Hyperpop EAS N L 18 Landlords A new database newcomer Fraxiom packs two GD AH CITY LIFE L CSC -J 03 Transportation A challenging matches rental properties with albums’ worth of sound into a new SJ R and memorable bike ride around owners whether they like it or not EP heavymusic zine Distort/ F AM R Chicago’s exact city limits 22 Photography TheFoldedMap Delay returns a er a fouryear C EBN B L C M DLCM Project shows a segregated city FILM hiatus and Sunday series Vibes C NLC J F S FOOD & DRINK 28 Small Screen Housing and on Logan hosts vinyl DJs on the F JH IH B 06 Feature As Passerotto closes the haunting of segregation in boulevard J C MJ M KSK N D LM its chef reimagines the future by Lovecra Country MAM -K J R N J preserving the past 29 Movies of Note TheBabysitter OPINION N M OAP- KillerQueen is a horrorcomedy 42 National Stage In politics the AK S CS that holds its own TheBroken fi ghts are fake but the folks pulling ------HeartsGallery is the newest feel the strings behind the scenes are DD J D SMCJ G good romcom the gorgeously real SSP shot documentary OurTime 44 Savage Love Dan Savage ATA Machine intertwines creativity and off ers advice on premature S IDM N familial connection promises of everlasting love D DC W MPCY D ARTS & CULTURE MUSIC & CLASSIFIEDS E ASL K 20 Ghosts Neighborhood tavern 46 Jobs MPD the California Clipper may be NIGHTLIFE 46 Apartments & Spaces AA C 08 In memoriam A zinester closed but it’s forever a part of 30 Galil | Feature Chicago rapper 46 Marketplace SEC K K remembers Rainforest Cafe and Chicago’s boozy haunted history Femdot has paused his career this ADVERTISING Cha Cha the frog summer to help deliver groceries -- @ to hundreds of people in need O P S C THEATER - @ 24 Theatre Y turns 34 Sandra B F B’ NEWS & POLITICS Home Movie Chicagoans of Note 10 Joravsky | Politics Trump could We’reGonnaDie into a meditative Treviño DJ and founder of Latin VPSA M teach Madigan and Burke a thing fi lm music site Enchúfate SDAN CRM TP SA R L M-H L S CSM WR

THIS WEEK ON CHICAGOREADER.COM NA V MG -- - J LSB ------D C [email protected] -- CHICAGOREADERLC BPD R L T E R A- S V

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T C R OP-RF C F ------Why isn’t anyone Time to get weird with Hit it!—the new Blues RISSN- RLC S M SC IL reissuing Karate records? mustard beer Brothers weed, that is --

The Boston band’s infl uential Are Chicagoans ready for some A Skokie dispensary features C ©C R music is entirely out of print. of the yellow stuff in their brews? dozens of varieties of fl ower. P C IL

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ome people probably think of me as the two days, spending a night away from home, Perimeter King of Chicago. Along with so I’d basically be taking a vacation solely Voted “Best Auto DeAlership” Smany other trips involving cycling the within the city limits. By CHICAGO Voters’ Poll 2019 outer edge of places—Illinois, Lake Michigan, I ruled out pedaling around O’Hare, since S three-quarters of the continental U.S.—for that would involve miles on a nightmarish TOP-QUALITY INSPECTED USED CARS & SUV’ the better part of a decade I led the annual seven-lane stretch of Touhy. I also decided IMPORTS & DOMESTICS SUBARU FORESTERS ‘17 BMW X3 xDrive28i ...... Sunroof, Leather, 28K, Grey, 24735A ..$23,995 ‘18 Forester Prem. ....Automatic, Sunroof, Heated Seats, Blue, P6401 ..$21,995 Chicago Perimeter Ride. That event typically not to bother tracing the outlines of Nor- ‘17 Mazda 6 Touring/Navi. ..Blind Spot, Leather, 24K, Soul Red, 24857A ..$19,995 ‘17 Forester Prem. ..Automatic, Sunroof, Heated Seats, Grey, 18740R ..$20,995 drew about 100 people for a leisurely all-day- ridge and Harwood Heights, those suburbs ‘16 Kia Sorento EX V6 AWD ...... Automatic, Leather, White, P6576A ..$18,995 ‘18 Forester 2.5i ...... Automatic, Full Power, Green, P6662 ..$19,995 ‘16 Chevy Traverse LT AWD ...... Automatic, Leather, White, 23754A ..$17,995 ‘14 Forester Ltd...... Automatic, Leather, Sunroof, 58K Red, 24803A ..$14,995 and-evening pedal around the city. that are oddly embedded within Chicago’s ‘16 Chevy Equinox LT AWD ...... Automatic, Full Power, Silver, 23539A ..$16,995 SUBARU OUTBACKS But I’ve su ered from imposter syndrome. northwest side for long-forgotten political ‘15 Honda Accord Hybrid EX-L ....Sunroof, Leather, 46K, Silver, P6650A ..$16,995 ‘19 Outback Prem...... Auto., Eyesight, Alloys, Brown P6573 ..$23,995 While the Perimeter Ride was always a blast, reasons. And where the border is a busy ‘16 Honda Fix EX-L ...... Auto. Leather, Moonroof, 34K, Black, 24894 ..$14,995 ‘18 Outback Prem...... Auto., Eyesight, Alloys, Blue, P6680 ..$22,995 ‘16 Honda Fix EX ...... Automatic, Moonroof, 28K, Black, 24768A ..$14,995 ‘17 Outback Prem...... Auto., Eyesight, Alloys, Blue, 24344A ..$19,995 it was actually a very streamlined route that main street, and there’s a chill, leafy res- ‘14 Ford Escape Titanium 4x4/Navi.Automatic, Leather, Black, 24841A $12,995 ‘15 Outback Prem...... Auto., Full Power, Alloys, 68K, Blue, 24601A ..$15,995 came nowhere close to tracing the actual idential road parallel to it nearby, I’d take ‘13 Honda CR-V EX AWD ...... Automatic, Sunroof, Metal, 24296A ..$11,995 ‘12 Honda Civic Hybrid ...... Automatic, Full Power, Silver, 24849A ....$7,995 SUBARU CROSSTREK / IMPREZA / LEGACY complex, zigzagging city limits. that instead, to ensure my journey was more ‘19 Crosstrek Prem...... Automatic, All-Weather, Grey, 24646A ..$18,995 ‘11 Dodge Avenger Mainstreet...... Automatic, Only 65K, Silver, 24731A ....$7,995 ‘16 Impreza Prem...... Automatic, Heated Seats, Grey, 24148A ..$12,995 So for years I’ve been meaning to make joyride than hellride, as the late Wesley Wil- ‘04 Toyota Prius ...... Automatic, Full Power, White, 24800A ....$6,995 ‘14 Legacy Prem...... Auto., Full Power, Alloys, Grey, 24736A ..$12,995 things right by biking the exact border of lis would say. A+ Chicago, or as close as possible without Around noon on a 91-degree August Satur- RATED risking being fl attened by a semi driver. The day, I start my 116-mile trip on the Lakefront EvanstonSubaru.com COVID quarantine, when entertainment op- Trail at Montrose, with a counterclockwise 3340 OAKTON - SKOKIE • 847-869-5700 tions are limited, seemed like an ideal time route planned for optimal shoreline views. *Add tax, title license and $300 doc fee. 0%financing for 63 months. Monthly payment of $15.87 per $1,000 borrowed. to do it. I planned to spread out the trip over Pedaling east toward the park path that Finance on approved credit score Subject to vehicle insurance and availability. Ends 9/30/20 ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 3 CITY LIFE continued from 3 River Grove to visit Gene & Jude’s, famous ing to write home about, and when I ask the Riverdale enclave, the only Chicago neigh- hugs crescent-shaped Montrose Beach, I’m for its minimalist “depression dogs” (onion, desk clerk if it comes with a complimentary borhood south of the Calumet, it’s a di erent annoyed to see that, although the local beach relish, mustard, and sport peppers only), bottle of spumante like last time, he just story. Many houses are falling apart, seem- bar is open and bustling, lifeguards are still and Hala Kahiki, the historic multiroom tiki laughs at me. ingly awaiting demolition. Local community shooing beachgoers off the sand as part of complex next door. In the morning, after grabbing a Danish advocate Fatimah Al-Nurridin will later tell Mayor Lightfoot’s dubious pandemic shore- Heading east I’m in Dunning, where I and doughnut across the street at busy me she’s not sure why this is the case, but line safety strategy. The following Saturday pass Truc Lam Temple, a Vietnamese house Weber’s Bakery, I pedal east on 64th in the there’s interest in improving the area. someone will nearly drown while swimming of worship that recently relocated from Clearing neighborhood. I’m once again in After I head northeast into the Altgeld off the unsupervised rocky revetment just Uptown. A plump, grinning Buddha statue cop-and-fireman land, as evidenced by the Gardens housing project, two young boys north of the beach. reclines in front. many variations on Blue Lives Matter fl ags on a gas-powered dirt bike try to talk me After tagging the Evanston border in Pedaling into Austin, I pass Ben’s Bar-Be- flying, including one that includes a red into racing them for a $5 bet so they can buy Rogers Park, the northeast corner of the city, Cue, in a beautiful old terra-cotta storefront. stripe for firefighters and a green one for Cokes. “Sorry guys, I’ve got to keep moving,” I pedal west down Howard into West Ridge, Continuing south on Mason and Mayfi eld as border patrol agents. I mumble through my mask. If I was quicker stopping to pick up a fried clam lunch at the the sun descends, I spot many “Black Lives Rolling southeast into Ashburn, I check on my feet, I’d ask if they know Deloris Lucas, old-school Fish Keg storefront. Rolling south Matter” signs and tricolor Black Liberation out Vito & Nick’s, a contender for the best known as “The Bike Lady” because she runs on Kedzie, I’m passing by the center of Chica- fl ags on display. Kids are playing on the side- thin crust in Chicago, then head to Lawndale the cycling and wellness group We Keep You go’s Orthodox Jewish community. A preteen walk with toy cars and scooters, or jumping and Columbus to visit the shrine and mural Rollin’ out of the Golden Gate neighborhood, girl and boy walk down the street, the latter on a trampoline next to a community garden. honoring Issac Martinez, 13. An allegedly in- next door to Altgeld. in suit, fedora, and sidelocks. People sell sno-balls with vividly colored toxicated hit-and-run driver killed Martinez Next I make the harrowing but basically Continuing west on busy Devon, I pass syrups from card tables. Five swan-shaped on his bike last June. A white-painted “ghost unavoidable trip east on high-speed 130th to Novelty Golf & Games on the Lincolnwood planters stand cheerfully on a brick stoop. bike” was also installed at the crash site with get to Hegewisch, at the southeast corner of side. The course includes a giant rooster, As I cross Madison, I look left toward Loop a sign reading “Safe Bike Lanes!” the city. The neighborhood feels like a sleepy a miniature Hancock Tower, and an ersatz skyscrapers tinted pink by the sunset, about Pedaling east into Beverly, I grab a snack of small town in Indiana, which lies just east. I Easter Island moai. seven miles east, but seemingly a world chili cheese fries at Janson’s Drive-In, which grab a plump chicken-fi lled masa pocket at Just west of the Edens, I follow the bor- away. has another awesome Googie sign, serenad- Gorditas Adrian’s, then roll east to tag the derline on Ionia into pleasantly sedate Edge- After crossing Columbus Park and rolling ed by Buddy Holly and Chubby Checker. From Hoosier border, passing Harbor Point Es- brook. As I round a northerly knob of the southeast through an industrial zone, I’m at there, annoyingly, the city boundaries veer tates, Chicago’s only trailer park. city, the suburb-in-the-city feel is hammered 26th in Little Village, Chicago’s second-busi- west again, taking me farther from my fi nish Finally it’s time to return north. After home by the sight of an older gentleman est retail strip, where it’s defi nitely time for line. rolling by Club 81 Too, a longtime corner bar watering the yard of his ranch house while dinner. At Taqueria Los Gallos, I pick up a Crossing Sacramento, I’m in Mount Green- known for its Friday fish fries, I skirt Wolf sitting in the driveway on a striped lawn tub of their specialty, carne en su jugo: beef, wood, at the southwest corner of the city. It’s Lake, which straddles the Illinois-Indiana chair that mirrors the home’s American fl ag. bacon, and beans in broth, garnished with another overwhelmingly white city worker border and was home to an active Nike mis- Rolling west on Touhy, I pass the Leaning radishes, avocado, and lime. I feast at nearby neighborhood, with a history of racial ten- sile silo during the Cold War. Then I pick up Tower of Niles, a half-size replica of the Pisa Manuel Perez Jr. Plaza. Across the street, a sion. After rounding Saint Xavier University, the Burnham Greenway and ride through landmark. Across the street is the Edge- raucous band featuring tumbling timbale I pass a house with a “Don’t Tread on Me” lakeside Calumet Park, full of people grilling. brook Motel, with an appealingly garish red rhythms and a prominent tuba blares from fl ag, a reminder that I’m in the only part of Pedaling west on 95th, I stop at Calumet and seafoam-green sign, the fi rst of several a backyard party. Someone sets o fi reworks Chicago that went for Trump in 2016. Fisheries for a gorgeous hunk of garlic-pep- examples of retro-futurist “Googie” archi- and the ground shakes. I ride three sides of Saint Casimir Catholic per smoked salmon. The seafood shack tecture I’ll encounter on this trek. Refueled, I continue south on the Pulaski Cemetery on hectic multilane roads, passing stands next to the river bridge Jake and A mile on the North Branch Trail takes Bridge over the Chicago Sanitary and Ship yet another cool Googie sign, at Fox Home Elwood famously jumped in the Bluesmobile. me to one of Chicagoland’s best-known ex- Canal into Brighton Park, then take resi- Center in Alsip. Returning east to Morgan Soon I’m at the Lakefront Trail again. I’ve amples of Googie, Superdawg Drive-In. Its dential streets west through Garfi eld Ridge, Park, I notice St. Walter Catholic Church got 16 miles of what should be smooth sail- midcentury design features blue and white part of the southwest side bungalow belt. has an outdoor display of small sculptures ing on familiar turf with a sweet tailwind to diamond panels, red neon, and winking an- There are many backyard gatherings here, of Jesus walking the Stations of the Cross. complete my circuit. thropomorphic wieners on the roof. including a full-blown house music dance Sadly, someone has pried one of the metal But suddenly the sky darkens, and the Soon I’m tracing the outline of Edison party in someone’s garage. crucifi xes from his hands. wind does a 180. By the time I reach Prom- Park, Chicago’s northwestern-most neigh- I’m sleeping at the iconic Rainbow Motel, I consider veering a mile north to Home of ontory Point, I’m fighting a headwind and borhood. Eighty-seven percent white, it’s known for its waterbed-and-Jacuzzi rooms, the Hoagy to sample a sweet steak, the leg- downpour, rolling into the jaws of a thun- popular with Chicago city workers, many of including ones with Las Vegas, Hawaiian, endary south-side-only cheesesteak variant, derstorm. Weirdly, the setting sun remains whom might prefer to live in the suburbs, but outer space, and, oddly, sandwich themes. but decide I need to stay focused on my task. visible to my left, and then a rainbow materi- need to meet the city’s residency require- While I feel a little silly staying at a love Continuing southeast into West Pullman, alizes over Lake Michigan. ment. Ebinger Elementary displays a “We hotel solo, I spent a night there with a girl- the 12700 block of South Morgan has a block Luckily, the storm soon dissipates, and Support Our First Responders” banner with friend years ago, so I know it’s a reasonably club sign prohibiting activities ranging from my spin back to Montrose is uneventful. But images of a fi refi ghter and a cop. sanitary, non-scary place. It’s also the cheap- ball playing to drug dealing. This corner of I can’t imagine a more fitting grand finale After rolling southwest, I enjoy several est option in the area, save for the nearby the neighborhood seems neat and orderly. to my epic circuit around Chicago than that miles of serene riding on the wooded Des Skylark Motel which, ominously, doesn’t Tidy homes on 129th back up to the Calumet bizarro sunset-thunder-rainbow. v Plaines River Trail. Exiting the path at Bel- offer overnight stays until after midnight. River. mont, I resist the temptation to detour to Granted, my bare-bones single room is noth- On the other side of the river in the tiny @greenfieldjohn 4 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants FOOD & DRINK at chicagoreader.com/food.

Chef Jennifer Kim and a colorful collection of edible “time capsules” COURTESY JENNIFER KIM

of the city’s most outspoken chefs on restaurant reform, particularly with regard to the way the industry treats its most marginalized and vulnerable workers. But even under restricted business operations, that work and the work of running a restaurant during the pandemic became ever more exhausting. “Anything that you do for the restaurant or with the restaurant or in the restaurant always sort of has this dark cloud of ‘and then don’t forget you also have to make money.’ It kind of takes that little bit of joy and magic out of what you’re doing.” Like many restaurant workers, Kim and her crew found ways to keep the lights on, even though they decided collectively not to reopen the restaurant’s patio or dining room. Instead, early on, along with heat-and-serve meal kits and takeaway family dinners, they began o ering DIY quarantine kits for making your own kimchi or XO sauce. Preservation, fermentation, and conserv- ing are the sort of time-consuming, low-and- slow kitchen projects Kim relished as a professional chef—the kind of work the whole sta put their hands in and bonded over but still found precious little time for. The anxieties of running a business only became more aggravated with the pandemic, FOOD FEATURE but at least there was more time. “I thought, why don’t I spend that digging deeper into Korean history?” she says. Jennifer Kim is bottling love “I was really focusing on, ‘what is fermentation to Korean culture?’ A lot of that was As Passerotto closes, its chef reimagines the future by preserving the past. done in large family gatherings or even a couple people that lived around each other By M S who were like, ‘We’re going to come together and make big batches and split it between everyone in the neighborhood.’ I just really love that about Korean cuisine, but in the ennifer Kim’s mom keeps a bottle under shelf in a newly dedicated storage room, munity that formed around her restaurant midst of a pandemic, small gatherings are not her kitchen sink containing knobby, next to the turmeric honey, ume plum gin, just over two years after it opened in what encouraged. That part of my life is missing Jgnarly roots and a continually replen- and some dozens of other ongoing preserva- seemed, at the time, like a cursed location. right now, but I could still pay homage.” ished volume of clear, high-proof spirit. tion-fermentation projects she’s undertaken Despite it all she sounded upbeat. In July the restaurant introduced its Pres- “She has this ongoing ginseng vodka,” during the pandemic. Passerotto might be “I’m extremely upset,” she says. “We’re ervation Pantry, rolling out a dazzling selec- says Kim, the chef behind Andersonville’s closing, but this room represents a new be- taking time to mourn and grieve but we’re tion of seasonal farmers market and foraged Korean-Italian Passerotto, which just closed ginning, arising out of something very old. also taking time to celebrate because there’s preserves: summer squash sott’olio, sweet its doors for good on Saturday. “It’s probably I talked to Kim a few days before Passe- been this great untethering.” Kim is a one- corn and pepper confit, juneberry capers, moonshine. But she’ll put a little spoonful in rotto’s last carryout-delivery services. It’s time pharmacy student who switched tracks perilla leaf bitters, blueberry chojang, and tea or something else. Fucking Koreans and closing in part because she needs time to rec- and came up in the kitchens of a handful peach ssamjang. Along with older projects ginseng: that’s our go-to for everything. Gin- oncile the joy of cooking with the necessity of of One Off Hospitality restaurants— Nico like vinegars and vermouths aging since the seng ﬁ xes all. It’s a curative, and restorative, making a living in a broken industry. “How do Osteria, Avec, Blackbird—before making her previous season, these items sold out quick- and an anti-inflammatory, and there’re so you share the bounties that you have made, name at the short-lived cured seafood-fo- ly, and as it became apparent the restaurant many di erent infusions.” and also still be able to pay rent?” And she cused microdeli Snaggletooth. would be closing, they weren’t replenished. Kim has a jar of it herself, steeping on a was getting ready to say goodbye to the com- Later, amid rising acclaim, Kim became one But informed by texts such as Harold J 6 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll FOOD & DRINK

Preserving the past, one bottle at a time COURTESY JENNIFER KIM

McGee’s On Food and Cooking, and the more “I’m rediscovering for myself a physical act recent Noma Guide to Fermentation, as well of cooking that gives me an excuse to go see as a sta ﬁ eld trip to South Korea in January, friends and drop something o on their porch Kim didn’t stop experimenting. In May she and be like ‘I thought of you today.’ It’s love macerated a bunch of unripe green plums in bottled.” sugar, and babied them for 104 days until she At the same time she’s also starting to think had maesil cheong, the medicinal plum syrup in terms of scale, with cases of tomatoes, Koreans use to sweeten teas or spike sodas. peppers, and summer squash to process, jar, “It’s those two items, and it’s time and care,” and hand label. She has her signature Mama she says. “I never actually made it from step Kim’s red cabbage in the works, and once one. You can always just buy it. But those two napa cabbage fully comes into season she’ll things eventually turn into three different get to work on classic baechu kimchi. Once things.” Two weeks ago she strained the the dust settles after the restaurant closes, syrup, and soaked the plums in soju, which she’ll address how she’ll introduce these she reckons will be fragrant, lightly sweet, things to the “alternative economy” so many and ready to bottle by Thanksgiving. From restaurant workers have pivoted to. These there she’ll pit the plums, chop them, and things will likely be o ered via Instagram (@ mix them with gochujang and sesame oil for jennifer.skim), but she hints that a number maesil-jjangahji, ready by the New Year—she of Korean banchan are being reserved for a says it’s a great sub for ssamjang in fami- pop-up in the next few weeks, modeled after ly-style grilling, especially for seafood. pojangmacha, South Korea’s ubiquitous out- Kim also macerated some of those plums door street food tents. She still needs to pay in Letherbee Gin, and has Polish-style sau- her rent, after all. erkraut and pickles going, as well as some Meanwhile, “Sometimes you gotta sit and brined Russian rye apples. “They’re time let shit get good,” she says. “Let it do what it capsules,” she says. “Every time you open a needs to do to turn into something else. Go be jar of something or eat something, it imparts a human being that doesn’t have a title or a a memory from somewhere before, or it im- restaurant, and just do the things that make parts a new memory. It’s like, what are we you happy as a human.” v trying to remember from this time? And what do we want not to forget. @MikeSula ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 7 FOOD & DRINK

MEGAN KIRBY Our waiter led us through the empty fi rst malist experiential dining. The Rock ’n’ Roll fl oor and up the stairs, where a small cluster McDonald’s fell in 2018, just across the street of diners were seated near each other in from Cha Cha’s stalwart gaze. Corny-combat- front of the robotic elephants. Families with ive diner Ed Debevic’s got pushed out of River elementary-aged kids, a group of tourists at North in 2015. Quick—someone check on Me- a long table, and Jon and myself armed with dieval Times! notebooks and adventurers’ keen eyes. We Restaurants aren’t built like theme parks were intrepid explorers, deep in the jungle, anymore. A gift shop does not add a Michelin ordering Diet Cokes with a slice of lime, if you star. But I do understand the appeal of these have it? spaces, even as they disappear from the As a kid, my parents refused to take us to public. The point wasn’t to feel like you were Rainforest Cafe. They would not even enter- actually in the middle of a tropical jungle. The tain the idea. Eleven-year-old me was not point was to play along. happy. Oh, the forbidden clout of a Rainforest Every 45 minutes at the Rainforest Cafe, Cafe bucket hat. I distinctly remember stand- a simulated thunderstorm rippled through ing outside the Woodfi eld location, watching the space. Ceiling lights flashed, speakers a man with a live parrot. Jon told me that can- boomed, the animatronic elephants trumpet- not be true—how could they have a live bird in ed in fear. Every time, Jon reacted in faux-ter- an establishment that passes the health code? ror, gripping the table and hollering. And I assumed I created a false memory, but when every time, I laughed like a toddler—gleefully, I looked it up, I learned that I was right. In the and without shame. That joke really landed. early aughts, some Rainforest Cafe locations And I think that sums up the sweet and eerie had live parrots entertain kids on fi eld trips as appeal of Rainforest Cafe: to sit amongst they devoured chicken strips. decayed and flimsy fantasy and pretend In Rainforest Cafe’s prime, mechanical together. birds swung and wheeled from the ceiling. There’s another TikTok making the rounds. Mist machines hid around the room, trans- A crane wrenches Cha Cha from their perch forming the climate to a humid jungle. (The while a bro across the street chants, “Don’t NOVELTY DINING vibe everyone wants as they eat their $14 An- take the frog!” aconda Pasta.) What happened to these feats The funny thing is, when Rainforest Cafe of experiential dining? “OSHA violations,” opened downtown in 1997, the city was horri- Gone but not frog-otten our waiter shrugged. fi ed. Founder Steve Schussler told the Chica- That night in 2019, we knew we were dining go Tribune, “Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, A zinester remembers Rainforest Cafe. in a relic. Everything was a little faded, a little has the reception been as mean.” musty, a little mildewed from the constant Maybe that’s what nostalgia culture boils By M K churn of the artifi cial waterfall. None of this down to: protecting the things we once bothered me. The truth is, I was drawn in by reviled. And to what end? Rainforest Cafe the absurdity of it all. The wild thing isn’t that is owned by Landry’s Inc., a conglomerate watch a TikTok where the Rainforest Cafe capitalist schemes at Jon’s kitchen table. Even Rainforest Cafe shuttered; it’s that it survived owned by a major Trump supporter. I spent frog sits on a trailer in a parking lot, dis- before Cha Cha showed up in my dreams, the for two decades. hours crawling through rainforestcafe.com to I mantled. When I fall asleep, I dream I have Rainforest Cafe sunk deep into my psyche. We’re witnessing the downfall of maxi- see if the wishing well coins actually support adopted the frog. I am trying to convince my But all things must end—especially kitschy the rainforest. Results inconclusive. roommate we have the space. “You can use it theme restaurants clinging to life with the In a stroke of creative genius, Jon and I ti- as a plant stand,” I tell her. “Besides, think of suction of an amphibian’s desperate grasp. tled our publication based on the experience the content!” In August 2020, they dethroned Cha Cha and Zineforest Café. On the cover, we drew the Cha Cha the frog stood sentry over Chicago tore down the plaster mushrooms flanking Rainforest Cafe logo, except he’s the gorilla for 22 years, peering out over Ohio and Clark the River North establishment. and I’m Cha Cha. Before we release it, we de- streets with wide red eyes and a benign smile. Rainforest Cafe’s demise was not entirely cided we needed an epilogue. A proper eulogy, Did you know their name was Cha Cha? I unexpected. In December 2019, the Woodfi eld now that we know how things end. didn’t until I went to Rainforest Cafe for the Mall location was replaced with a Peppa Pig Right now, I like to imagine a future where fi rst time, in August 2019. My buddy Jon and World of Play. When Jon and I went for our I’m walking downtown with someone I hav- I like to go to theme restaurants and write fateful meal, the vines covering the walls en’t met yet. We’ll pass the Ohio-Clark corner, zines about the experience. That late summer were dusty. The mist from the wishing well and I’ll point to whatever has replaced Rain- evening, our pick was Rainforest Cafe. We waterfall fi lled the restaurant with the smell forest Cafe, and I’ll say—with true warmth in ate subpar dinners and took pictures of the of musty chlorine. Even the animatronic my voice—“I used to know the frog who lived animatronic gorillas and spent the next year jungle creatures were over it. The leopard’s there.” v researching, drawing tree frogs and “Jungle tail swung slowly; Tracy Tree’s human eyes Burgers,” drinking seltzers and slamming twitched with exhaustion. @megankirb 8 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll SPONSORED ADVERTISING NATURE’S CARE CO CHARLES AMADIN GENERAL MANAGER OF NATURE’S CARE CO GARY LITTLE CEO OF COLAGROUP LLC AND DISPENSARY MANAGER OF

COURTESY NATURE’S CARE CO When Chicago speaks, Nature’s Care listens Meet the cannabis dispensary already proving to be a community leader

t began in December 2019, Equity Illinois Coalition (CEIC), designed partner in Illinois, seeking to combat so- DIAs, and worked with minority and so- during a casual dinner conver- to ensure that the economic success of cial injustice by creating real solutions cial equity businesses to make Nature’s sation between Nature’s Care Nature’s Care West Loop dispensary is and pathways to help those dispropor- Care West Loop a reality—among many and ColaGroup,” said Charles linked with economic benefits for the tionately impacted. The solutions in- others,” stated Amadin. “IAmadin, General Manager of Nature’s communities most disproportionately clude education in expungement, “Know To celebrate the milestone achieve- Care Company. “And that conversation harmed by the War on Drugs. Nature’s Your Rights” virtual community events, ments coming out of both the CEIC and budded into two historic cannabis equi- Care agreed to the following: financial literacy, cannabis careers, and ColaGroup agreements, Nature’s Care ty and social justice partnerships—two • Hire 75% of employees from dispro- guidance and sponsorship in business is running an equity campaign entitled partnerships that are paving the way for portionately impacted areas (DIAs) ventures. In addition, Nature’s Care spon- “The City is Speaking. And We Hear You.” cannabis dispensaries, not only shining within two years sored 34 applications for cannabis licens- The campaign genesis speaks to the city’s light on the sincere struggles and historic • Provide 100% living wages for es to the State of Illinois for individuals outcry for change and support, and it wrongs of cannabis laws, but also provid- those individuals from DIAs. will spotlight the agreements, the part- ing the necessary resources to eradicate • Donate 10% of dispensary net prof- Nature’s Care and ColaGroup are ners who pushed them into reality, and those wrongs and establish pathways to its to community organizations that particularly proud of and committed to Nature’s Care’s mission and accomplish- success for disproportionately impacted help DIAs their work on expungement, which in- ments. individuals harmed by the War on Drugs.” • Contract at least 10% of products volves clearing or sealing the record of “It’s time for Chicago to see and ex- Nature’s Care may be a medical and and services from minority and social a person’s prior arrest, criminal charges, perience what we’ve created,” said Ama- adult-use cannabis dispensary brand in equity businesses or convictions. Together, they created an din. “We love and care about what we do, Illinois, but its mission includes much • Create a training and career devel- online dashboard (naturescarecompany. and our Nature’s Care West Loop dispen- more than selling cannabis. Nature’s Care opment program for employees com/social-equity) that provides step-by- sary is proof that we honor our prom- believes in doing the right thing and us- • Host “know-your-rights” events step educational information, access to ises. Supporting Nature’s Care means ing its resources to support under-served and participate in National Expunge- legal services, and the necessary knowl- supporting your community. ‘The City is communities and citizens in Illinois. With ment Week and ongoing expunge- edge required to navigate the cannabis Speaking. And We Hear You.’” its upcoming new cannabis dispensary ment support. expungement process. Nature’s Care is Nature’s Care West Loop is located slated to open in the West Loop on Sep- And Nature’s Care is holding true to also supporting National Expungement at 810 West Randolph Street and is slat- tember 28, Nature’s Care is taking this this agreement, having already hired 95% Week (Sept. 19-26), during which they ed to open Monday, September 28, 2020. time to show Chicago the reality of their of the promised employees from DIAs in covered the rap sheet costs of almost 40 For more information on the location, mission and just what they’ve been up to half of the promised time—all 33 jobs, participants. agreements, and how to access the tools for the past year. with more to come, provide 100% living “It’s not lip service. We act on our and services listed, visit NaturesCare- In March 2020, Nature’s Care signed wages. promises. Over the last year, we created Company.com or follow the brand on In- a first-of-its-kind in the nation Commu- Nature’s Care also signed an agree- an online dashboard to help navigate ex- s t a g r a m ( @ n a t u r e s c a r e ) a n d F a c e b o o k nity Benefits Agreement with Cannabis ment with ColaGroup, a social equity pungement, built a dispensary team from (@naturescarecompany).

ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 9 NEWS & POLITICS

Want to get away with whatever crimes you according to Eric Lipton’s investigation for the want? Ask me how! GAGE SKIDMORE New York Times. A few cases stem from Trump suing former Nonetheless, the Madigan/ComEd connec- aides (like Omarosa Manigault) for allegedly tion has Republicans, like state representative violating nondisclosure agreements. Jim Durkin, howling for investigations. But I doubt if Attorney General William Barr or they’re curiously quiet about Trump’s role in any of his lawyers at the Justice Department the case of TikTok, the Chinese-owned social will be looking into this. media platform. Quite the contrary, the Justice Department Trump demanded that ByteDance, which recently moved to take over the defense of owns TikTok, sell the company, on the grounds Trump’s rape trial. that it’s a national security threat for a Yes, Trump’s been accused of rape—not that Chinese-owned fi rm to have so much access to you’ll hear any Republicans talk about it. They user data. only care about sexual harassment if they can That’s ironic coming from Trump, who use it against Democrats. called on Russia to hack into Democratic E. Jean Carroll—a journalist and book au- computers. thor—says Trump raped her in the changing It looked like Microsoft might purchase room of a department store in New York City. TikTok. But Trump let it be known that he Trump denied it. Said he didn’t know Car- preferred Oracle. roll. Said she wasn’t his type. Which implies he Why not? Larry Ellison—Oracle’s cofound- might have raped her if she were. er—is one of the few tech titans with close ties Carroll filed a defamation suit against to Trump. Trump. She says there’s a substance on the In February, Ellison hosted a fundraiser dress she was wearing the day Trump raped POLITICS for Trump at his estate in California. “For her. Wants the president to take a DNA test to $100,000, supporters can join a golf outing see if the substance was left by him. and have their photo taken with the presi- Trump’s racking up legal bills fi ghting not to Under Barr’s thumb dent,” according to the Desert Sun newspaper. take the DNA test. Though you’d think he’d do “For $250,000, contributors get a photo, golf whatever he could to clear his name if he was Trump could teach Madigan and Burke a thing or two about corruption. outing, and can participate in a roundtable innocent of her charges. Funny how these law- discussion.” and-order types don’t want law and order for By B J Oracle’s chief executive—Safra Catz—was themselves. on Trump’s transition team. With the Justice Department’s interven- In August, Labor secretary Eugene Scalia tion, you, the taxpayers, would be paying for was accused of intervening on Oracle’s behalf Trump’s rape defense. to settle a class action job discrimination suit, That’s like Madigan tapping Attorney Gen- s time goes on, it seems more obvious to nated $50,000 to Emanuel’s fi rst mayoral cam- according to a whistleblower’s complaint. eral Kwame Raoul to handle his defense in me that Donald Trump would fi t right in paign. Just in time to have Emanuel—once in And in a move straight out of the ComEd the ComEd case. Can you imagine the howling Awith all the regulars of the local Demo- o ce—conveniently look the other way when playbook, Oracle hired people close to Trump, from, say, the Tribune, in such a case? cratic Party. Trump slapped that big ugly sign on his tower. including a lobbyist named Matt Schlapp Speaking of the Tribune, John Kass recently Not that you’ll hear much about this from Then Rahm acted like a helpless little no- whose wife, Mercedes Schlapp, works for conducted an interview with William Barr. our local Democratic-bashing Republicans. body who couldn’t do anything to force Trump Trump’s reelection campaign. For the benefi t of younger readers, Kass is No, they’re pretty silent when it comes to to take it down. Quick—Jim Durkin, hold an investigation! the far-right, MAGA-loving Tribune columnist Trump’s corruption. So, yes, plenty of friends among Chicago Lo and behold, ByteDance recently rejected who routinely savages Madigan, Kim Foxx, and We’ll get to them. Back to Trump and the Democrats. But, it goes deeper than that. Con- Microsoft’s o er. “The move leaves Oracle— other Dems. Dems . . . sider the parallels in behavior. one of the few Silicon Valley fi rms to publicly He had a chance to ask Barr about Carroll’s For starters, former Governor Blagojevich— House speaker Madigan’s under investiga- ally with Mr. Trump—as the sole publicly suit, the DNA test, and taxpayers footing the aka, Blago—has become one of Trump’s big- tion because Commonwealth Edison doled out known remaining bidder to TikTok,” as the bill for Trump’s rape defense. gest in-state cheerleaders since the president contracts and jobs to some of his cronies. New York Times puts it. Alas, he asked Barr about his favorite steak- commuted his sentence for conviction and let Madigan says he did nothing wrong. Says he Funny how that happens. house in Chicago. Apparently, Kass ran out of him out of prison. doesn’t dictate who ComEd hires. And points Wait there’s more . . . space before he got to the all-important ques- And Alderman Ed Burke—who’s facing fed- out that ComEd’s rate deals passed with plen- When local Dems get in trouble, they dip tion of whether Barr favors A.1. or Tabasco. eral corruption charges—helped Trump save ty of Republican support. So it’s not like he did into their campaign funds to pay their legal How embarrassing. To paraphrase the millions in property taxes by appealing the as- anything on ComEd’s behalf. bills. Madigan’s done it—as have Burke and Stones, under Barr’s thumb the “Siamese cat” sessment on Trump Tower to the Cook County I think he makes a strong case—I can’t recall former Alderman Danny Solis. has become “the sweetest pet in the world.” assessor’s office, which was then headed by the last time Republicans took a strong stand Compared to Trump, they’re pikers. Since Purr . . . v Joe Berrios—another Chicago Democrat. against ComEd, or any big utility company for 2015, Trump’s tapped into various campaign And don’t forget Mayor Rahm. Trump do- that matter. accounts to pay about $58 million in legal fees, @bennyjshow 10 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll The Chicago Reader BOOK CLUB

Mikki Kendall Nnedi Okorafor Kayla Ancrum Hood Feminism: Notes Remote Control Darling From the Women That a March 21 July 21 Movement Forgot 3/25/2021 7/22/2021 Book Club Month: October 20 Author Talk: 10/22/2020 Natalie Moore Jessica Hopper The South Side (TBD) Sonali Dev April 21 August 21 Recipe for Persuasion 4/22/2021 8/26/2021 November 20 11/19/2020 Rebecca Makkai Precious Brady-Davis The Great Believers I Have Always Been Me: A Riva Lehrer May 21 Memoir Golem Girl 5/27/2021 September 21 December 20 9/23/2021 12/17/2020 Fatimah Asghar If They Come for Us Emil Ferris June 21 My Favorite Thing Is 6/24/2021 Monsters January 21 1/28/2021 Book Club membership includes: Exclusive access to conversations between Authors and the Reader Eve Ewing 1919 Discounts to your favorite independent bookstores February 21 A curated monthly newsletter 2/25/2021 A members-only discussion forum Special oﬀ ers from Reader partners

Learn more at chicagoreader.com/bookclub ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 11 #TVKUV9TKVGT 2GTHQTOGT! NEWS & POLITICS %4'#6+8' 51.76+105 (14 Upcoming Issues: %4'#6+8' 2'12.' 5WRRQTVKXG #HHKTOKPI CPF )QCN Sept. 3, 2020 &KTGEVGF 2U[EJQVJGTCR[ CPF Education Issue *[RPQVJGTCR[ HQT #FWNVU /#: - 5*#2'; .%59 Sept. 17, 2020 .QECVGF KP &QYPVQYP 'XCPUVQP Housing Issue YYYOCZUJCRG[EQO Oct. 1, 2020 OCZUJCRG["CQNEQO Fall Arts Issue NWG TQUU NWG 5JKGNF 2TGHGTTGF 2TQXKFGT KIPC 2TGHGTTGF 2TQXKFGT Oct. 15, 2020 Mental Health Issue: SocialWorks Insert

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READER Nov. 12, 2020 MASKS Nov. 26, 2020 Dec. 10, 2020 CULTURE Dec. 24, 2020 At home with Chicago’s mid- Download a free copy of any Reader issue here: century modernism chicagoreader.com/ chicago/ issuearchives A new book looks beyond skyscrapers to a neglected bounty of single family houses.

Find one near you: By D I chicagoreader.com/map

hicago’s skyscraper modernism—the essays by the authors that provide broader

GO’S FREE WEEKL Y AY M | E C N I S LY K E E W E E R F S ’ O AG C I H C Hancock, Marina City, Sears/Willis—is context. Cthe city’s treasured calling card. What’s Modern in the Middle originated with Ben- less known and much less appreciated is our jamin, the co-author of two previous books

The Gaming Issue area’s parallel cache of modernist residential on Chicago architecture and the research- GO’S FREE WEEKL L I R P A | E C N I S LY K E E W E E R F S ’ O AG C I H C architecture. Modern in the Middle, a new er-writer responsible for numerous national book by historian and preservationist Susan and local landmark nominations. She says S. Benjamin and IIT professor Michelangelo she’s been thinking about writing it since she Sabatino, sets out to ﬁ x that. worked on an exhibition on the same subject Published this month by the Monacelli in 1976. Co-author Sabatino is an architect, Press, it o ers a portfolio of 53 modern hous- preservationist, and historian. es built in the city and suburbs between 1929 The word “middle” in the book’s title, with and 1975, along with the story behind each its potentially sleepy connotations, was a CHICAGOREADER. house, more than 300 stunning period pho- deliberate choice according to the authors, Home & Plants Issue tos (many of them from the Chicago History locating this architecture smack in the mid- THREADLESS.COM How to make the most of your ﬂ ora and furnishings Museum’s Hedrich-Blessing archive), and dle of the century, middle of the country, and 12 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll NEWS & POLITICS

Harriet Davis and Louis Ancel House in Glencoe, massive expanses of glass that bring the projects, including the Johnson Publications space.” 1961 DARRIS LEE HARRIS outside in. Company headquarters. That could help preserve Chicago’s stock middle class. “If you lie down on the bed in the Farn- There is also only one house by a woman of these midcentury modern residences. It’s At a time when great urban centers were sworth House,” Sabatino told me, “the archi- architect in the book—Jean Wiersema the authors’ hope that this book will, too. considered the hubs for everything serious tecture disappears, and you’re basically in Wehrheim—another reflection of the fact The front cover bears an interior photo of the and sophisticated, “What we tried to show nature.” that the profession was, for so long, notori- long, low, flat-roofed, open-plan Highland is that these clients were perfectly fi ne with Many of these houses will be a revelation. ously short of opportunity for anyone but Park home designed by Keck & Keck for Max- living in the suburbs,” Sabatino said in a While a few, like Farnsworth and the Mies white men, Benjamin told me. On a more ine Weil and Sigmund Kunstadter and built phone interview last week. “And that, even house that’s now a part of the Elmhurst positive note, while the houses those white in 1952. It was demolished and replaced with for those who could a ord more, there was a Art Museum, are open to the public, and a male architects built have traditionally been a larger house in 2003—a fate too many mid- sense of being frugal, but elegant.” number of others are familiar—the glass identifi ed by the names of their male owners, century modern homes met when the land “We’re not talking lifestyles of the rich and box garage from the John Hughes fi lm Ferris every home in this book that was commis- they stood on became more valuable to the famous here,” he said. “This is cosmopolitan Bueller’s Day O ; Adlai Stevenson’s country sioned by a couple is labeled with the names marketplace than the house itself. “We really informality.” house—most are functioning private homes of both partners. hope this book serves as a catalyst,” Sabati- The title also points to a middle ground scattered anonymously through suburbs Modern in the Middle ends in 1975, when no says. “We hope the positive examples of between the opposing philosophies of the from Flossmoor to Waukegan, and even fur- high modernism began to wane and people preservation will encourage folks that might two towering fi gures of Chicago modernism, ther afi eld. were moving from the suburbs back into want to take a project like this on.” Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic approach to de- A smaller number are in the city, where the city. Now, both authors think that trend The book closes with a glimpse at the au- sign and Mies van der Rohe’s more abstract vacant land was sparse, but they include may be reversing. “Even when this pandemic thors’ own homes—suburban houses in the focus on structure. The authors say that the only house in the book by a Black archi- disappears, people have learned that they modernist mode, built in 1939 and 1941. It’s despite their di erences, the two shared an tect—the compact Miesian home John W. can actually work from home,” Sabatino an impressive scholarly work, but also, clear- appreciation of nature: while Wright used Moutoussamy (who studied with Mies at IIT) says. “I’m imagining that there’s going to ly, a labor of love. v natural materials and designed buildings designed for his own family in the Chatham be increased interest in having access to na- that melded into the landscape, it’s Mies’s neighborhood, before he went on to bigger ture and in this kind of elegant but informal @DeannaIsaacs

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ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 13 NEWS & POLITICS

On a July a ernoon, ex-cops working for a Rogers Park landlord extracted a tenant from his home at gunpoint. See the online version of this story for video of the incident. MAYA DUKMASOVA

“Threaten you with what?” “Don’t threaten me again.” “I didn’t threaten you!” “Get out,” the driver said again as they reached the ground fl oor. The tenant said he would call the police. “Get out, I’m telling you,” the driver repeated. “Are you on the lease? Are you on the lease yes or no? The answer is no. We know that and management’s here,” he indicated the third, masked man who was watching from a few steps away. “Is this Greenspire Realty?” the tenant asked the third man. He received no response. “They don’t want you here,” the driver said. Soon the tenant appeared to walk away. The guy with the shades on his forehead turned to me and said, “And you’re recording what? Really? Really?” waving his hand dismissively. Moments later the tenant HOUSING heavyset, gray haired man in his 60s wear- reemerged in the back stairwell having ap- ing a blue polo shirt—had drawn a gun. The parently accessed it through the basement. other, who had a pair of narrow sunglasses This time the two men intercepted him on perched on his forehead, had his hand at the the stairs. A scu e ensued in the shadows of Tht lockout you waist of his bootcut jeans. the back landing. “Please stop, you’re hurt- “Where’s he at?” the driver called out to ing me!” the tenant repeated several times. someone inside the apartment. Someone got shoved down the stairs with witnessed? “In here,” a man’s voice responded. a thud, and called someone else a “mother- “Come on out!” the driver barked. “Come fucker.” “Please stop, you’re hurting me!” the on out! Police! Out, now!” He swung the gun tenant yelled again. It didn’t hppen. from the door and in the direction of the “Why don’t you fuckin’ stop?” one of the Ex-cops attempted to throw out a Rogers Park tenant at gunpoint. The police stairs as the tenant emerged with his hands two men responded. “We’ve been nice with report tells a diff erent story. up. “Put your hands behind your back,” the you. Why don’t you fuckin’ stop?” driver ordered as he marched the man down “Help!” the tenant shouted again and By M D the stairs, gesturing with his gun. “Get out.” again. “I can’t breathe! Help! Look he’s got “Get out,” the other man chimed in. my fucking helmet around my neck!” “You’re trespassing,” the driver said as Right about then nearly a dozen cops from wo middle-aged men sat in a red Hyun- A tenant from one of the third-fl oor units they made it down another landing. “You the Chicago Police Department’s 24th Dis- dai Sonata with the license plate “RUF,” ascended the stairs. He was moving fast, don’t belong in there, get the fuck out of trict arrived in the gangway. Tidling in a back alley parking lot along characteristically dressed in a tight lycra here.” Farwell Avenue in Rogers Park. When I pulled biking top and cargo shorts, with tinfoil When they reached the last fl ight of stairs, or the next hour on that July 30 after- in and parked, the white man behind the sticking out from underneath his helmet. the tenant protested. “The fuck I don’t dude, noon, my friends and I and other neigh- wheel nodded at me. I went to my friends’ The neighbors often saw him coming in and I live there! I’ve lived there for fucking over Fbors from the cluster of brick apartment first-floor apartment to pick up some be- out of the apartment with a bike and heard a year!” buildings around that alley watched and longings and when I came out a few minutes him screaming at odd hours. It was hard to “Let’s go!” the men responded in unison. fi lmed as the cops spoke with the tenant and later the men were standing, maskless, in the tell what was happening in the home because It was then that the driver, still with his gun his former roommate (who was the actual gangway in front of the back staircase of one his windows were filled with blankets and out, turned and saw me fi lming with my cell leaseholder but had moved out months before of the neighboring buildings that shares the other debris. Just as he made it to the door of phone. because the unit had become uninhabitable), alley. A third man who was wearing a mask the apartment, which was ajar, the two men “Don’t threaten me again,” the driver then representatives from Greenspire (the compa- and holding some papers stood a few feet from the Hyundai followed up the stairs. said to the tenant as he descended the last ny that owns that unit in the condo building), behind them. The one who had been behind the wheel—a fl ight of stairs. and the men who claimed they were police. 14 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll NEWS & POLITICS

“This fucking guy he pulled a gun on me ation into their own hands. “Now you guys dom Thursday afternoon. It was the kind of about the landlord’s wellbeing so he brought right away, he represented himself as the locked him out, now you guys are in the incident I’d usually receive a tip about, and private security with him to do maintenance police,” the tenant told Lucas Cunningham, a wrong. . . . Where you guys are at is anyone try to report in the face of vehement denials on this person’s apartment. He started young, gloved but unmasked o cer in a CPD who tries to remove him and keep him from of malfeasance from the landlord and a total screaming for help. The incident is classifi ed baseball cap who was the fi rst to walk up to that residence is gonna be in trouble. So lack of corroborating evidence from the as noncriminal so there’s not a detective the scene. whoever these gentlemen are . . .” he trailed police. I must confess that, despite all I’ve looking into it. It just seemed like whoever “I never said I was the police,” the driver of off, indicating the men who attempted to seen as a reporter, I was unprepared for how the individual was didn’t want the landlord the Hyundai said to Cunningham. A chorus evict the tenant. nonchalantly the truth would be erased in to do work on the apartment.” of neighbors’ voices rang out saying that he “They were there to protect our employ- real time and how quickly the systems of priv- According to the spokesman, the report had, indeed, claimed he was police and that ee,” the woman on the video call said. ilege that enable powerful people to do the (for which I promptly filed a Freedom of the tenant was telling the truth. “If you guys have a legitimate belief that wrong thing were mobilized to shield them Information Act request) made no mention We listened to a lengthy conversation he’s a threat, then you have to go to a judge from consequences. Reporting this story un- of what appeared to bystanders to be an between officer Joshua Surgal (whose face and you have to get an emergency order derscored my own privilege, too. None of the illegal eviction attempt, of one of the secu- stayed obscured behind a baseball cap, and you have to have the sheri s come and neighbors I spoke with were able to get much rity guards pointing a gun or claiming to be sunglasses, and a neck warmer until most evict,” Surgal said. “Right now you have a clarity about the situation on their own, while police, of my name or the name of at least one of the neighbors and their phone cameras gentleman who’s basically been living there, the tools at my disposal as a journalist led to other witness who gave statements, of avail- dispersed) and Greenspire representatives, by the admission of the person that was on most of our questions being answered. able video evidence. I asked whether there who had beamed into the alley via video call your lease . . . So we are already clearly es- One of my friends had written to 49th was any information about the identity of on the Hyundai driver’s cell phone. He held tablishing that he has residence. And so until Ward alderwoman Maria Hadden (who hap- the security guards or the fi rm they work for. the phone with the grid of faces at chest level you guys get the order to remove him he has pens to live in a building that also shares the “They’re just security guys,” he said. “Green- as Surgal dressed them down with a high- the right to be in there. For sure you guys alley) about what happened, but got only a spire City North, that’s what the employer is pitched voice and thick Chicago accent. can’t just come and change the locks on him, canned response from her sta er: “We hate listed as.” Greenspire’s people said the tenant was because then you guys get in trouble.” to hear the experience you have recently I called Greenspire and spoke with pres- squatting in the unit. Surgal asked if the A man on the video call said something gone through. We are happy to hear the ident and CEO John Dragic. “Let’s not blow company had filed for eviction. A woman about the tenant being “a danger to the police arrived on the scene. You and your things out of proportion. They did not come on the video call confi rmed that Greenspire neighborhood.” neighbors deserve to feel safe. This falls of with guns blazing,” Dragic told me in a calm had, but that they hadn’t gotten an eviction “No that’s not true,” Surgal cut him off. course directly under police jurisdiction. and soothing voice. “This is the reality: We order from a judge. “OK so he’s not evicted,” “You can’t establish that there’s a danger I would recommend following up with the needed to make repairs in that unit. Plumb- Surgal said. “You had a tenant who allowed right now. I got people around here that are police on this matter to get an update.” ing repairs needed to be done because the him to come and live in your property. . . . You establishing that the gentlemen that came More than anything, we wanted to know tenant was dismantling the plumbing in the know the law. A squatter can even establish with your manager are more of the danger. who the men from the Hyundai were and unit. You’re familiar with the tenant, so you residence.” So if you want to talk about a danger to the how they would be held accountable for know he has some issues.” He went on to say I learned that shortly before I came out- neighborhood, I don’t know if you really their actions. It was hard to believe that any that the tenant had a criminal record, was side, another neighbor had watched Green- want to go down there. So you guys may corporate landlord could attempt what the “violent and threatening,” and that “there spire representatives change the locks on want to reassess and think about this really tenant called a “self-serve eviction” and get was no forced eviction.” the unit. “The fi rst thing that happened was carefully.” away with it. Indeed the Chicago Residential I asked Dragic to explain what a half dozen they went upstairs, pounded on the door and After the video call, Surgal moved far Landlord Tenant Ordinance establishes people saw. I asked why Greenspire’s people said ‘Police! Open up!’” Lisa Martin, who away from the crowd of onlookers and had criminal penalties against landlords for had changed the locks and claimed they had a clear line of sight from her third-story a quiet conversation with the two men lockouts, including fi nes ranging from $200 were cops. “Because the tenant himself had porch across the alley, told o cer Cunning- from the Hyundai. The tenant-squatter was to $500. changed the locks, we didn’t have keys,” ham, who chewed gum as he jotted down her allowed to stay in the unit. Two neighbors I called the 24th District to fi nd out what Dragic said. “I wasn’t there, I don’t know story into a notebook. “Then what they did and I gave statements to o cer Cunningham was in the police report. More than a week what these [security] guys were saying, but was they had two maintenance guys break about what we saw, and shared our IDs and after it happened, neither I nor any of the the intent was not to evict him, the intent in, remove the locks, change the locks, and contact information. No arrests were made neighbors who gave statements and record- was to make repairs . . . We had no idea these pull his curtain down.” even though we and the tenant told police ed videos had heard back from the cops. guys had guns or anything like that.” “As a manager you know tenants’ rights, that Greenspire’s armed representatives After several unhelpful conversations with He wouldn’t reveal the identity of the men. you know squatters’ rights, right? And he’s had pointed a gun and claimed they were officers on phone duty who wouldn’t even “They are security people. They were re- being allowed in by a tenant you have a lease cops. Slowly, the onlookers, some of whom share the incident report number with me, I ferred to us. I’m not gonna disclose anyone’s with,” o cer Surgal told Greenspire on the had come outside barefoot, dispersed into contacted CPD’s news a airs sta . names. You won’t be seeing them anymore.” video call. The woman on the call protested, their homes. The leaseholder walked away in “This is a whole lot of nothing,” a depart- I asked if Dragic had anything to say to the but he interrupted. “We’re in Rogers Park, a hu . The tenant shut himself in the apartment spokesman said. He then gave me the neighbors who were frightened, concerned we’ve got a lot of people with a lot of weird ment. Greenspire’s people and the police got report number and summarized what was that someone might have been shot or killed. behavior. You guys changed the locks, you’re in their cars and drove away. in it: “So pretty much o cers responded to a “That was a one-o situation that I think was going to have to give him the key to the locks. disturbance. They heard someone calling for regrettable on everyone’s part,” he said. “We And you’re going to have to get an eviction couldn’t stop thinking about what hap- help. The male was upset because a landlord didn’t understand there were firearms in- order. We’re not taking him out.” pened. The issues I’ve been writing about was trying to do work in the apartment. The volved. So whatever they were saying I don’t The officer went on to chastise Green- I for years—eviction and policing—had landlord said the person who was screaming know, but our mission there was to shut o spire’s representatives for taking the situ- converged right in front of my eyes on a ran- had made threats. There was some concern the water that was running on the people ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 15 NEWS & POLITICS

continued from 15 condo to Greenspire after her divorce. Marty they’ve just been sitting on the papers and gonna take the law in their own hands,” Kahn below. That’s why we went in.” stayed on as Greenspire’s tenant after she now they’re saying in order for them to do it said. “I’m not saying it’s right but I under- The next day, Steve Cain, another Green- moved out and was living in the two-bedroom I have to give them an a davit about [Sam’s] stand where it comes from. It’s cheaper to spire executive, e-mailed the Reader. Cain apartment alone when, in the spring of 2019, criminal conduct.” throw them out and risk getting sued than said that the problem tenant wasn’t home he met Sam, the man who’d become known Marty said that on July 30 he was sur- waiting for the process.” when company representatives arrived to to us neighbors as the problematic tenant prised to receive a call from Greenspire out do repairs and that the door had been barri- and whose name I also changed to protect his of the blue. “They said: ‘You better get down he red Hyundai’s vanity license plate had caded. “We were able to enter from the back privacy. Sam needed a place to live and Marty there now. We came in there. We changed the a faded Fraternal Order of Police stick- door and began to do the necessary repair had a spare room, so he invited the younger locks.’” He said the company also wanted him Ter. I was able to track down the driver work,” he wrote. He then o ered the follow- man to move in and split the rent last August. to stay in the unit overnight to make sure through the Illinois Secretary of State. His ing narrative: “That was the worst thing I ever, ever did,” Sam didn’t return. Marty said there had been name is Ronald Rufo and he retired from the “The roommate came home, saw what Marty told me when we met on Zoom. Sam, a leak in the unit a few weeks prior and the Chicago Police Department in 2015, where he was going on, entered through the front of who earned money through bike delivery, company was able to get in and investigate, was a cop in the 18th District. According to the building, down through the basement fell short on his half of the rent almost im- but there was no new emergency mainte- the Illinois Department of Financial and Pro- and then came charging up [the] back steps, mediately. Marty said Sam was also using nance to take care of that day as far as he was fessional Regulation, Rufo was once a security threatening our maintenance people. It was methamphetamine. Within a few months aware. When he arrived and saw the state guard (in addition to being a real estate agent at this point that things really got unpleas- their cohabitation became untenable. “He of the home, he told the security guards and and cosmetologist), but his license expired ant. Our security person charged up after thinks the Nazis are coming to get him,” Greenspire’s masked property manager Luis in 2018. Googling his name turned up several him, prevented him from entering, and a Marty said. Sam accused him of spying and Lopez that it would be impossible for him to local media interviews where Rufo is often fight ensued. The roommate slammed the messing with his bike and barricaded doors stay in the unit. That’s when Sam came home presented as a “PhD” expert on police suicide. security guard hard against a wall, injuring in the apartment. Last December Sam had and the guards ordered him out. He was also listed as an “EdD” on the covers him. The security guard pinned him down, Marty arrested for throwing a television Marty added that Greenspire “wanted to of his books—one called Sexual Predators at which point he began screaming for the remote control at him during an altercation. kick him out and they were gonna get a com- Amongst Us published in 2011, the other, a police and saying ‘I can’t breathe.’ I believe it When the coronavirus lockdown began in pany there that day to take everything out 2015 volume he edited called Police Suicide: was at this point that Maya and many other March, Marty left the apartment to stay with of the apartment.” This also surprised him Is Police Culture Killing Our Officers? His on-lookers came out of their apartments and a friend. since he thought he’d have the whole next doctoral degree came from Argosy University, started filming. If you only see what hap- Over the next several months, Marty said month to move out. a now-defunct for-profit diploma mill. Rufo pened from that point going forward, it is he continued to pay the full $1,370 rent to Marty said he’d never seen the security didn’t return calls and texts for comment. easy to surmise that this is just another case Greenspire while Sam changed the locks guards before. The gun brandishing was When I e-mailed Greenspire to ask whether of a horrible, heartless landlord making life to the unit and destroyed some of Marty’s unnerving. “I was shocked,” he said, “I didn’t they were aware Rufo wasn’t a licensed secu- miserable for a poor, helpless tenant strug- things. Marty tried to remove some of his think that was right.” Since the incident, he rity guard when they dispatched him for the gling to maintain his home.” possessions from the apartment but that be- still hasn’t been able to get his possessions, July 30 job, Dragic didn’t address the issue. Cain wrote that it’s “hard to estimate” the came harder after Sam had him served with which include his parents’ ashes, even Instead, he once again denied any wrong- value of the property damage and “on-going a restraining order. though he now has the keys to the new lock. doing. “This was not an eviction attempt no lost rent” the man had done to Greenspire When he finally complained to the land- (Chicago law allows landlords to change matter what you are trying to claim,” Dragic and the original lease-holding tenant. “Ide- lord, “they were more than gracious with locks if they lose access to their property, on wrote. “We hired security to protect our ally, I would ask that you not run this story,” me,” Marty said. Though his lease was the condition that they continue to provide employees from a dangerous occupant of the Cain wrote. “If anything, this story should supposed to end in August, Marty said tenants with keys, too.) He’s been negoti- unit while our staff was making necessary be about the harms that come to small prop- Greenspire agreed to terminate it a month ating with Sam for a time to access the unit repairs . . . Any other portrayal of the events erty owners who are left helpless to prevent early and give him the fi nal month to move without much success. are a fabrication.” the ongoing damage that is occurring to his belongings without having to pay any Kahn wasn’t surprised when I described I got in touch with 49th Ward alderwoman this unit, building and surrounding condo more rent. Greenspire fi led an eviction case what had happened, though he said he hadn’t Maria Hadden, who then did some of her own owners, not to mention the fi nancial damage against Sam last April. “They knew they had heard from his clients about the incident. digging on the matter. She said 24th District we are su ering. . . . We have gone through to go through the courts,” Marty said. “I’m hearing this more and more often every Commander Joseph Brennan told her that every legal requirement and will wait out But eviction courts have been closed due day and I can’t blame too many landlords the security guards were both retired CPD the lifting of the ban on evictions and the to the pandemic and Sam still hasn’t been because they’re not getting any recourse,” o cers and that he knows one of them per- reopening of the courts. But unless this guy served with a summons, according to Cook he said. Recently the Chief Judge of the Cook sonally, but he didn’t share their names. “My does something to get arrested or impris- County records. And even though landlords County circuit court extended the eviction intention is some kind of action with this oned, we will have to constantly allow him are supposed to be able to have emergency court closure and ordered the Cook County management company, to really investigate,” re-access to the unit where he ‘lives.’” hearings in matters like this, those can’t be Sheri to refrain from enforcement through Hadden said. “We can’t have illegal evictions held until a tenant is served with the court September 21. The Centers for Disease Con- happening.” arty, Greenspire’s leaseholder, first papers. trol and Prevention has issued a declaration I reached out to Brennan through a 24th moved into the condo about ten “We filed the case and the sheriff won’t that evictions should be halted nationwide District CAPS representative, but didn’t get Myears ago. He agreed to speak to even serve the papers due to COVID,” Green- to help curb the spread of COVID-19, though a response. me on the condition that we not use his real spire attorney Robert Kahn told me. “The the federal government hasn’t issued rental When I caught up with neighbor Lisa Mar- name. He’d lived in that home with the previ- sheri is not doing their job at all. I’ve been assistance to tenants or landlords. “You take tin weeks later, she said she hadn’t heard ous owner, a friend who had to short-sell the going around and around with them and away people’s right to [evict] and they’re anything back from the police. Martin comes 16 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll NEWS & POLITICS

from a police family herself; her father was present.” According to the report Greenspire moratorium,” spokesman Don Terry e-mailed in a little corner of the city to a little group a CPD commander. If the security guys were “went into the residence to perform emer- in response to my questions about the report. of relatively well-off people. As vulnerable ex-cops, “they’re above the rules in this city,” gency plumbing repairs,” and that while “While we cannot comment on individual as Sam may be, he’s still a white man. As she said. “I’m just trying to think in what that was happening the security guys saw allegations, the Department is reviewing all confused and helpless as the neighbors universe you go to somebody’s place to get Sam going upstairs and were “concerned for procedures regarding this incident to ensure might have felt, they still knew a journalist them out by force of gun.” the safety of the maintenance worker. In an they were properly followed. If there are any to help them figure things out and reach She said that while “there’s no way we’re attempt to stop [Sam] [redacted] displayed photos, video footage or evidence material some officials. As pissed as Greenspire and gonna go back and fi x the past,” she wanted a handgun and gave him an order to stop.” that depicts wrongdoing on the part of the Sam’s neighbors might be at the failure to Greenspire to know “that what they did is The officers reiterated Greenspire’s claim private security guards, as you suggest in get him out of their hair, CPD would still not OK. And if we see anything like this again that their people were only there to fix the your questions, we encourage you to provide answer their calls the next time Sam became we’re going to report them to the mayor, to plumbing and had to “cut the locks to gain that material with CPD so we can ensure any too much. What happened on July 30 would the tenants organizations, to the alderman . . entry to the unit because the resident was individuals who may have committed a crime hardly register on the Richter scale of police . This guy is not even a neighbor I want,” she not responding to messages.” are held accountable.” discrimination, violence, and cover-ups in said, “but what they did to him and how they A woman matching Lisa Martin’s descrip- The next day Lisa Martin got a call from Chicago. The thing about misconduct on did it is absolutely wrong and it put a lot of tion was the only listed witness. This is how CPD’s Internal A airs Bureau with a request the job, though, is that most of it tends to be people in danger.” her story was described: “stated that she for another interview about the situation. mundane. It happens in small ways on a daily Martin had placed one of the 911 calls on observed the entirety of the disturbance and basis—looking the other way when a friend July 30 after observing the security guards that [Sam] was coming back to his residence or decades, whistleblowers, journalists, or acquaintance or former colleague does claim they were cops. She said she hesitated, when [redacted] for the property stopped academics, and ordinary people have something wrong; giving people who seem knowing that an encounter between the po- him and attempted to keep him from going Fproduced voluminous records on police nice and respectable a pass for things some- lice and a person like Sam could end badly. to his apartment because [redacted] was misconduct in Chicago. The way cops cover one less likable would never get away with. “The only reason I felt comfortable to call still [redacted]. The witness stated she ob- for each other and the “code of silence” among Isn’t that what broken windows policing ad- the cops was because there were so many of served the men fall down the stairs together, them is well-known and well-documented. vocates have been arguing for decades—that us out there. So many people watching with and one of [redacted] point his weapon at The thing about the July 30 incident was leniency toward small instances of misbe- their cameras, fi lming exactly what was hap- [redacted].” that, in front of the watchful eyes of many havior builds up tolerance for more serious pening. And you can ignore one person, but Her account was then dismissed: “Upon witnesses, the 24th District o cers actually misconduct? If we only pay attention to the you can’t ignore eight to ten people saying watching the video that [Lopez] had record- did the things police reform advocates say big cover-ups, the big scandals, we risk over- the same thing.” ed on his phone, while [redacted] was on the that they need to: They de-escalated the looking the systemic nature of the abuse of On September 9—weeks after the depart- stairs with [redacted] before, during and situation, treated all the parties involved power. There aren’t any “bad apples” in this ment’s deadline to respond to my FOIA had after the fall down the stairs, no guns were courteously, called the balls and strikes. story (other than, arguably, Sam), just privi- passed—I fi nally received the police report drawn.” They were correct in stopping what appeared leged people doing what they feel entitled to from CPD. It appears the CPD is quite capable “That is not at all accurate to what I said,” to be an unauthorized eviction, and correctly do. The grace and benefi t of the doubt they of ignoring multiple people saying the same Martin texted me after I sent her a recap of explained the law to Greenspire. They made receive from authorities is a tacit sanction of thing. The three-page document was heavily the report. “It also sounds like they took a sure that the more vulnerable party could their behavior. redacted, and, just as the department spokes- whole bunch of people’s statements and cob- exercise his rights and left the scene without Around 11 PM on Saturday, August 29, a man fi rst told me on the phone, presented the bled them together in such a way as to make funneling anyone into the criminal-legal platoon of 24th District cops descended on situation in a much more benign light than it appear that the two fake or prior police pipeline. Farwell Avenue, their SUVs clogging the en- the reality. O cers Cunningham, Surgal, and o cers were specifi cally not at fault and that Yet this approach was mobilized primarily tire block. Sam had apparently broken a wall two others who signed o on the report listed nothing illegal happened.” to protect the most powerful people on the with an adjoining condo unit. His neighbor Greenspire as the “victim” of the “non-crim- The report made no mention of other scene—the ex-cops and the landlord—from was on the third-floor landing of the back inal” incident. Four individuals were listed available video evidence or other witnesses consequences. The cops’ actions also ben- stairs, venting about how impossible it was as “person reporting offense”: men whose who gave statements to Cunningham. It also efited Sam, but how could anyone hope to to live next door to the guy. The neighbors demographic information matched Rufo and made it seem as though Lopez’s video con- successfully press criminal charges or sue a watched as dozens and dozens of cops milled the second ex-cop, Greenspire’s property tradicted Martin’s account, when in reality landlord claiming an illegal eviction attempt around. Somewhere in the center of the sea of manager Luis Lopez, and Sam. Lopez didn’t even start fi lming the incident if the o cial record of the incident doesn’t uniformed o cers was a voice, intermittent- The narrative states that Sam “believed” until after Rufo and the other ex-cop had even mention it? On paper, Greenspire isn’t ly explaining something calmly and bursting that Greenspire’s people “were attempting marched Sam out of his home at gunpoint a corporation that apparently attempted into shouts of “Help!” and “I can’t breathe!” to evict him by threat of violence during the and told him to “get the fuck out.” Had the a lockout because they couldn’t get what and “Get the fuck out, monster!” His hands COVID pandemic.” And that he told o cers cops taken me up on the offer to share the they wanted from the courts. On paper, the were cuffed behind his back and the police “that his property management company video I’d made they would have seen that. ex-cops who claimed they were police and ex- eventually loaded him into a transport van. illegally gained entry into his residence and CPD “is committed to protecting the rights tracted a person from his home at gunpoint A woman who lives in a neighboring build- did plumbing work without his knowledge or and safety of tenants and landlords. That’s don’t exist. In the end, Marty still couldn’t ing sighed as we slowly dispersed. She said permission.” The report goes on to say that why the Department is in communication get his possessions, the neighbors in the one of the o cers told her they were taking after talking to Lopez, o cers “learned that with the Chicago Department of Housing and building were still left to deal with Sam’s an- him to a psych hospital. Sam was back in his [Sam] made threats of violence against him Cook County Sheriff’s Office to ensure that tisocial behavior, and the rest of us were left apartment just a few days later. v in [the] past that made him unwilling to re- all o cers are not only trained but following feeling less safe in our neighborhood. turn to do work on the unit without security protocol pertaining to the state’s evictions This was just a little thing that happened @mdoukmas ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 17 NEWS & POLITICS

The larger the dot, the larger the building. FIND MY LANDLORD

it is. Matching landlords with the properties required a team of volunteer researchers to fact-check the data. “The matching is the tricky part because you’ll have an owner like Pangea where it’s in their best interest to create a separate limited liability corporation for every single building they own. So that if a particular tenant in a particular building sues, it doesn’t bring down their entire corporation,” said Abid. “That makes it really di cult to do matching. Or to fi gure out who an owner is.” So instead of looking up the address of the property owned by the landlord—often hidden under different names—Abid and Noomah looked up the taxpayer address. All of the properties owned by a single landlord had the same taxpayer address, which was then linked to the landlord. Lucien Liz-Lepiorz, a member of CDSA who manages the technology team at the insurance company Allstate, built the front and back ends of the website. On the bottom right of the page is a link to “Improve our Data.” Visitors to the website can then use that function to e-mail corrections to Abid and HOUSING And people have tried to do it before, but it’s Liz-Lepiorz. Abid said multiple people have really hard because developers and landlords already contacted them and that they’re still take all these steps to obscure ownership and fi guring out how to streamline the process. How many buildings does your obscure their identity.” Abid and Liz-Lepiorz also made sure that In March, as the coronavirus pandemic tenants who visited were able to connect thrust millions of Americans into economic themselves to organizing resources. Above landlord own? uncertainty, CDSA began to focus more ef- the search bar is a line that reads “Communi- forts around tenant organizing and joined ty stops eviction” with a link to sign up, spon- A database matches rental properties with owners, whether they like it or not. the citywide coalition Chicago Tenants sored by the Autonomous Tenants Union. Movement. While all the data behind Find My They have also helped train 30 volunteers By G DV Landlord is public, the most concise database with the Chicago Tenants Movement which made with the information so far is a private has a hotline open Wednesday through Sun- one used by real estate agents, realinfo.net. day, 10 AM to 2 PM and 5 PM to 9 PM. n August the Chicago chapter of the seem straightforward, the process behind it CDSA bought a subscription to the website When tenants decide to organize against Democratic Socialists of America (CDSA) was far from simple. The databases’ creators, and used it to provide data for tenants. Abid a landlord, they usually begin in their im- Ilaunched the interactive database Find while seasoned in web development, under- wanted to take on the painstaking task of mediate surroundings, the building and My Landlord. The website features a map of took a long and arduous process to make making it a public tool. There’s a reason this the community. Sometimes, however, the rental properties across the city. The owners, publicly available data actually accessible has never been done before. building only represents a fraction of what along with their properties, can be found via and digestible. Only two people, Abid and Theo Noomah, the landlord actually owns. “What we’ve the search function. All data is available for “That information is technically publicly compiled the data. First Abid had to retrieve seen especially during the pandemic is a lot download. available,” said Ivy Abid, a member of CDSA data from the Cook County Assessor’s web- of people in di erent buildings with the same The dark map is covered in an array of red and a high school computer science teacher. site, match the properties with the landlords, owner are coming together and forming and peach and purple and black dots. The “But it’s not collected and quantifi ed in a way and then verify and fact-check all the infor- landlord-wide tenant unions,” said Abid. larger the dot, the larger the building. In the that we can analyze it. You can do an individ- mation by cross-referencing it through a Even before the conception of Find My bottom right corner of the page sits a key, ual lookup of an address, but you can’t see a lookup tool on the Illinois Secretary of State’s Landlord, a group of renters made use of the which indicates how many properties a land- trend.” Abid was responsible for compiling website, the Department of Buildings, and data. In April, as a result of the economic lord owns, organized by color. the data now featured on the site. “So it was the Cook County recorder of deeds. If that instability made worse by the pandemic, While the website’s technical functions really important to create a source for that. sounds confusing and tedious, it’s because tenants of the property company A. Saccone 18 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll NEWS & POLITICS

& Sons came together in Logan Square to Sons. They’ll own it as 2848 North California lords are buying properties, and if they are form the Saccone Renters Union. Through LLC,” said Duffy. While A. Saccone & Sons actively gentrifying neighborhoods and dis- the Lift The Ban Coalition, CDSA was able was not listed as the owner of any properties, placing residents. Liz-Lepiorz said that the to access and share the raw data set from the company utilizes the same tax address website is a lot like the Citizens Police Data realinfo.net with the Saccone Renters Union, for all of its properties. Project. “You can look up police o cers, see which in turn improved Abid’s data set. Once “We found 110, a little over that, properties their misconduct complaints, and it’s a very the union members had access to the data, where the tax address is A. Saccone & Sons’s tactical use,” said Liz-Lepiorz. “You want they used the same process of matching the address,” said Du y. The union has members to find a cop and you want to find out what landlord to property, all while navigating the from 12 of those properties, and has now the record is? Same with this website. You various aliases of property owners. grown to over 50 members. want to ﬁ nd a building, see who owns it. But Sean Duffy, one of the tenant organizers “If you’re a tenant and your landlord isn’t there’s a secondary e ect where people who and a member of CDSA, joined the union soon just, you know, some guy who lives in your aren’t out to ﬁ nd something end up discover- after its formation. At that time, the renters building, isn’t just some family that owns ing, you know, what the reality of the city is. identified properties owned by A. Saccone like two or three properties, but is a real “You end up seeing, ‘wow, all these build- & Sons by the signs that hung outside of the large landlord—whether or not you have a ings that are around me are owned by people building. They had no idea how many build- good relationship with them, whether or that own hundreds more buildings.’ And ings were actually owned by the company. not they’ve always treated you nicely—you so by seeing all this inequity in terms of Still, the issue of landlords shrouding should be organizing fellow tenants,” said ownership and land property, even though Find hundreds themselves in anonymity persisted. Search- D u y . I may pay my rent and that’s how I interact ing for the name A. Saccone & Sons on realin- To Duffy, Abid, and Liz-Lepiorz, union is with my landlord, by default, I’m affected of Reader-recommended fo.net returned inconclusive results. “The power. Find My Landlord provides tenants by their predatory behavior towards other restaurants at names a building is owned under will vary with the tools to build solidarity and take renters.” v chicagoreader.com/food. because usually landlords including A. Sac- collective action. Abid said the data also en- cone & Sons, they don’t own it as A. Saccone & ables renters to see patterns in where land- @delvecchiograce

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ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 19 ARTS & CULTURE

GHOSTS and bars commonly functioned as neighborhood hearths. Rumors swirled that bootlegger Baby Face Nelson—born only a half block south on The lingering spirits of the California Clipper California Avenue—had maybe used the bar as part of his operation. While very likely untrue, The neighborhood tavern may be closed, but it’s forever a part of Chicago’s boozy, haunted history. Battaglia likes that it feels like it could be true. Lots of patrons did. By M C Alas, the movie theater chapter of the Clip- per’s long life was not actually ended by the hen news broke in May that the Califor- past and present might collide in surprising, son, an anthropology professor at University flu pandemic. Relative to now, few businesses nia Clipper was permanently closing, even unnerving ways, making it a likely place for of Southern California and folklore expert. “So permanently closed then because the 1918 quar- Wpeople began to talk. Not just about something spooky. often they appear at liminal places. Ghost stories antine only lasted a few weeks, and anything not the circumstances of the bar’s closure—which Early into her year-and-a-half as a bartender are interesting to me in the way they express the associated with nightlife (like movie theaters) owner and boutique restaurateur Brendan So- there, Chelsea Foss-Ralston heard rumors about ‘shadow side’ of history. They often can contain quickly reopened. Newspaper ads in the Tribune diko claimed was due to the fi nancial strain of a ghost. One of her opening duties included sag- truths that o cial histories do not.” reveal the theater was still showing fi lms early the pandemic—but about the bar’s history, too. ing the space, and coworkers would tease it was The Clipper is an ideal site for a ghost—or at into the 20s. Then in 1927, a for sale ad at 1002 Most believe the Clipper was originally a to clear lingering spirits. If something unexpect- least a ghost story—because as far as official N. California boasted a 300-seat movie theater nickelodeon that shuttered because of the 1918 ed happened, like a mop falling over, someone histories go, it doesn’t have much of one. Or and a side space for a beauty shop. (Presumably, flu pandemic. Many believe it’s haunted, too, might joke, “Clipper ghost!” Occasionally, she’d rather, the one it has is markedly incomplete. this is what the false wall was for.) But the per- because that’s the kind of place the Clipper is: a meet adventurers on self-guided ghost tours It’s true that it started as a turn-of-the-century sistence of rumors that it closed in 1918 reminds fountain for fascinating stories. But much like who’d ask about the lore. The bar is included movie theater. There are sub-basements in the people of the cultural toll pandemics take. the bar’s closure announcement, all Clipper in two books on Windy City haunts, and in the area similar to those beneath the Green Mill and It likely wasn’t a speakeasy, either. Contrary stories contain a drop of truth amidst a pool of aughts, its website used to advertise a woman in a false wall in the bar, too, prompting suspicion to many people’s belief, beer barons didn’t build speculation—ones that reveal more about Chi- white who’d appear to “freak out management.” it might have been a speakeasy during Prohibi- any tunnels beneath Chicago, just exploited cago and culture than about the tavern itself. But then Foss-Ralston started to have experi- tion, which collapses the Clipper into beloved ones that already existed. The ones underneath In interviews with more than half a dozen ences: things like hearing phantom knocking and Chicago mythology California and Augusta were likely part of a former Clipper employees spanning the last footsteps, even one night losing her garage door larger freight network that moved coal, housed 20 years, “David Lynch” is used as a descriptor opener only to fi nd it placed on her driver seat hen the Clipper’s landlord Gino Battaglia telephone wires, and even funneled cool air into of the space almost every time. “David Lynch in the morning. These encounters convinced bought the building nearly 20 years ago, large gathering spaces such as movie theaters. turned sideways,” one person says. “Patsy Cline her it was more than talk, and she’s not the only Wpart of its appeal was its hazy, storied But according to Battaglia, there’s no indicator meets David Lynch,” says another. Even patrons former employee with such accounts. past. He likes that it’s still a true tavern—a hold- the Clipper had direct access to such tunnels. describe it as a place where time doesn’t feel “Ghosts are liminal (between here and there, over from a pre-Mayor Daley time when liquor Some speculate a Walgreens shared a wall linear. Its air sizzles with an expectation that between now and then),” writes Dr. Tok Thomp- licenses weren’t contingent on serving food, with the Clipper. Pharmacies could legally sell 20 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll ARTS & CULTURE

FRANK OKAY example. Changing attitudes about women even persist in stories of one of the Clipper’s former booze, making this a convenient Prohibition owners. workaround. But property records show this In 1937, the Caporusso siblings—Gus, Joe, and also isn’t true; the nearest pharmacy—a fam- Antonia—bought the building and opened the ily operation—was a block away, and alcohol Clipper Tavern. Gus died in the 1950s, but Joe prescriptions were so expensive, no one in the and Antonia continued running it until the late working class Humboldt Park of the 1920s could 90s, when Joe died and Antonia retired. (She have made a habit of them. But the fact that so continued living in the building until she passed many ghost stories are associated with the bar is around 2010.) Tales of the bar’s life pre-1999, itself a holdover of Prohibition. when Max Brumbach bought it and transformed it into the California Clipper, all center on s legend goes, a woman in white haunts Antonia. booths one and nine, as well as the wom- In one, cops come in to shut down an illegal Aen’s restroom, and her rose-like perfume gambling night. “OK, OK, everybody out,” they chases lingering drunks at close. Foss-Ralston say, but Antonia grabs a gun and says, “No, you thinks the ghost is a woman from one of the pho- get out.” In another, she refuses to serve women tographs on the wall of the bar who’s never been who come in unescorted. “Harlots,” she suppos- identified. According to the Chicago Haunted edly called them. Handbook, a manager brought in a psychic in the They’re anecdotes that reveal less about mid-aughts who said something similar. who Antonia was than ideas of what Humboldt “The woman in white was waiting for her Park—and women in it—were becoming. As a beau who went to war and never returned,” says myth, she gets to be a brazen outlaw who puts Jessi Meliza, a long-time patron who ran a trivia her financial stakes above the law as much as night there for a year. a strict enforcer of traditional gender roles. A “A young woman gets dressed up and goes woman who’s tough enough to provide for her to the Clipper for a date she’s excited about,” family and come out strong in a changing, often recounts Stephen Spataro, who worked at the turbulent neighborhood. But she’s not so tough Clipper for more than a decade. “He stands her that her job interferes with her or other women’s up, and she gets so distraught, she runs out and abilities to have a family. gets hit by a car. Now she haunts the place.” That stories of imbibing persist as threaten- According to Daniel Majid, who also worked ing marriage or performing idealized woman- at the Clipper for more than a decade, ﬁ rst-time hood might be the scariest part of all. customers would go to the bathroom—most often the women’s one—then return and say, “Is ll the talk of ghosts makes Battaglia chuck- this place haunted?” Or they’d remark on their le. “One of our tenants has been living hair standing on end, the place feeling a little Athere 22 years,” he says. “A lot, seven to eerie. ten years. We rarely have a vacant apartment. Amidst all the accounts, two themes emerge: Certainly nobody scared o by ghosts!” the ghost is always a woman, and she’s often Battaglia’s proud of the relationships he has Providing arts coverage heartbroken. built with his tenants, which made it all the more “[Ghost stories of heartbroken women] are a wrenching when Sodikoff announced he was common thread in many cultures,” says Thomp- closing the Clipper, a neighborhood bar that’s in Chicago since 1971. son, the USC anthropologist, “particularly patri- become a local institution, and retaining rights archal ones where a woman’s place in society is to the name. According to Battaglia, he o ered heavily dependent on marriage.” Sodikoff ample rent relief, but he believes So- Temperance was born, in part, from women diko was just looking for an excuse to break his organizing to deal with alcoholism’s impact on lease. (Hogsalt Hospitality, the group that owns their families. If booze wasn’t so readily avail- the Clipper, did not respond to an interview re- able, they contended, their husbands wouldn’t quest.) Now they’re duking it out in court. undermine their security by, say, losing their While the future of the California Clipper jobs or becoming violent. In this light, it makes is unclear, one thing is very obvious: there’s sense why people might perceive or imagine something about 1002 N. California that makes a female ghost scaring off drunks with her it a mirror for local fantasies and anxieties. And www.chicagoreader.com perfume. that’s something that will endure regardless of But the way the story varies expresses a plu- what comes next. v rality of ideas about women, too—the toll WWII took on women’s security and livelihoods, for @miccoslays ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 21 ARTS & CULTURE

HOUSING The Folded Map Project shows a segregated city Tonika Johnson’s multimedia project expands with a new ﬁ lm. B SNL

’m sure you’ve heard the words to photography project in 2017 while she was describe Englewood are ‘Black, dan- a photojournalism fellow at City Bureau has “Igerous, poor, gun violence,’” says transformed into a short film, which John- Tonika Johnson in one of the opening lines son says will eventually be a long-form fi lm. Animal Candy, an o eat novel by James Owens, set of her short film, The Folded Map Project. Johnson originally began photographing in the south suburbs of Chicago in 1976. Psychedelia, Englewood is where Johnson was born and “address pairs” where she looked at housing it’s where she still lives. Englewood is home. di erences in the city and then “map twins” Goth, counterculture, PCP addiction. In her film, Johnson asks the viewer to who live on the north and south sides of think about how they came to live in the Chicago along the same street with the same neighborhood where they live or to think address. If you fold the map of Chicago at about the neighborhood where they grew its zero point, the streets that connect the up. She asks viewers to think about how they north side and south side—like Englewood to decided to live where they do. Who did they Edgewater—are separated by 15 miles within talk to before making the decision? the same city. For example, someone living My move from Hyde Park to Back of the at 6900 North Ashland in Rogers Park and Yards happened a year ago and I’m still think- 6900 South Ashland in West Englewood are ing about my decision, why I chose to move, map twins. She interviewed the individuals and what led to these changes. When I moved living in specifi c houses and introduced them from Hyde Park my friends seemed to mourn to one another, creating a dialogue for folks the change more than me. “I just can’t believe to confront racial and institutional segrega- you won’t be a Hyde Parker anymore,” they tion in Chicago. Johnson uses prompts like, would say. It was as if I was moving state “How much did your house cost?” or “Why lines instead of only a few miles away. did you move to this neighborhood?” and the It’s fi tting, then, that Johnson’sThe Folded di erences (or similarities) unfold. In 2018 Map Project asks me—and all viewers—these an exhibition of “The Folded Map Project” Available at barnesandnoble.com and on Amazon. questions in her introduction. Chicago is was presented at Loyola University Museum a city of neighborhoods. What started as a of Art and that same year, it was also turned 22 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll POETRY CORNER ARTS & CULTURE The Other Word for Love identical locations as Johnson. Soth posted a Nanette, south side Englewood resident and by Lisa Alvarado Wade, north side Edgewater resident, pose public apology on Instagram acknowledging together on Wade’s front porch and in front of Johnson’s project. Soth explained that the the other’s home. TONIKA JOHNSON editors of the opinion section of the New Writing about Chicago is like trying to find the other word for love. York Times reached out to him and asked for It makes you reach into that wordless place. into a play presented through Collaborac- a photo essay based on the segregation of It pisses you off and breaks your heart in the worst and best ways. tion, which had four sold-out shows at Ken- neighborhoods in Chicago. Johnson contact- nedy-King College. Johnson also has plans ed him and he ultimately said, “I apologize to The rip of traffic above you when you walk on the Riverfront. Sleek, green gold buildings waver in the blue artery of water. to create a curriculum around the project for Tonika Lewis Johnson and very much regret You daywalk and daydream past the beautiful people, but you get them. Chicago Public Schools and for a future west accepting this assignment.” He also men- JustJ like you get the guy at Jimmy’s Red Hots who knows EXACTLY side study, folding the map for streets travel- tioned that all income he receives from the how to drag your dog in the garden. ing west to east, then photographing, inter- New York Times will be donated to the Folded viewing, and introducing those residents as Map Project. The opinion editor has issued And you get the Brown and Black faces on the California bus she did with the north and south sides. an edit that recognizes Johnson’s work and going south of Odgen, and you understand not to look too long at anyone, Crossing one bridge can propel you into directs readers to her project. before they spill out toward little factories with no signs and Cook County Jail. a new circle of people and culture. Intersec- Despite this apology, it’s a significant And you get the smiling, shiny, White Ravenswood riders. tions and cross streets are linchpins for com- example of transgression and infringement You may not like them, but you get them, and they always have the best coffee. munities. Bus stops, train stations, and bike of Black America and how white folks profi t I’mI’ not getting any closer to the other word for love, but you get the idea. routes connect us and divide us. What devel- from the ideas, art, and culture of Black folks. ops in Johnson’s fi lm is a beautiful telling of Johnson told The Art Newspaper that it There is always, always, the firm rocks along the Lake at Fullerton, what it means to live in a neighborhood with was her “wish and a goal” to have her work pulling you, anchoring you. your family and peers. It all stemmed from featured in the New York Times but now it’s It never fails, and you catch your breath at the blue her grandmother, who purchased a house “taken a real twist.” that’s the water and the sky at the same time. in Englewood, where Johnson grew up with Johnson’s work is a long-term research her mom and two uncles. “My childhood was project looking at the city she lives in and Chicago is a red-brown two-flat in Albany Park where you learned what true sorrow was, beautiful,” says Johnson as the short film visually exemplifying the institutional and that you could put words to it, and you could call yourself your own name. shows slides of images of her grandmother, racism and segregation among the 77 neigh- herself, and even a neighbor who lived next borhoods. In her film, Johnson mentions door. how she wants to get at the heart of what Two weeks ago, I drove from my apartment brings people to a neighborhood, or what down 47th street through New City, Fuller forces them into one. She asks the tough Park, Bronzeville, and Hyde Park for a beach but simple questions: What can be done day at the Point. From paleta carts to par- to combat systemic racism? How do eco- ents with strollers, the view transformed as nomics and discrimination a ect your life? I drove along the long road to the lakefront. Chicago’s segregation shouldn’t affect how Similarly, during her early commute to Lane we interact as a city, but it does. Johnson is Tech, Johnson recalls noticing the changing seeking out the answers and asking others of neighborhoods along her bus ride north. to help brainstorm solutions to the deeply Lisa Alvarado is a poet, novelist, journalist, editor. She identifies herself as She explains how on this bus ride she realized rooted racism that impacts Chicago’s grid of Chicana/Italian/Bi/Jew/Aleyo. Alvarado’s books include Reclamó, The Housekeeper's Diary, Raw not all Chicago neighborhoods are the same. neighborhoods. Silk Suture, and Still, Life. Before being named Hispanic Author of the Year in 2009, Alvarado Although street signs and street names read “I played outside everyday. I rode my bike co-authored the novel Sister Chicas with Ann Hagman Cardinal and Jane Alberdeston Coralín. the same from north to south, they looked with my friends. I met my fi rst friends in life,” Curator: Tara Betts is the author of two poetry collections, Break the Habit, Arc & Hue, and the entirely di erent. recalls Johnson about her childhood growing forthcoming Refuse to Disappear. She also co-edited The Beiging of America and edited a In her four years at Lane Tech, where her up in Englewood. It’s an image far di erent critical edition of Philippa Duke Schuyler's Adventures in Black and White. In addition to her new friends were of Polish, Latino, Asian, and than the one painted in news headlines. She work as a teaching artist and mentor for young poets, she's taught at prisons and several universities, including Rutgers University and University of Illinois-Chicago. In 2019, Tara Jamaican descent, Johnson was invested in says that you truly get to know Chicago’s published a poem celebrating Illinois' bicentennial with Candor Arts. Tara is the Poetry Editor learning about the neighborhoods and cul- neighborhoods through friendships and con- at The Langston Hughes Review and the Lit Editor at Newcity. Betts is currently hard at work to establish The Whirlwind Center on Chicago's South Side. tures that mold Chicago into what it is. This nections. And by connecting folks with the continued into adulthood when she decided, project, she hopes to open everyone’s eyes A biweekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation. in order to change the racist conversation and hearts to an integrated Chicago. surrounding Black neighborhoods and the The Folded Map Project short fi lm will be stereotype of their being “war-torn” or using available for purchase (suggested donation) nicknames like “Chiraq,” to literally fold the and downloaded on the Folded Map Project map of Chicago. website in 2021. The exhibition of images of On September 5, the New York Times “The Folded Map Project” are available on Poetry Foundation published an article detailing the inequality Johnson’s website. v 61 West Superior Street poetryfoundation.org/events in America by white Minneapolis-based photographer, Alec Soth, using many of the @snicolelane ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 23 W ’ GD THEATER /-/: Fri-Sun PM, theatre-y.org, F

HOME MOVIE We’re Gonna Die—just ask Y Theatre Y turns Young Jean Lee’s play into a meditative ﬁ lm. By I H

here’s a video of Young Jean Lee per- the way back, I read the play. The story deals forming her 2011 play We’re Gonna Die with loneliness, rejection, decay, and death, Ton Vimeo. It’s an exercise in minimalism but it was also a celebration of the small A new daily podcast that goes and mortality: a single person with a mike things in life. I felt strangely at peace and backed up by a band—part stand-up, part comforted by it.” The same weekend, his own beyond the headlines in Chicago. rock concert, part TED talk, and part camp- grandmother in Spain was diagnosed with fi re confession—relaying a series of humil- the virus. iating, horrifying, gory, and mundane inci- “My mom tested positive. Then uncles dents-in-the-life-of, and Lee is brilliant: eyes and cousins. It spread like a wildfi re.” With dry, voice wry, bangs on her face, feet on the summer plans to direct a show coproduced ground, and a pocket full of tunes that worm with the contemporary dance company the their way into your ear. With the murmur of Cambrians (“about extinction and the fragil- the crowd in the room, that video is a relic ity of life”) facing likely cancellation, Álvarez of a time and place we won’t reenter soon. proposed a fi lm of Lee’s play as an alternative Just before lockdown began, a production of just two days before Chicago locked down. We’re Gonna Die was playing o Broadway “At the time, I was totally untouched by at the Second Stage Theater, one of the last COVID,” says Theatre Y artistic director houses to go dark in New York. And while Melissa Lorraine. “I knew we were heading sheltering in place, Theatre Y embarked to feeling much closer to death than we did upon making a fi lm of the work, intentionally at that moment. Héctor was ahead of us in a piece by and for plague times. terms of having it land. If it comforted him, it Director Héctor Álvarez read Lee’s play [stood] to reason that it may comfort others in February, at a funeral. “My wife’s grand- as we get further into this pandemic.” mother passed away. She was 99, and, while Armed with Álvarez’s perspective on very sad, it was not a surprise. We flew to events in Europe and charged with an injunc- Ohio for the memorial service,” he says. “On tion by Lee that no one be exposed to sick- 24 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll R READER RECOMMENDED b ALL AGES F THEATER

We're Gonna Die JUSTIN JONES come interlopers in a di erent medium, we honor the baggage we bring with us.” Through Zoom meetings, Theatre Y kept ness during the process, Theatre Y dove into several longtime collaborators close, in- It’s Time to Go BIG creating remotely. “I invited Emily [Bragg, cluding Kyle Gregory Price, whose cheery who plays the narrator] to live with us im- arrangements of the songs telescope Lee’s mediately,” says Lorraine. “I said, ‘Move into rock band aesthetic down to the intimacy of our living room. I just have the feeling we’re home. never coming out again, and if you don’t Like live performance, Theatre Y’s produc- move into my house right now, we’re never tion of We’re Gonna Die has a fi nite number going to be able to interact!” of showings. And Lorraine insists that, de- The process of creating the fi lm, which was spite their foray into fi lm, including a series shot on a professional camera as well as an of Andràs Visky shorts, as well as a fi lm of his iPhone, was dictated by the terms of isola- Juliet to be released this November, Theatre tion, with everyone working asynchronously Y exists to create theater. “Some artists say, to create a visual and sonic environment ‘I don’t do virtual. You’ll see me when we’re for a character, who was also developed in back in the flesh,’” notes Lorraine. “Is that solitude over a series of assignments Álva- acceptable, knowing we have a whole society rez designed. “I would share provocations starving for something right now? Can we with Emily,” he explains. “I would give her innovate, or is that reducing the art form? a couple of hours to create something and Knowing how to take care of the form during 15 1 send it back to me. For example, I asked her this crisis is really hard.” ARTIST $470K VIRTUAL AWARDED to compile a list of 50 sounds that were com- “Our task, our duty, is to be the frequency COMMISSIONS EVENT forting to her. I asked her to create tableaux of the times and filter the turmoil and suf- or object arrangements for each of the sto- fering and noise through your imagination ries”—elements that eventually made their and give something back to the world,” says way into the fi lm. Álvarez. “The crises we’re living through are The result is a peculiarly lonely and el- morally asking artists to respond in some Join us for a celebration of remarkable liptical telling of Lee’s play, a set of images way.” characterized by still life and time-lapse, oc- “I think it’s important to all of us that the artists in the performing, teaching, and curring in the confi nes and cubbyholes of an work we make is life-giving,” says Lorraine. interior packed with memorabilia that still “I hope people feel companionship in the visual arts who make our hearts soar. manage to move. A curiosity shop of photo- struggle. Artists are asked to make mean- graphs, cards, candles, and tchotchkes tell ing”—(“while telling the truth,” interjects the bulk of the story, and Bragg’s articulate Álvarez)—“which is a tall order at this October 19, 6PM body, when it intervenes into the action, al- time.” v most seems to become another one of these objects. Never seen to speak, with her face @IreneCHsiao event always partially or entirely obscured, the FREE WITH RSVP sense of her absence and thus of all we miss of theater and each other is poignant and potently present. “We were very keen to embrace the idea of THE the absent performer and the absent body,” u 3Arts advocates for Chicago’s women artists, says Álvarez. “That gave us the idea of using object theater as one of the languages.” The artists of color, and artists with disabilities. film references theatrical methods and de- vices throughout: “Emily is often wearing a mask. That’s a commentary on COVID and PRESENTING SPONSOR everyone wearing masks but also it’s hear- keningIS back to theNOT mask of theater! I was also inspired by a form of Japanese street theater called kamishibai, which means ‘paper play.’ Storytellers would set up a cardboard box proscenium on a street corner with painted boards, and they would narrate a story to Photo by Nijole Shuberg, @nspicture childrenFREE while changing the images. That is 2019 3Arts/Southwest Airlines Awardee Sam Trump a techniquechicagoreader.com/donate we used in the fi lm. When we be- chicagoreader.com/donate ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 25 THEATER

Lifeline’s Pride and Prejudice COURTESY LIFELINE ers again, live and in public. THEATRE Since 1986, Lifeline Theatre has thrice presented Christina Calvit’s adaptation of Jane classrooms that maintained de facto segrega- Austen’s most beloved novel onstage. But the tion in Chicago schools. Mariama’s recounting version available online now works beautifully of her personal involvement in politics is set at suggesting the tensions between private against a backdrop of imagery from the civil feelings and public behavior that undergird rights movement and graphic photos of lynch- Austen’s world. Directed by Lifeline’s former ings. (BoHo has a content warning on the site artistic director Dorothy Milne, edited by Har- for a reason.) Her rendition of “Sometimes I rison Ornelas, and featuring a lineup of long- Feel Like a Motherless Child” reminds us that time ensemble members (including delightful the notion of “home” as a sanctuary has never real-life couple Katie McLean Hainsworth and been respected for Black people in this nation Christopher Hainsworth as Mrs. and Mr. Ben- (the police killings of Breonna Taylor and net), the piece should resonate equally well Botham Jean made that all too clear), while with Austen purists (the dialogue remains her exhortation to “Stand Up” suggests that faithful to the original) and those who are try- getting out of our homes and into the streets is ing to fi gure out the rules of dating in a socially a moral imperative. distanced time and place. Mariama chooses to perform against a solid There are few attempts at costuming (save black drop cloth, with her voice and the archi- some plastic tiaras donned during various STREAMING PERFORMANCE val photos creating the emotional environ- balls), and no attempts at creating a simula- ment. But other performers allow us glimpses crum of Austen’s world in the homes of the into the interior of their homes as well as their performers (though Caroline Andres’s period Split-screen theater tears down histories. (Tony Churchill deserves credit violin music adds delightful aural texture). for his excellent editing work at blending all But the story of Elizabeth Bennet (Samantha these segments.) Natara Easter performs a Newcomb) and Mr. Darcy (Andrés Enriquez) the digital box spoken-word piece that begins with “Well, unfurls with all the wit and fi re you could ask I feel free,” and then takes us through all the for. A moment when Newcomb’s Lizzy breaks BoHo and Lifeline overcome the limitations of Zoom. ways she’s been made to feel ashamed about away from the on-camera world to stride down her appearance and expression—“the black- the sidewalk (the only exterior shot in the By K R est sound in my laugh,” her smile, her way of piece), intent on visiting her sick sister Jane speaking, her hair. (Easter notes that Black (Kristina Loy) not only shows us the forthright boys in her school were as likely to tease her bull-by-the-horns candor underneath Lizzy’s he age of Zoom has created a split-screen pletely different. BoHo’s show, subtitled A about the latter as her white peers.) Through- careful exterior, but adds an extra layer of metaphor for the changes in our private BoHo Exploration of Freedom, brings together out, we see Easter in her home; looking out a meaning in a time of pandemic and panic. Tand public lives. We’re separated physi- 17 BIPOC artists under the direction of the window to her backyard, writing in her jour- Taken together, BoHo and Lifeline’s pro- cally, but the world is invited into our personal company’s new executive director, Sana nal, washing her face in her bathroom, and ductions reveal sophistication in style and spaces in a way that never happened in Cube Selemon, in a virtual cabaret of song, spoken otherwise claiming herself in her space. material, and an admirable ability to take the Farmlandia. For theater pieces created at a word, personal storytelling, and combinations The theme of self-acceptance also comes limitations of our Zoom-saturated current distance and for online consumption, the di- thereof. through in Dillon Chitto’s piece about growing reality and transform them into something chotomy feels even more keen. The show kicks o with Donterrio Johnson, up gay and Native American in Santa Fe (“the fresh, personal, and wholly entertaining on the artistic director of PrideArts, singing and gayest city in the southwest”) and the culture their own terms. v dancing in an empty theater to “I’ve Gotta shock of attending a Jesuit seminary in Ohio. T PH P R P Be Me,” a song from the 1968 musical Golden (The piece begins with a quick history lesson @kerryreid The Pursuit of Happiness, available anytime Rainbow, composed by Walter Marks and in how queer or “two-spirit people,” who were through bohotheatre.com, free. made famous by Sammy Davis Jr. At the end, accepted in Native culture, were labeled as Pride and Prejudice, through /, available Thu- Sun anytime during the weekend of purchase, we see a photo of vaudeville star Bert Wil- sinful when the colonizing Catholic mission- lifelinetheatre.org, $. liams, who was the fi rst Black artist to have a aries arrived.) Chitto tells us that he has “a leading role in a Broadway show. It’s an e ec- rosary in one hand, and a bagful of cornmeal tive way to encapsulate the ways that Black in the other,” and creates his own personal READER Increasingly, companies producing new artists have struggled to achieve success in a trinity from “culture, religion, identity.” RRECOMMENDS work online are leaning into that dichotomy. white-dominated cultural landscape without Whether showing us the interiors of their That’s clear in two streaming shows that have losing their own identity. homes or the inner workings of learning to Get twice-weekly picks in music, premiered in recent weeks: BoHo Theatre’s It concludes with Marguerite Mariama, a blossom as a BIPOC artist, The Pursuit of movies, theater, and more. The Pursuit of Happiness and Lifeline The- longtime artist and activist who notes that Happiness is an exhilarating, intimate, and atre’s Pride and Prejudice. her political organizing began as a student thoughtful 75-minute journey well worth tak- chicagoreader.com/newsletters In content and style, the pieces are com- protesting the “Willis Wagons”—portable ing. And I can’t wait to see all these perform- 26 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll DAYS

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ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 27 FILM

far southeast side. The Howards, who were bors glare out their windows as Black folks fair-skinned, were placed in Trumbull Park of all ages swarm in for live music, food, and because Chicago Housing Authority workers drinks—Emmett Till and Gil Scott-Heron are thought Betty Howard was white when she among the young guests there. applied. Created in 1937, it was CHA’s un- But the revelry is interrupted when white written policy to keep families segregated by neighbors burn a cross on Leti’s front yard. race. It’s the fi nal straw. A bat-wielding Leti storms Days after the Howards moved in, the out of her house and busts the windows of apartment manager realized that the family the cars that, days later, still have their horns “might be Negro.” That’s when the violence going. With the perfect use of Dorinda Clark- started. The Howards had to board up their Cole’s “Take It Back” playing in the back- windows to block the bricks and sulfur ground—“Everything that the devil stole, candles white people threw through them. God’s giving it back to me”—Leti fi res back Months later, CHA moved in more Black fami- at her neighbors and is arrested and abused lies—intentionally this time—launching riots by police as they deny receiving any of the 21 that lasted for almost a decade. complaints she made about the harassment. And before the Howards, there were Now, while Leti and Tic are fi ghting racist more incidents of violence caused by white neighbors, they’re also fighting a racist residents aiming to keep Black people out ghost, one who wants them out of the house. of their neighborhoods: when eight Black To kick him out, Leti calls on community; she families moved into the Fernwood Park hous- calls on her ancestors. “I can’t live in fear; I Lovecra Country ing project in 1947, when the Clarks moved won’t,” Leti says. “I gotta face this world to suburban Cicero in 1951, and even when head-on and stick my claim in it.” two white couples, the Bindmans and the That attitude was how Black people have Sennetts, moved to Englewood in 1949 and attacked housing segregation in Chicago. SMALL SCREEN invited over Black guests. In the show, this In subsequent years after the Trumbull history would have been top of mind for a riots and others, the fight for fair housing Black woman like Leti who is knowingly inte- continued as a collective e¥ ort. Recognizing ‘Pioneering is dangerous’ grating a community. But like she says to her that segregation and discrimination had a sister, Ruby, “There’s strength in numbers.” different face in cities like Chicago than in Housing and the haunting of segregation in Lovecra Country At the time, boarding houses were still the south, Martin Luther King Jr.’s time in common in Chicago, and Leti says her de- Chicago was spent on the Chicago Freedom By A N cision to purchase the house is to create a Movement campaign, which centered around space for her, Ruby, and other Black people ending slums and was a collaboration be- in need of a place to stay. She moves in her tween the Southern Christian Leadership boarders, one being James Baldwin, on a Conference and the Coordinating Council of Sunday while most of her neighborhood is at Community Organizations in Chicago. Warning: This review contains spoilers. city’s fi rst appearance in episode one: an all- church. But although that confl ict is slightly During a 1966 demonstration in Marquette Black community with Black businesses and delayed, it’s definitely not avoided. Leti’s Park, a white neighborhood at the time, hen HBO’s Lovecraft Country start- Black celebrations. neighbors welcome her and her group with hundreds of white people threw rocks and ed filming in Chicago, excitement But, it’s in episode three that the stares and never-ending car horns caused by bottles at King and other marchers. He was Wsurrounding the upcoming TV deep-seated issues of Chicago housing come bricks tied to steering wheels. “Here we go,” struck and later told reporters: “I’ve been in show quickly spread. And halfway through into play when heroine Letitia “Leti” Lewis Ruby tells Leti as they stare back at the white many demonstrations all across the south, its debut season, the drama delivers on its (played by Jurnee Smollett) buys a huge old men attempting to intimidate them. “I told but I can say that I have never seen, even in examination of both supernatural horrors— house on the city’s north side. As an opening you it was going to be Trumbull Park all over Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hostile ghosts, monsters, and magic—and very real title card reminds us, “pioneering is danger- again.” and as hate-fi lled as I’m seeing in Chicago.” ones such as economic inequity, the inhu- ous,” and to stay in this home, Leti battles As expected, things continue to escalate. More than a half-century later, the city’s mane treatment of Black bodies in science, both physical and spiritual evil. But as scary Very soon, signs that say, “We are a white not-so-invisible lines have shifted but still and housing segregation. It’s all rooted in as the supernatural storyline may be, nothing community, undesirables must go” are exist. More than 50 years after the Fair Hous- racism, of course, and racism? It haunts you. is quite as chilling as knowing what a group posted in lawns, and it seems one of her ad- ing Act of 1968—which prohibits housing It’s eerily familiar. In the 1950s, much like of Black folks have to face when moving to an versaries has adjusted the heater to make the discrimination based on race, color, national today, Chicago’s segregation and the people, all-white neighborhood. house scorching. They’re trying to force Leti origin, religion, sex, familial status, and dis- policies, and systems behind it were evident The show is set in 1955, which lands it and her boarders out, and as noted by Atticus ability—Chicago still ranks high on every list as clear dividing lines that dictated who right in the midst of a string of very real, “Tic” Freeman (played by Jonathan Majors), dedicated to identifying the nation’s most lived, worked, and played where. Decades very violent encounters with white neigh- excessive heat and noise are the same tactics segregated cities. We still have the same into the Great Migration, the city’s Black bors throughout the city. In Chicago in 1953, he used in Korea while in the military. ghosts. We’re still haunted by inequity. v population still largely lived in the Black Belt white men attacked a Black family in the Still, Leti persists. She throws a huge and that strong cultural presence is felt in the Trumbull Park Homes housing project on the housewarming party and angry white neigh- @ArionneNettles 28 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll R READER RECOMMENDED b ALL AGES N NEW F FILM

The Broken Hearts Gallery Our Time Machine R In this Chinese documentary by directors The Babysitter: Killer Queen Yang Sun and S. Leo Chiang, artist Maleonn grapples R The Babysitter: Killer Queen doesn’t miss a beat. with his own art making while also coming to terms Picking up two years a er The Babysitter, the sequel with the legacy of his father, a renowned Chinese quickly reminds viewers that Cole (Judah Lewis) was opera director, whose memory is slipping away due able to defeat a satanic cult led by his babysitter Bee to Alzheimer’s disease. Together, the father and son (Samara Weaving). Now, a high school junior, he’s trying collaborate on a puppet show about a man who builds to forget his traumatic past and focus on his turbulent a time machine to take his elderly father back to his present. As a misfi t, he struggles to make friends because childhood. Frenetic sequences depicting Maleonn no one believes his story, but also probably because he expertly cra ing his steampunk puppets are inter- wears a brown corduroy three-piece suit to school. His spersed with slower moments of reckoning among loner status complicates things when his old enemies loved ones, making for a rarifi ed, fragile emotional unexpectedly return, and it’s once again all up to him to tenor, oscillating between professional awe of an artist outsmart the forces of evil. Fortunately, an unsuspecting at work, and the precursor of grief felt by a son losing new student named Phoebe (Jenna Ortega), who is his father. Gorgeously shot, each frame is precise in NOW PLAYING run into the man behind the wheel either. He becomes a force all her own, seems like a promising partner in its intense focus on the twinned processes of creativ- more menacing with each encounter, the tension build- crime. Full of scary situations and fun sequences, The ity and familial connection. In Chinese with subtitles. All In: The Fight for Democracy ing until he kidnaps and locks her in a cabin. While Babysitter: Killer Queen is a horror-comedy that holds its —N L C 81 min. Gene Siskel Film Center R As someone points out in this timely documen- his motive is unclear, Jessica’s will to survive is not. own. —B J 102 min. Netflix From Your Sofa tary, if voting were inconsequential, then some people Escaping into the wilderness, she’s able to outrun and wouldn’t be trying so hard to prevent others from outsmart her captor in a series of harrowing feats in The Broken Hearts Gallery Rent-A-Pal doing it. All In: The Fight for Democracy is directed by this fast-paced survival thriller. Anchored by solid per- R Check your hard feelings about cheesy romantic R Rent-A-Pal is a pre-Internet era look at the ter- Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés, and produced in part by formances from all involved, Alone is a straightforward comedies at the door and just enjoy Natalie Krinsky’s fi rst rifying depths of isolation. Set in 1990, the fi lm follows Stacey Abrams, who appears as a subject. Impressively success that reminds viewers that their problems are feature fi lm, The Broken Hearts Gallery. The fi lm follows a lonely bachelor named David (Brian Landis Folkins) researched and concisely reported, the fi lm details the never far behind them. —B J 100 min. Music Lucy (Geraldine Viswanathan), who a er being dumped as he searches for love via a video dating service. A long history of voter suppression in the United States, Box Theatre Virtual Cinema by her boyfriend Max (Utkarsh Ambudkar) and fi red from stereotypical nerd, David lives with his mother, Lucille using as its springboard Abrams’s own experience run- her job as a gallery assistant, meets aspiring hotelier Nick (Kathleen Brady), providing for her as her dementia ning for governor of Georgia in 2018. It’s thorough in its Antebellum (Dacre Montgomery). Lucy goes on to create an exhibit progresses. He uses this to his advantage in his dating presentation of the multiple forms of voter suppression, Sharing a smidgen of DNA with Kindred, one of Hugo in his work-in-progress hotel where emotional hoarders profi le, framing himself as a dutiful caregiver. David from tactics such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and voter Award-winning science fi ction author Octavia Butler’s like her can leave items from previous relationships–– does not, however, land a date instantly. Instead, ID laws, to gerrymandering and the recent Shelby seminal works, Antebellum very much wants to say and their emotional attachments to them—behind. It’s he discovers a strange VHS tape called Rent-A-Pal. County v. Holder ruling and its eff ect on the Voting something profound, and ultimately ends up saying, refreshing to see a fi lm with a woman of color as the lead Hosted by Andy (Wil Wheaton), the tape off ers David Rights Act. More compellingly, the fi lm details incidents “Racism is bad and Janelle Monáe is fabulous,” both of without any plot points or dialogue revolving around her a much-needed outlet, but it doesn’t take long for of outright violence against minorities seeking to exer- which should be nearly universal truths. Representing identity. And even when the fi lm felt like it was pandering the relationship to become worrisome. A depressing cise their constitutional right. Interwoven throughout is the directorial debut for writers Gerard Bush and to a young audience with its pop culture references, the sense of desperation and delusion permeates the a sort of fi lm within a fi lm about Abrams that positions Christopher Renz, Antebellum attempts to create a charming cast and the fi lm’s gusto surely solidifi es The movie, leaving an icky sheen over even the most prom- her as a politician for the new era, one with a specifi c psychological thriller about modern-day slavery, yet Broken Hearts Gallery as the newest entry in the endless ising moments, such as David matching with a woman passion for electoral reform. Political documentaries an unripe script and ineff ective editing end upcreating list of feel-good romantic comedies. —M D L named Lisa (Amy Rutledge), as each uncomfortable are a dime a dozen, yet I was moved by how stridently two separate narratives without enough connective C 108 min. AMC theaters, Logan Theatre, Regal scene builds to an almost unbearable conclusion. this one’s subjects are fi ghting for people’s right to tissue or thematic thrust to build coherence. The Webster Place —B J 108 min. Music Box Theatre vote. I guess it’s a good thing this is an Amazon Studios more entertaining half of the fi lm follows Monáe as release; one of the interviewees, historian and educator she saunters through the life of famous activist author The Devil All the Time Residue Carol Anderson, speaks so convincingly that I imme- Veronica Henley. We watch as she sits for a stunning “Got time for a sinner?” It’s a question Arvin Russell (Tom R Aspiring fi lmmaker Jay (Obinna Nwachukwu) diately wanted to buy her book on the matter. (Jokes Vogue photoshoot: switching out gorgeous outfi ts Holland) poses to a morally bankrupt preacher (Robert returns to his hometown of Washington, D.C., to write aside, buy local.) Ultimately, the fi lm’s message is to go while perched on the counter in her breathtaking Pattinson) a little over halfway through The Devil All the a fi lm about his childhood, but nothing seems to be the all in and vote, vote, vote—only once, of course, though Architectural Digest home; eating a picturesque pan- Time. But it also seems to be the question that writer/ same as when he le it. His neighborhood is gentrifi ed it also does a good job debunking the conservative cake breakfast with her handsome, helpful husband director Antonio Campos repeatedly asks his audience beyond repair, his childhood friend is missing, and the myth of pervasive voter fraud. —K S 102 (Marque Richardson), and her perfectly adorable and throughout his wide-ranging, o en bloated tribute to rest of his relationships appear to have soured over min. Amazon Prime and Landmark Century Centre well-behaved child. Gabourey Sidibe and Lily Cowles Southern Gothic literature and noir. What keeps the time. With Residue, writer/director Merawi Gerima— Cinema play BFFs Dawn and Sarah respectively. A hilariously viewer tuned into the prolonged rigmarole that is The the son of Ethiopian fi lmmaker Haile Gerima—creates bubbly Girls’ Night Out scene hints at an alternate Devil All the Time are its stellar performances. Pattinson a haunting environment of isolation and unfamiliarity. Alone universe of a more fun movie that could have been, and and Holland are both commanding, as are Riley Keough With a distinct visual style, Gerima’s daring debut illus- R Alone races toward a rewarding fi nish. Jessica begs for a future comedic career for Sidibe. The less as an unconventional serial killer and Bill Skarsgård as trates the challenges of reconciling with your past in a (Jules Willcox) is a grief-stricken widow hoping to fi nd entertaining half includes predictably painful scenes Arvin’s father. But the fi lm o en feels too uninspired and deeply altered present—when home is a place you no solace by moving out of the city, but her relocation of slavery, an attempt at a twist ending, and a fi nal unfocused for its own good. There are instances of heart longer recognize. Gerima gives these familiar themes doesn’t go as planned. While towing a U-Haul through scene of comeuppance that could have been really and signifi cance scattered throughout the fi lm, but it too new life through Residue’s disorienting cinematogra- the scenic Pacifi c Northwest, she’s almost forced into badass if there had been any emotional investment in o en gives into its wandering nature and stops itself from phy, switching from fi lm to kaleidoscopic digital in a a head-on collision with a semitruck by a driver who the characters. —S F 105 min. In wide ever making a lasting impression. —C C 138 stunning array that gives depth to Jay’s internal and won’t let her pass. This incident isn’t the last time she’ll release on VOD min. Netflix external battles. —C C 90 min. Netflix v ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 29 Femdot, aka Femi Adigun, coordinates volunteers in the Aldi parking lot at 2600 N. Clybourn. Below: The Scholars Slide By volunteer Korrina Zartler loads groceries for delivery. MATTHEW GILSON FOR CHICAGO READER

Femdot puses his rp creer

30 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll to help feed Chicgo

Run through his nonproﬁ t, Delacreme Scholars, the Scholars Slide By has delivered groceries to hundreds of people in need this summer. By L G

hen grieving, outraged the store and get whatever is on the list that they I wanted to do it.” is most other rappers’ fi fth. He’s worked hard to crowds marched through put up.’ He pulled up with donations—and then Adigun couldn’t keep up that pace for long, develop mike skills that can turn heads, and he’s downtown Chicago on Sat- stuck around that fi rst day, and helped with the and by the end of June he’d created a process smart enough to put that technical fl ash to use in urday, May 30, to protest volunteering and helped coordinate.” that’s enabled him to coordinate a team of 25 to the service of storytelling and lyricism. Though the killing of George Floyd Adigun returned to Burke the following day to 50 volunteers to deliver groceries to as many as his wordy, labor-intensive approach to rapping Wby Minneapolis police, Chicago rapper Femdot help with what would become the People’s Grab- 100 homes per day. The Scholars Slide By settled befi ts the underground, he’s also got an ear for was among them. And when Chicago cops began N-Go, a Black-led food distribution program that into a biweekly schedule on June 27, operating hooks and melodies with mainstream appeal. assaulting those protesters, he was among the continued every Monday till the end of August. on Saturday and Sunday every other week, and And Adigun’s career is picking up traction. In targets—one or more o cers struck him in the By midweek, Muse became part of the Grab-N- it’s continued all summer. By the middle of Au- 2018, the year he graduated from DePaul, he per- head with a baton. Even after a hospital trip to Go leadership team, which also included fellow gust, Adigun and his volunteers had delivered formed at Lollapalooza. Last fall, he went on his have his injury closed with staples, Femdot— YCA teaching artist Dominique James, activist groceries and other essentials to roughly half of fi rst nationwide tour, supporting popular Chica- born Femi Adigun—didn’t shrink from the fi ght Trina Reynolds-Tyler of Black Youth Project Chicago’s 77 community areas as well as to a few go rapper Tobi Lou; all 24 dates sold out. While against systemic racism and police brutality. But 100 (among other organizations), and Jihad suburbs, including Cicero and Riverdale. on the road, Adigun self- released his best project he did let friends talk him out of heading right Kheperu, a regional manager for youth outreach He’s decided to wind down the program this yet, 94 Camry Music, a concept EP revolving back into the streets—in part because a new program Becoming a Man. On Tuesday, when month, in order to shift focus to the scholarships around his fi rst car. Had things gone according front in his struggle against injustice and inequi- Adigun left Burke after a second day of giving out that Delacreme Scholars awards each winter. to plan, he would’ve performed it in full at the ty opened the very next day. On Sunday, May 31, food, he got an idea for a di erent way to provide The final Slide By of the year will take place Pitchfork Music Festival. Chicago Public Schools responded to citywide for those in need. Saturday, September 26, and Sunday, September Instead Adigun spent the summer driving unrest by announcing that it was suspending its “What about people who can’t get there? 27—though with any luck it’ll be back. Adigun around the city to bring strangers groceries. The free lunch program as of Monday. The elderly, or people who are scared of COVID, says he’d love to pick the Slide By back up next city’s punitive response to May’s street demon- The CPS announcement went out after 10 PM. things of that sort,” he says. “And also, when I summer, if he’s able to get funding. strations and looting—cutting o CTA service, Its free lunch program had already served more was driving back, leaving the neighborhood, I The biweekly schedule of the Scholars Slide raising bridges in the Loop, suspending the CPS than 13 million meals since the start of the pan- didn’t see a grocery store open. So the next day I By has allowed Adigun to continue volunteering free meal program—aggravated the inequalities demic, so a lot of families were relying on it to started delivering groceries.” with other food distribution efforts, including and injustices that had brought protesters down- feed their children—and CPS gave them almost On Wednesday, June 3, Adigun began spread- the People’s Grab-N-Go and Feed the West town in the fi rst place. The Slide By can’t undo no time to prepare for its absence. Several of ing the word about his plan via Twitter and Side, a monthly initiative based in Austin that’s the harm done by decades of disinvestment in Adigun’s friends sprang into action in the early Instagram: “If you need food we will slide on you overseen by the Pivot Gang-affiliated John Black and Brown communities, but it’s provided hours of Monday, June 1. Rapper and Young Chi- with groceries! No questions asked.” He encour- Walt Foundation. He’s stayed busy enough with much-needed relief by mitigating the lack of ac- cago Authors teaching artist Matt Muse posted aged people to reach him through Delacreme community service this summer that he nearly cess to food for hundreds of Chicagoans. online that he was headed to meet volunteers Scholars, a nonprofi t he’d established in 2018 to forgot about a big booking that COVID-19 had “It’s cool to know that when the world fails us, who were setting up rapid-response food dis- provide fi nancial assistance to Black and Brown canceled for him. “I was out doing something we’ll take care of ourselves,” Adigun says. “For tribution outside Burke Elementary School in college students. He decided to call his new food and I realized, like, ‘Damn, I was supposed to be everyone to be fi guring it out together, it gives Washington Park, which was ordinarily a pickup distribution program the Scholars Slide By. doing Pitchfork today,’” he says. “That would’ve me a sense of peace in the midst of all this. A lot point for free CPS lunches. “When we started in the beginning of June, been cool.” of times when we’re doing this, stu is stressful, Adigun read that post and reached out. “He I was doing everything myself—doing all the As Femdot (which he styles femdot.), Adigun but those end up being some of the best days.” saw it and called me instantly,” Muse says. “He running around, deliveries,” Adigun says. “I was is one of the strongest young MCs to emerge was like, ‘Hey, do y’all need help with anything? mapping out a system. I did it fi ve days a week for from Chicago in the past few years. He can de- elacreme Scholars had its beginnings I’ll pull up.’ I don’t know if I told him to bring two weeks straight, and I did 100 deliveries a day. liver richly detailed verses at such a blistering several years before its launch in 2018. anything—I was probably like, ‘Bro, just go to I was working out the kinks of the system of how speed that you could be convinced his fi rst gear DAdigun, 25, struggled with the fi nancial ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 31 time,” he explains. “I just wanted to be the resource I didn’t have. I’m like, ‘I would’ve loved to trip and fall into some money in December.’”

digun’s mother, Siki, didn’t know her son was even interested in rapping Auntil 2012, when he won a competi- tion at Homewood-Flossmoor High School at age 16. Siki considered her eldest son, Kola, who’s 12 years Adigun’s senior, to be the MC of the house. When Kola made music in the basement of the family home, Adigun would watch him work. “Femi, we knew he was listening—but nobody knew he had that interest until high school,” Siki says. “We’ve always supported him, but I never thought he would ever go into this,” she says of Adigun’s hip-hop career. “I just wanted to support whatever he’s doing, and just be there for him, just make him happy. The only problem that he would not get my support is if school is not going well. But if school’s going well, anything else you want to do, you got my support.” School wasn’t a problem for Adigun. He was an honor roll student in high school, and he also played on the basketball team and ran

Adigun (right) with the Scholars Slide By volunteers Fallone Moff ett, Corea Mitchell, and Staci Morris MATTHEW GILSON FOR CHICAGO READER track. As the Homewood-Flossmoor 2013 class president, he gave a speech at his graduation. “If I remember correctly, a lot of it was rooted in moments that we had as a class—like beat- continued from 31 “I didn’t sleep,” he says. “I could fall asleep Scholars—named after his album. “I’m trying ing our rival high school. That’s what success burden of higher education while at DePaul. standing up, because you gotta get what you to make it in a way where I’m funneling my was like,” he says. “I think that’s how I ended “I had holds on my account a lot. I had to put can.” resources, but it’s also not about me,” he says. it—like, ‘This is gonna be a snippet of what money down to schedule classes,” he says. Adigun’s rap career gained momentum “The scholarship is a completely separate enti- success is yet to come.’” “In college, in general, you watch people who steadily throughout his college years, despite ty from Femdot. It just so happens that I’m the Since his early days at DePaul, Adigun has don’t come back after the first semester, or this grueling routine. The di culty of making one who made it.” defined success for himself as succeeding in the next year, and it’s over funds.” In 2013 or time for music taught him to budget every He’s since secured partnerships that have music. “I pretty much geared my school and 2014—around the time he began college—he minute and sharpened his perfectionist streak. allowed him to grow Delacreme Scholars, and work schedule around me being a musician, got the idea to o er scholarships to fellow stu- He performed his first public set as part of because he’s no longer relying solely on his rather than gearing my work and music around dents, but he wouldn’t have the means to do it a show sponsored by Columbia College at personal income, he can o er a predetermined being in school,” he says. “I was always moving till after he graduated. Subterranean in 2014, then landed his first amount rather than just giving away however around. I was always tired.” Adigun got by with a lot of loans, which headlining gig at Schubas in May 2017. In much his next big show makes. Adigun’s Lin- Adigun is a meticulous planner, which he’ll be paying off for a long while yet. He June 2018, just days after dropping the album coln Hall concert funded two scholarships, but helped him maximize the time he spent on also fi gured out how to navigate a byzantine, Delacreme 2 (distributed by beloved Chicago in late 2019 the next annual crop of scholars music. He’d often record raps on his own opaque administrative network in order to hip-hop indie label Closed Sessions), he grad- grew to six with help from Puma—and the at home, polishing his lines till he knew he fi nd resources for students in need. “It’s like a uated from DePaul. That summer he appeared Illinois and Indiana students Adigun selected could deliver them perfectly in a professional secret . . . not society, but you’ve gotta tunnel at Lollapalooza, and for his next big show he to become Delacreme Scholars didn’t just get studio—he wanted to be able to nail his tracks through, talk to the right person, meet in per- headlined Lincoln Hall in December. As he $750 each but also Puma clothes, shoes, and in one take when the meter was running. son, do this, do that—somebody could proba- prepared for that date, he revisited his idea to backpacks. “Because of funding, I literally can’t a ord to bly help you get an extra grant or something,” start a scholarship. Adigun didn’t decide to award scholarships waste time, but I also don’t have time to waste he says. “It’s a whole process.” “I’m like, ‘I could just take the proceeds from in the dead of winter just because that’s when because I have to study,” he says. His schedule at DePaul didn’t leave him a this show and give this away to the people at his Lincoln Hall show happened—he was also The disciplined work habits he developed lot of uncommitted time to spend jumping DePaul, and if it works I can continue to grow thinking about the way fi nancial aid, which is in college have stuck with him. “A lot of my through these hoops. He majored in biological and do this next year with people outside typically granted at the beginning of the school creative process—even currently—is purely sciences and worked a part-time job, all while of DePaul,’” Adigun says. “I’m fresh out of year, semester, or quarter, often runs dry right based on me being in school and having to he laid the groundwork for his rise as a rapper. college—I know what people in college need, around then. “There’s no scholarships in the have a structure,” he says. While at DePaul in “I’d be in class from, like, nine to two; I would because I graduated four months ago.” middle of the year—that’s when your fi nancial 2014, he planned out a timetable of mixtape, probably be in lab from three to six; I worked Adigun announced his scholarship program aid drops, or you’ve got to wait for it to kick in EP, and album releases that extended well from six to 11; I’d record from 11 to, like, seven,” with a tweet on November 5, 2018. He asked when you get back to school but you have holds beyond graduation. “All the projects I’ve Adigun says. “In between those times I’d prob- Black DePaul students who needed financial now, or you’re trying to fi gure out your whole dropped up to this point since the King Dilla ably just be in the library. I’m known for being assistance to e-mail their name, age, and semester and you need money for rent but project, I’ve known what these projects have in the library.” That’s not all he was known for. major to an address he’d set up for Delacreme you’re waiting for your refund check to hit on been since 2014.” 32 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll t DePaul, Adigun shared a class with In his early social-media calls for volunteers community, long before all of this happened. Camry Music till the loss of his car was a couple Cole Bennett, founder of hip-hop blog and support for the Slide By, Adigun included So it’s very easy to be like, ‘Yo, Imma pull up to years behind him, he was better able to render ALyrical Lemonade, which has since be- information for Delacreme Scholars’ Cash App, your shit, you gonna pull up to my shit, we’re those memories in lucid, even-keeled verses. come a miniature entertainment empire largely QuickPay, and Zelle accounts. By July, he’d all gonna help each other out.’ That’s how it’s He delivers a career-making performance on thanks to Bennett’s videography work. In 2016, launched a BioTapper website where people been since June fi rst. Everybody’s been helping “Snuck to Matty’s,” a minute-by-minute break- when Bennett shot a video for Adigun’s “King can donate money via Cash App, credit card, or everybody, there’s never a no, there’s never down of an endless night out with friends that’s Dilla Freestyle,” he brought Lyrical Lemonade debit card as well as sign up to volunteer. The a ‘Nah, I’m not in the mood.’ It’s ‘Oh, you need upended by a shooting at a house party—his editor Elliot Montanez with him. Delacreme Scholars website has added a form help? Imma pull up.’ That’s the energy Femdot vivid lyrics unsentimentally capture the thrill “Afterwards, Cole was like, ‘I really like this to take grocery requests, which closes once it’s brought. That’s the energy we brought to Fem- and sadness of a life-altering night. guy. He’s super dope, he’s talented—I think he accepted as many submissions as the Slide By dot’s shit. That’s the energy we brought to Feed Adigun had been driving a 2002 Honda Ac- could use some help, like a manager,’” Mon- can handle—thus ensuring that nobody goes the West Side.” cord while making 94 Camry Music, but it gave tanez remembers. “Cole was basically like, ‘I through the trouble of listing the groceries Pugh has made sure that people who’ve come out on him in May 2019, when he was en route would, but I don’t really have time. If you’d be they need and then doesn’t receive anything. to Feed the West Side were aware of the Schol- to a mixing session at 2 AM. He never replaced interested, that’s something you should look “We really get whatever they ask for—the ‘no ars Slide By—it’s been the only program of the that car—before the pandemic, he’d been doing into.’ And I was already interested.” Montanez questions asked’ is a real thing,” Adigun says. three to do deliveries. “We had a sign-up sheet his touring and traveling in rentals or other says he spent about a year becoming friends “I mean, we don’t get alcohol and stu like that, for people that were in line, like, ‘Hey, if you people’s vehicles, and he’d adapted to getting with Adigun before he formally asked to be- but in terms of food and baby care products . . . want other assistance or have a friend or family around town without one of his own. come his manager. “I always wanted to manage a lot of people need cleaning stu , so we’ll grab member that’s immobile or can’t get out here someone,” Montanez says. “But I wanted it to mops—whatever they really need, we’ll grab today, we do have a friend that’s doing grocery n Saturday, May 30, after the cops be the right person.” it.” drop-o s,’” she says. “I can’t even tell you how whaled on Adigun at the protest, he Montanez manages Adigun, sharing the Adigun’s system involves up to 50 volunteers many people that I know of that have reached Otexted Ponce asking if he could swing job with Tamika Ponce, who met the rapper per day, split evenly across two shifts—the fi rst out and asked, ‘Hey, could you submit my infor- by her place. through a mutual friend. Adigun asked Ponce to shift runs from 11 AM to 2 PM, the second from mation to that group again? Because they were “I kind of knew something was wrong—and manage him a few times before she warmed up 2 to 5 PM. He meets volunteers at a north-side really helpful for me.’” he showed up and he was just so calm,” Ponce to the idea and came aboard in 2017. parking lot adjacent to an Aldi and Jewel-Os- Pugh understands the work that goes into says. “Ten minutes later, he takes his hat off, “I knew I was in trouble because he got co, then provides each of them with grocery coordinating a food distribution program, and and I see blood on his face. I’m like, ‘What’s booked for a House of Vans show at South by lists for two households. Ponce and Montanez she admires Adigun’s drive. “He was protesting, going on?’ He’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I got beat with a Southwest, and I asked who was going with him station themselves inside Aldi and Jewel, re- trying to stand up for the injustice that was baton.’” Ponce stayed up all night with Adigun and he was like, ‘I’m going by myself,’” Ponce spectively, and use Delacreme Scholars’ credit happening in our community, and at the same in case he had a concussion. He did, and when says. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I can’t let you do that.’ cards to process grocery payments for the other time, still doing his grocery delivery,” she says. he fi nally went to the hospital, he needed those I booked all my stu last-minute, and it was re- volunteers. “It just proves the type of young man that he is.” staples to close up the top of his head. ally expensive to go down there and help him.” “Fem will set up in the back of his car, in a For years, Adigun had consistently scheduled After she pitched in to set up his fi rst headlining parking lot with his laptop,” Montanez says. hen Adigun has delivered groceries time to write lyrics and work on music, but after show that May, she agreed to join Montanez in “He organizes all this stuff himself. He has this summer, he’s had to rent a car, his injury, he took a break. “You would think, managing Adigun. spreadsheets. He’s in constant communication Wuse a rideshare app, or borrow a car like, ‘Oh, this is something you should probably “When she got brought on, she helped so with these families that are reaching out.” from his parents. He said farewell to the vehicle write about,’ but I didn’t,” he says. much—she makes our lives easier,” Montanez When volunteers cancel at the last minute, at the center of his most recent release, the Adigun had been working on the Slide By and says. “We’re a good trio. I feel like we work well Adigun, Montanez, and Ponce pick up those October 2019 EP 94 Camry Music, on Decem- helping with other mutual aid e orts for around together.” grocery deliveries themselves. Adigun is ber 5, 2016, after he crashed into another car a month when he started flexing his music Like Montanez, Ponce has a relationship grateful to be reminded of how rewarding it is on his way to LA Van Gogh’s headlining set at muscles again. By early July, he’d started par- with Adigun that transcends business. “He to hand over a donation in person. “When you Subterranean. “My brakes were bad, I slid into ticipating in Zoom sessions with his friends in took me and Elliot home to meet his mother, pull up and they start realizing, ‘Oh, y’all got somebody, dented my car, and parked it,” Adi- Pivot Gang—they’d set themselves a challenge and I felt like I was meeting my boyfriend’s what I asked for,’ it’s cool, it’s an element of care gun says. “I did my verse, left, and that was the to write 16-bar verses and produce beats in 16 parents or something. I brought her fl owers. I in that,” he says. “Like, ‘OK, y’all actually are last time I had that car.” minutes. “We’re all so competitive, it felt like was nervous,” she says. “We’re friends—I mean, considerate and care about what I have going “He would just always tell me how that car we was in the basement or we was just cooking we have to be. We trust each other with a lot of on enough to get me my essential items that I was basically like a piece of his family,” Mon- up with the homies,” he says. “That made me stu .” asked for.’ It gets heavy, but stu like that, you tanez says. “His mom called the car Killa Cam.” feel like I have it, like I can start writing again.” can’t buy that. You can’t buy that at all.” Adigun had been driving the green 1994 Toyota At around the same time, he wrote his fi rst new ontanez and Ponce have helped Adigun Camry since he was 16—it’d previously be- song since early May. with the Scholars Slide By all summer. s the Slide By became an established longed to his older sister, Seun, a track star who Before the pandemic, he’d finished record- MOn the second day of the People’s Grab- part of his summer, Adigun also con- also founded the Nigerian bobsled team in 2016. ing most of the not-yet-titled follow-up to 94 N-Go, Ponce and Adigun brought a large canopy Atinued volunteering with the People’s Adigun got the idea for a concept EP about Camry Music. He’s been tweaking it on and o , that organizers used for shade throughout the Grab-N-Go and Feed the West Side, launched by his car in 2015, but he didn’t think he was ready though he didn’t touch it during his hiatus ei- summer. When Ponce noticed Adigun using John Walt Foundation executive director Nach- to make what became 94 Camry Music back ther. “The project that I’m working on now, I’m his own funds on the Slide By, she stepped in elle Pugh, Pivot Gang cofounder Frsh Waters, then—in fact, the right time didn’t arrive till also really excited about that, ’cause it doesn’t to remind him that he had to budget carefully and photographer Qurissy Lopez. Leaders from after graduation, long after he’d abandoned sound like 94 Camry Music at all,” he says. “It and solicit donations because there weren’t any all three of these mutual aid e orts consistently Killa Cam. “The music I want to make now has sounds like me, but it doesn’t sound like 94 gigs on the horizon. “Of course, as the manager, pitched in on at least one of the others, which to refl ect me post-school and has to be honest Camry Music. Whatever people are expecting, I’m like, ‘We got to get a little bit more orga- helped them all grow. to who I am,” he says. “I’m like, ‘OK, what mo- they’re wrong, and I’m pretty happy about nized, because you’re also spending all your “We all care about the city, number one,” ments have made me who I am—where did I that.” v own money and everything’s slow right now,’” Muse says. “We all care about each other, num- have most of these moments? In my car.’” she says. ber two—we already exist with each other in Because Adigun didn’t start working on 94 @imLeor ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 33 MUSIC

BIT.LY/GOOSEDELIVERS

Donate to get Leor Galil's best articles over the past 10 years of Chicago music! CHICAGOANS OF NOTE chicagoreader.com/leorbook Sandra Treviño, DJ and founder of Latin-music site Enchúfate “I love that I can share the music that I love, and that once people hear it they’re gonna love it too.” As told to L G

Sandra Treviño, 48, has run Latin-music site day the singer, Hector Ivan Garcia, came out Enchúfate since founding it in 2005. She also of the show, and I was standing outside, and contributes to Vocalo and two Lumpen Radio he was like, “Would you like to be a band programs and DJs as part of Latinx arts col- manager?” That’s where it all started for me, lective Future Rootz. as far as covering music, being involved in music management, and booking shows and was born in Chicago, but we moved to all that—that was in the early 2000s. I was Texas when I was ten, so I grew up there. with them for about 13 years. I When I came back, I met someone who in- I remember one of the first things they troduced me to local shows. I started going to asked me to do was to cold-call someone that local rock en español shows. One of the bands, they knew and just ask if they could play. I Descarga, I started following them a lot. One was like, “I’m the band’s manager—I want to

34 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER MUSIC enjoy STEPHANIE MANRIQUEZ people that loved rock. That’s why I started YOUR FAVORITE Enchúfate—to promote all these other amaz- know how this works.” He was very nice and ing artists that were doing music that had a told me how they did the booking and how Latin background. they paid out. I kept doing it on Enchúfate, and then I I realized that a lot of the bands weren’t started working with Gozamos, which is a reaching out to venues that they didn’t know Latin outlet for art and culture. Eventually WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY! because they thought the venues would au- Vocalo reached out. Jesse Menendez, who tomatically say, “Rock en español, that’s not used to work there, reached out and said, something we know, so no.” I approached “Would you be interested in coming in so we it like, “Why are you saying you’re a rock en can interview you?” español band—you’re just a rock band.” And After that, he asked me if I was interested that’s when I started to get bigger bookings. in coming in to talk about Latin alternative We did the ﬁ rst rock en español showcase at music once a month or once every two weeks, Double Door—I was so happy and so proud. and that’s how my segment started on Vocalo. When we saw the lack of coverage for the Now I have the privilege of doing the Friday- rock en español community—nobody was re- morning segment on Latin alternative music, porting about it, we weren’t getting written and I’ve been doing that maybe seven years. up—the band’s singer and myself decided to I got into radio through them. I start- do something about it. He studied cinema- ed working with Radio One Chicago on tography at Columbia College and he’s like, WLUW—I was with them for a few years. And “I know how to do video. If you’re interested then Lumpen Radio happened. Me and my DJ in interviewing bands, why don’t we cover partner, Stephanie Manriquez, we decided we the community?” We started a TV show on wanted to push women-fronted music, most- channel 25 called Errores no Eliminados, ly from Latin America and South America. We which means “Errors not Eliminated.” We were asked to DJ at a show, and then when started covering local shows—going to every Lumpen Radio popped up, we submitted our single show out there, interviewing all the show idea; we called ourselves the Ponderers, bands. That’s where my love for covering art- because we were always pondering about ists that weren’t being covered comes from. music. Now that’s what I do all the time as a music Now I work with Future Rootz. I’m part of journalist. their DJ crew—I’m also a DJ. I started DJing The TV show was in 2002. We were on the because when we would go to clubs or venues air for about two years, and then we stopped. and it was supposed to be a Latin night, they REDUCED PRICING THROUGH THE END OF 2020! We wanted to do it again, and we came back would play the same thing all the time. It got Book a My Social Circle private tour for just $135 with a bigger team—we had a dozen volun- to the point where we would get to the show, teers. We decided we were gonna do it in one and we were like, “OK, he’s gonna play this (regularly $180) for up to six family members or friends location for a certain amount of time, so we next, this is next, and now this is next.” And along any existing CAC route. Valid on all tours booked would do a month at Cobra Lounge, a month sure enough, that’s the way it was. Again, and attended through December 31, 2020. at this other venue, and di erent venues; the it was the singer of Descarga who was like, bands would just show up, do their perfor- “Why don’t you start bringing your CDs and And with appreciation for all they do, we’re pleased to mance, then do the interview. So we did that playing when we have a show?” And that’s offer teachers, active service members, veterans and for about a year. The local rock en español how it started, and I’ve expanded to vinyl, community wasn’t interested in us doing which is great. essential workers further reduced rates. that, so we just started adding bands that I love that I can share the music that I Email CAC Group Sales at [email protected] were outside of that speciﬁ c genre. At some love, and that once people hear it they’re point, we were like, “People aren’t really gonna love it too. But my love isn’t just rock to learn more! interested,” so we stopped. But before that, I en español—Latin alternative music, trop- did start my website, Enchúfate. ical music, some global bass here and there. I started it to cover music that I liked— Cumbia is my favorite. I have the Future music outside of rock en español, which is Rootz radio show as well, on Lumpen. And what we call Latin alternative. I liked it be- I write with whoever wants me to write for cause it wasn’t just the hard rock and metal them about Latin alternative music, mostly that we were used to seeing at the Latin rock because that’s my favorite thing to write shows; there was stuff that was electronic, about. v a little pop, just different fusions of music that I loved, but that wasn’t accepted by the @sandratrevino SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 35 Recommended and notable releases and critics’ insights for the week of September 17 MUSIC

Big Branch, Cliff Press Pot PICK OF THE WEEK bigbranch.bandcamp.com

On their debut album, Cliff, Chicago duo Big Bill Callahan has a couple dad jokes for you Branch combine warm vocal melodies with kitchen- sink instrumentals inspired by the dusty samples of underground rap. The record’s ramshackle sound recalls Beck circa “Loser” or Dubya-era TV on the Radio, a hybrid style the group calls “hop ’n’ roll.” SEPT. 19 @ Online SAT Vocalist Jamal Semaan and guitarist and producer Sophia Lucia Presents: Rob Lorts originally went by the name Grimms & Freak Show Cabaret! Blacknight, and they wrote the songs on Cliff (EVENT REPEATS SEPT. 26) during a 2016 DIY tour. A er coming home to fi nancial hardship and health problems, they revital- ized themselves with a new band name and a more SEPT. 19 @ North Bar SAT guitar-heavy sound. Big Branch recorded Cliff with Nesh and Lee Lee Live producer Brian Deck, who also contributes percussion—it shares the foreground with Lorts’s guitar playing, such as the wiry lines that supplement the chorus on “Something Out There.” Semaan’s TO ADD YOUR EVENT TO conversational vocals sound great paired with har- TIXREADERCOM monies from Ohmme’s Macie Stewart, who guests SEND AN EMAIL TO on a couple tracks on vocals and violin—they’re especially good together on lead single “Spit It [email protected] Out,” where the singers plead for more direct communication even as they prepare to wince at the unfiltered truth. But the front man hasn’t abandoned rap. Midway through “Bubblegum,” Semaan drops into an unexpected rhythmic pocket amid a cacophony of overlapping guitars and cymbals. The song doesn’t employ traditional drum-kit patterns— instead Semaan’s voice provides the rhythmic bed- OTOGILLEN rock, anchoring the layers of instrumentation. It’s a sophisticated gambit that was worth all of the time Never Big Branch spent in fl ux. —J R miss a Bill Callahan, Gold Record JuJu Exchange, The Eternal Boombox show Drag City Self-released billcallahan.bandcamp.com/album/gold-record thejujuexchange.bandcamp.com/album/the- again. eternal-boombox

In a recent interview with the Yale Center for Faith & Culture’s podcast For the Life of the World, pianist Julian Reid described the way mourn- ing informed the thematic underpinnings of The Eternal Boombox, a new self-released EP by his Chicago- based band, the JuJu Exchange. The members of this jazz combo also draw upon their experiences outside jazz: Reid is assistant music INBILLCALLAHAN broke a bout of writer’s block that had lasted more than ﬁ ve years director for Kelley Chapel United Methodist EARLY with Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, a 20-song concept record about the satisfactions of Church in Decatur, Georgia; his drummer brother, Everett, studied jazz and performing arts technol- family life. Gold Record, which arrives just 14 months later, sustains its predecessor’s sparse ogy at the University of Michigan; and producer WARNINGS country-rock sound. And while it wastes no e ort on trying to shape its ten songs into a and trumpeter Nico Segal is a crucial member of cohesive statement, several tracks elaborate upon Shepherd’s themes. Having embraced Chance the Rapper’s band, the Social Experiment. Each of the five songs on The Eternal Boombox Find a concert, buy a fatherhood on Shepherd, Callahan now revels in daddishness by dispensing advice, telling corresponds with a stage of grief from the Kübler- jokes, and laying down rules. The limo-driving narrator of “Pigeons” preaches tolerance Ross model: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, ticket, and sign up to to a pair of newlyweds. “Ry Cooder” is an escalating tall tale about the titular guitarist’s and acceptance. The second track, “Avalanche,” is definitely the “anger” track, with ice-sheet synth get advance notice slick licks and yoga skills. And on “Protest Song,” he upbraids a singer on late-night TV who melodies and a rush of crunching electronic per- of Chicago’s essential is “messing with a man’s toys,” with the tone of a cranky pop who won’t let you touch the cussion ﬁ t for drum ’n’ bass. As Reid told For the contents of his toolbox but sure will let you know if you don’t hold your hammer right. If Life of the World, “Music cultivates in me—and cul- music shows at tivates in my colleagues—a sensibility of having Callahan is concerned about staying at the top of his game, he doesn’t show it. And the way a sense of self and being connected to a greater chicagoreader.com/early. he layers intimations of past and future losses into “The Mackenzies,” which describes a whole.” That sensibility guides the JuJu Exchange friendly encounter between an elderly couple and their agoraphobic neighbor, proves he has as they blend genres throughout The Eternal Boombox, and it propels them through the dark- nothing to worry about. —BM est shades of grief. On the fourth track, “And So 36 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll MUSIC

Le Couleur GABRIELLE DEMERS

On . . . ,” they evoke depression with a small sym- Phew, Vertical KO phony, and Reid’s fl amboyant gospel-fl ecked piano Disciples Because of the pandemic, our doors pierces a despondent string passage like a sun- phewjapan.bandcamp.com/album/vertigo-ko beam cutting through fog. —L G For more than four decades, Hiromi Moritani has were forced to close until further been making music by her own rules. She’s large- Le Couleur, Concorde ly known for the short-lived art-rock band Aunt notice. The livelihoods of our box Lisbon Lux Sally, which she started as a teenager in late-70s lisbonluxrecords.com/le-couleur-d Osaka, and for her 1981 self-titled solo album under the name Phew. Since then she’s continually honed office workers, security, stagehands, Montreal synth-pop trio Le Couleur delve into her craft as Phew, expanding beyond her post- some disturbing history on their new album, Con- punk beginnings into straight-ahead rock, other- corde, named for the supersonic airliner that in the worldly pop songs, and avant-garde experimental techs, and bar servers have been 1970s made it possible for elite jet-setters to leave pieces built around her voice. Though she’s col- their European estates and arrive at Manhattan laborated with a handful of artists throughout the directly affected by this decision. nightclubs a er as little as three hours in the air. decades, including Bill Laswell, the Raincoats’ Ana Midway through the record’s title track, the group da Silva, and turntable experimentalist Otomo deliver a gut-punching reminder of the great stain Yoshihide, her solo endeavors have consistently on the Concorde’s legacy: a fuel-tank explosion been her most enthralling and intriguing. With the We want them to know how much on a 2000 Air France fl ight that le no survivors. new Vertical KO (Disciples), Phew skews darker, (The plane was retired from service in 2003.) As presenting a collection of seven harrowing synth- singer and keyboardist Laurence Giroux -Do told and-voice tracks that Moritani says comes with an we appreciate their hard work online magazine Âught last month, the album con- underlying message: “What a terrible world we cept was inspired by all the ups and the downs of live in, but let’s survive.” That simultaneous sense the Concorde’s story: “We were fascinated by the of dread and persistence is clear on album open- and help support them Concorde: its symbolism, its sexy look, its crash.” er “The Very Ears of Morning,” whose diaphanous Drummer Steeven Chouinard and bassist Pat- ambience fl utters gracefully before tumbling into during this trying time. rick Gosselin add so but precise nu-disco beats alien noises. The peculiar uneasiness of that song is to the album’s sophisticated, sometimes dreamy magnifi ed on “Let’s Dance Let’s Go,” an enveloping dance pop, and their tight interplay works mag- whirlwind of disorienting manipulated vocals that, ically on “Train de Minuit” (which could easily be contrary to its title, is the least danceable track on confused for a Giorgio Moroder classic) and the the album. On Moritani’s cover of the Raincoats’ instrumental “Vol d’Après-midi.” Giroux-Do accom- “The Void,” she stiff ens the jaggedness of the orig- PLEASE DONATE: panies the swanky grooves with sad, introspective inal with a humming drone, while a constant tum- lyrics suffused with memories of love lost, sung bling drum-machine beat lends it an anxious jitter. entirely in French—like the Concorde, Le Cou- Most potent is “All That Vertigo,” which starts off jamusa.com/helpourstaff leur evoke a posh and perfect moment in time. subtle but eventually wraps the listener in whir- —S C-J ring sirens, haunting vocal coos, and a suff ocating wall of noise that feels like being hit with a huge ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 37 Chicago Run is a nonprofit organization that provides young people across Chicago with inclusive running MUSIC and physical activity programs. Your support is crutial to ensuring that Chicago Run remains a steadfast resource for our communities during these challening times.

Tune in for Chicago Run’s 12th Annual, 1st Virtual

October 25 - October 30 , 2020 A week-long celebration featuring NPR’s Peter Sagal

Visit www.chicagorun.org/LSBS for more information on how you Uniform EBRU YILDIZ can support programs that provide continued from 37 liant, confrontational fury. Uniform have always equitable access to physical activity. gust of wind. Vertical KO is a visceral and evoc- stirred up a lot of emotions, and Shame makes you ative listen: you come out of it feeling worn out feel everything at once with uneasy, eerie clarity. and beaten. But the album also lives up to Mori- It’s the band’s best work yet, a massive statement tani’s message—once you make it through with your in darkness and a well-timed soundtrack for our emotions intact, the world seems a bit less daunt- frustratingly twisted age. —LC ing. —J M K

Vic Spencer, Spencer For Higher 3 Uniform, Shame Old Fart Luggage Sacred Bones vicspencer.bandcamp.com/album/spencer-for- unifuckingform.bandcamp.com/album/shame higher-3

I’ve spent a lot of Reader ink gushing about Chicago rapper Vic Spencer couldn’t let the year Uniform and the previous projects of their mem- pass without dropping at least a couple albums. bers. With the release of their new fourth full- August’s Spencer for Higher 3 (Old Fart Luggage) is length, Shame, the band’s sonic assault contin- his third solo outing of 2020, and that’s not even all ues—and so does my adoration. Formed in 2014 as he’s put out. A er February’s Psychological Cheat a wildly abrasive industrial-noise-rock-drone duo of Sheet and April’s No Shawn Skemps, he released vocalist Michael Berdan (formerly of unreal noise- June’s Your Birthday’s Cancelled as part of Iron core trio Drunkdriver) and guitarist Ben Greenberg Wigs, an underground supergroup that also fea- (who’s played in Zs and Pygmy Shrews and engi- tures Chicago rapper Verbal Kent and UK rapper- neered records by every good band coming out of producer Sonny Sathi, better known as SonnyJim. NYC), Uniform have continually streamlined their Sathi produced the bulk of Spencer for Higher 3, sound, toying with Wax Trax! industrial, straight- and his elegant old-school soul approach to boom- forward punk, and electronic synth swaths—some- bap brings out the musicality in Spencer’s gritty times all at once. On 2018’s The Long Walk, they voice. Spencer can come oﬀ as irascible, but on this added live drums to their previously all- electronic album he’s most o en self-deprecating and playful- rhythm section, recording with experimental drum- ly mischievous—he occasionally uses his ad-libbed mer Greg Fox (Liturgy, Guardian Alien). The result grunts as an exclamation mark at the end of a joc- was driving, aggressive, blown-out noisy punk and ular line. Spencer’s a workaholic, but throughout metal—no frills, no bullshit. It was a perfect album, Spencer for Higher 3 he sounds like he’s unlocked IS NOT FREE as far as I was concerned, and captured every- the secret to having more fun on the clock than thing I needed from a weird, heavy band: sticky anybody else. —L G riﬀ s, deranged vocals, and a grimy, gloomy atmo- sphere. Turns out Uniform had the capacity to chicagoreader.com/donate improve on perfection. Fox has le , and longtime Vuelveteloca, Contra touring drummer Mike Sharp (an Austin scene Self-released mainstay who’s played with the Impalers, Bad vuelveteloca.bandcamp.com Faith, and Hatred Surge) has stepped in, and his We Couldn't Be Free Without You— heavy hand anchors Shame’s creeping, pounding American news media can be frustratingly myo- tracks. The album walks the line between organ- pic. But even when mainstream reporting fails to Support Community Journalism ic and synthetic, mean and sad, pretty and terri- deliver the goods from outside our bubble, the fying, familiar and foreign. The songs are layered simple act of listening to an album can remind us and textured, and they’re all delivered with bril- that we’re part of a global community of people 38 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll GX-19 - Chicago Reader ad ALT_GX-19 - Chicago Reader ad ALT 8/27/20 3:08 PM Page 1

Gourmet Expos Find more music reviews at chicagoreader.com/soundboard. MUSIC is Taking the Live Spirits Festival Online! The Virtual SpiritsTasting Festival A fascinating, varied series of Craft and Name Virtual Spirits Tasting Events September 30th World of Whiskey October 21st Dreamy Creamy Liqueurs November 18th World-class Hawaiian Rum

COMING IN DECEMBER & JANUARY: Jay Wood COURTESYTHEARTIST Craft and Name Brandies and who share more common interests—and face more through smoky clouds of percussion into a motor- common threats—than our leaders would have us ik rhythm, their blend of triumphant, silky guitars Grappa, Gin, Vodka and Tequila Tastings believe. On Contra, the new seventh album from and soaring atmospheres suggests that everything Chilean four-piece Vuelveteloca, the band use a could turn out all right. —J L spacey blend of psych, Krautrock, and postrock $ to tap into dystopian visions of the future and a Introductory Special Savings 20! beautiful spirit of resistance and reemergence. Jay Wood, Trackstar The record’s title means “against” or “opposed,” Freesole Valid For Each Event and its six brightly colored songs conjure feelings jaywood.bandcamp.com/album/trackstar of warmth and movement, even when their moods Courtesy of Chicago Reader! turn mysterious and their themes—such as on Three years ago Chicago rapper Jay Wood (a mem- the hypnotic “La Sangre del Oro” (“The Blood of ber of the Freesole collective) dropped his debut Use promo code READER Gold”)—hint at something darker. The single “Ciu- full-length, Self Doubt, where he made mincemeat dades Subterráneas” (“Underground Cities”) was of hard-edged beats while sharing the mike with inspired by a visit to Cappadocia in Turkey, where more established MCs, including Ajani Jones and For event details and tickets, go to for centuries networks of hidden caves and tunnels Femdot. Since then Wood has polished his skills Gourmetexpos.com protected citizens from persecution and invading and reconciled his fi erce vocals with his interest in . armies. Over ebbing and fl owing desert-rock riff s, pop songwriting. On his new EP, Trackstar (Free- chunky metallic chords, and hazy grooves, the band sole), he matches the ironclad mettle of his tough- draw threads from that history to the present day, est instrumentals and harshest drums with boister- Spirits shipped prior to each 90-minute when people around the world, Chileans includ- ous performances that tease out the sweetness ed, are rising against oppression. But even those hidden in the tracks—on “Champagne” he rounds presentation. Prices include shipping. currently at the top of the pecking order could be off his rapid raps with a light, honeyed touch. Pro- at the mercy of some unknown forces pulling the ducers Namesake and Moses Mode also have an strings: on the meandering closing track, “Puentes ear for glossy pop, which comes through most G OURMET E XPOS Etéreos” (“Ethereal Bridges”), Vuelveteloca explore prominently on the title track—Wood matches the the concept of otherworldly beings that anon- music’s ostentatious R&B vibes with gold-flaked Beverly Hills, California ymously bend mankind to their will. That might singing that’s sensuous enough to make Travis sound scary at the outset, but as the band glide Scott blush. —LG v ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 39 CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

EARLY WARNINGS b ALLAGESF WOLFBYKEITHHERZIK Okkervil River 10/29, 8 PM, Never miss livestream at noonchorus. a show again. com b Passport Vibes Afrobeat Sign up for the Street Festival 6/26/2021, newsletter at noon, the Promontory b chicagoreader. Lawrence Peters Outfi t 9/27, GOSSIP 1 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn F com/early Andy Pratt, Joe Policastro 9/23, 6 PM, Montrose Saloon WOLF Rezn record release for Heat featuring DJ Ron Carroll Chaotic Divine 9/28, 8 PM, and more Thursdays, 7 PM A furry ear to the ground of livestream at audiotree.tv b through 12/23, Le Nocturne Justin Roberts 9/26, 11 AM, Chicago, in-person as well as the local music scene SPACE, Evanston b livestream; seating limited Keith Scott and friends 9/25, Hyde Park Jazz Festival RISING CHICAGO hyperpop sensa- 5:30 PM, Reggies’ Music day one featuring Mike Joint F Reed, Tomeka Reid, Jason tion Fraxiom had a hell of a weekend. Secret Lives 9/24, 7 PM, Mon- Adasiewicz Trio's the Silent On Saturday, they performed alongside trose Saloon Hour with Russ Johnson & the likes of Charli XCX, 100 Gecs, Aaron Isaiah Sharkey 10/18, 4 and Jakob Heinemann, Marquis Cartier, and Clairo as part of Appleville, 7:30 PM, City Winery b Hill's Circle the Round, Dee She Past Away 12/1/2021, Alexander Quartet, Charles a virtual festival organized by PC Music 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Heath Quartet, Greg Ward, founder A.G. Cook. And on Sunday, Frax- Lenard Simpson Trio 9/30, Alexis Lombre Quartet 9/26, iom dropped their second EP of the year, Lydia Loveless MEGANTOENYES 6 PM, Montrose Saloon 4 PM, livestream at Feeling Cool and Normal, a deliriously Stick Men 4/21/2021, 7 PM, hydeparkjazzfestival.org Superman, DJ Dot, and lar featuring Rashada Dawan Reggies’ Rock Club, 17+ F b joyful collision of grainy, blown-out bass, NEW more 6/27/2021, 10 PM, the 10/17, 7 and 9:30 PM; 10/24, Deb Talan 10/2, 4:30 and 7 PM, King Krule, Lucy 12/2, 7:30 PM, jittery synths, chipper vocals pitch-shi ed Promontory 7 and 9:30 PM; 10/31, 7 and SPACE, Evanston b Riviera Theatre, canceled wildly in every direction, and sentimen- Afro Fusion featuring DJ Dee Claudettes 10/10, 5 and 9:30 PM, Ace Hotel, Prairie Bethany Thomas 10/7, 8 PM, Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials tal acoustic strumming—the combination Money, DJ Three K 10/3, 4, 8:30 PM, City Winery b Roo op livestream at noonchorus. 9/27, 7:30 PM, City Winery, 6:30 and 9 PM, the Prom- Michael Steven Cohen 9/20, Paul Johnson, Victor R, DJ com b rescheduled b works especially well on “This Guitar,” ontory 2 PM; 9/27, 2 PM, Montrose Sheik 10/10, 7 PM, Le Noc- Suzanne Vega 10/7, 8 PM, lives- Lone Bellow 4/8/2021, 8 PM, with its “third-wave emo at the rave” vibe. Constantine Alexander Trio Saloon turne Chicago tream at seated.com A Thalia Hall, rescheduled, 17+ In 2014 Gossip Wolf covered the debut 9/29, 6 PM, Montrose Saloon Bernard Crump and friends Journeyman (Eric Clapton Wyatt Waddell 9/26, 1 PM, Memba 3/20/2021, 8 PM, Chop of Carmelo Española’s metal and punk Algoritmo 9/24, 7 PM, Fitz- 10/2, 6:30 and 9:30 PM, the tribute) 10/22-10/23, 7:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn F Shop, rescheduled, 18+ Gerald’s, Berwyn F Promontory City Winery, 10/23 sold out b Dan Whitaker & the Shine- Milky Chance 5/4/2021, zine, Distort/Delay , but since then he’s Ali & Ben 10/3, 3 PM, Reggies’ Dehd record release for Flow- Eugene Kaler and friends 9/23, benders 10/2, 7 PM, Montrose 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre, been so busy making killer music—with Roof Deck F er of Devotion 10/15, 8 PM, 6:30 PM, Colvin House b Saloon rescheduled; tickets pur- menacing industrial duo Ozzuario and Kris Allen 10/8, 8 PM, lives- livestream at audiotree.tv b Geordie Kelly & Eric Chial, Whitney 9/23, 8 PM; 9/30, chased for both the original electronic solo project Lnr Tmb—that he tream at citywinery.com b A Diff erent Vibe featuring DJ Geordie Kelly (solo) 9/22, 8 PM, livestream at nooncho- and previously rescheduled A.M. Drinkers 10/11, 6 PM, Machede, DJ Joe Kollege 6 PM, Montrose Saloon rus.com b dates will be honored b hasn’t published an issue in four years. Montrose Saloon 9/24, 5 PM, the Promontory Davy Knowles 10/2, 7:30 PM, Zachary Williams 10/23, Monophonics 4/3/2021, 8 PM, Last week Española shared the third Dis- Devendra Banhart, Todd Dahl- Rachel Drew Quartet 9/27, City Winery and 10/3, 4:30 4:30 and 7 PM, SPACE, Evan- Chop Shop, rescheduled, 18+ tort/Delay, which he’s selling in a print h o ff 9/30, 8 PM, livestream at 6 PM, Montrose Saloon and 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston ston, 7 PM sold out b Mountain Goats 5/17/2021- edition of 100 for six bucks a pop. It’s a noonchorus.com b Dry County Line 9/19, 6 PM, b Mike Zito, Ricky Liontones 5/18/2021, 8 PM, SPACE, Christy Bennett's Fumée Montrose Saloon Jon Langford & Sally Timms 9/19, 8 PM, Brauerhouse, Evanston, postponed until a quarantine-themed issue, with interviews Jazz 9/30, 6:30 PM, Colvin End of Summer Soiree hosted 10/28, 7 PM, FitzGerald’s, Lombard date to be determined b by Gossip Wolf faves Hide, Brazilian grind- House b by Ramonski Luv featuring Berwyn F Nowhere FM, Lotus Kid, Blind core ghouls Test, São Paulo postpunks Bluefecta featuring Toronzo Damon Williams, Carmichael Lisker Music Ensemble 9/25, Adam & the Federal League, Rakta, and more—plus action snaps of live Cannon, Sandra Antongiorgi, Musiclover, DJ Sam Chat- 6:30 and 9 PM; 10/2, 6:30 UPDATED Butchered 9/26, 8 PM, GMan Browns Crew, SistaStrings, man, DJ Cisco 9/19, 6:30 PM, and 9 PM; 10/9, 6:30 and 9 Tavern, canceled shows by the likes of Boy Harsher, Bloody- Jon Langford & Jean Cook, The Entrance, Harvey PM; 10/16, 6:30 and 9 PM; Batu, Hijo Prodigo 10/2, 10 PM, Portland Cello Project minded, and Mystifi er. Never has a mosh DJ Dripsweat, Harvey FitzGerald’s Drive-In Concert 10/23, 6:30 and 9 PM, Ace Smart Bar, postponed until a presents Purple Reign 9/29, pit looked so close but felt so far away. Dreaver, B. Keyz, DEATH, featuring Michael McDer- Hotel, Prairie Roo op date to be determined 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, Since late August, DJ DREAM has host- Jae ae, Avery R. Young, mott 9/26, 4 and 8 PM, Reuse Los Gallos 9/25, 8 PM, Mon- Sarah Brightman 10/15, 8 PM, canceled Ric Wilson 9/17, 7 PM, online Depot, Maywood, 8 PM is trose Saloon Chicago Theatre, canceled Pretty Reckless, Them Evils ed Vibes on Logan, an outdoor gathering fundraiser for Detroit Action, sold out b Lydia Loveless and friends Bringers, God Awful Small 10/5, 8:30 PM, Bottom that celebrates selectors who spin vinyl— Leaders Igniting Transfor- Harold Green & Flowers for record release show for Aff airs 11/8, 8 PM, GMan Lounge, postponed until a he got the idea from the Live on Logan mation, Restaurant Oppor- the Living 10/16, 7:15 PM, the Daughter 9/24, 8:30 PM, Tavern, date changed date to be determined, 17+ jazz series that Sergio Castro launched tunities Centers United, and Promontory b livestream at noonchorus. Caribou, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Snow Patrol 10/1/2021, 8 PM, Voces de la Frontera action; Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2020 com b 10/22, 7:30 PM, Riviera The- Fourth Presbyterian Church on his lawn. Vibes on Logan happens Sun- livestream link provided a er featuring Alison Brown, Yola, Lydia Loveless (solo) 10/8, atre, postponed until a date of Chicago, rescheduled b day a ernoons on the south half of Logan registration F b John Doe, Aaron Lee Tasjan, 8:30 PM; 10/22, 8:30 PM, to be determined, 18+ Tribute to Donald Byrd with Boulevard near Rockwell; masks and social JC Brooks 10/24, 8 PM, City Sierra Ferrell, Emmylou Har- livestream at noonchorus. Clannad 9/20/2021, 8 PM, Irish Kevin Toney, Azar Lawrence, distancing are required, and donations to Winery b ris, Buddy Miller, Amythyst com b American Heritage Center, Dominique Toney, Johnny Bumpus 9/26, 7 PM, Fitz- Kiah, War & Treaty, Steve Metropolis String Quartet rescheduled, 17+ Britt, and more 5/28/2021, the DJs are encouraged. “Making a com- Gerald’s, Berwyn F Earle & the Halfgrass Dukes, 10/14, 6:30 and 9 PM; 10/21, Louis Cole Big Band 4/22/2021, 7 and 9:30 PM, The Promon- munity around this event has been pret- Cannonball 9/25, 7 PM, Fitz- Chuck Prophet, and more 6:30 and 9 PM; 10/28, 8 PM, Chop Shop, resched- tory, rescheduled; 9:30 PM ty extraordinary,” DREAM says. “This is Gerald’s, Berwyn F 10/2-10/4, noon, livestream at 6:30 and 9 PM, Ace Hotel, uled, 18+ sold out b the fi h week, and the last weekend was Paul Cebar 10/18, 7 PM, hardlystrictlybluegrass.com Prairie Roo op Five Finger Death Punch 11/5, Velvet Caravan 10/15, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b F b Kevin Morby 9/17, 8 PM; 9/24, 6 PM, Allstate Arena, Rose- Tack Room, canceled incredible—it was 150 people.” DREAM Eric Chial 10/12, 6 PM, Mon- Anne Harris & Ernie Hen- 8 PM; 10/1, 8 PM; 10/8, 8 PM; mont, canceled Max Weinberg’s Jukebox hopes to keep the party going till mid- trose Saloon drickson 10/4, 7 PM, SPACE, 10/15, 8 PM, livestream at Fleetmac Wood presents 10/22, 8 PM, City Winery, October, or later if the weather stays nice. Chicago Honky Tonk DJs 9/27, Evanston b noonchorus.com b Rumours Rave 12/12, 9 PM, postponed until a date to be —JRNLG 3 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Honey Cellar 9/20, 7 PM, Mon- Jason Narducy 10/16, 7 PM, Chop Shop, canceled determined b F trose Saloon SPACE, Evanston b Freddy Jones Band 6/25/2021, Thom Yorke, Sarah Davachi Chicago Urban Pride Finale Jazz and the Black Experience Nasty Snacks 9/26, 4 PM, Fitz- 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, 10/6, 7:30 PM, Auditorium Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail celebration featuring DJ with Chicago Soul Spectacu- Gerald’s, Berwyn F rescheduled b Theatre, canceled v [email protected].

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325852_10_x_9.875.indd 1 9/1/20 4:56 PM ll SEPTEMBER - CHICAOREADER 41 Don’t miss the newest Chicago Reader “Best of” book, a collection of pieces OPINION from more than two decades of work by NATIONAL STAGE senior writer Mike Sula. Politics is wrestling The ﬁ ghts are fake but the folks pulling the strings behind the scenes are real. By L CG

Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal and depleting their pension funds savings defense attorney and co-owner of the newly to pay bondholders. Many experts are pre- independent Reader. dicting a new pandemic of homelessness if nothing is done. recall being devastated when I learned that In this environment, Congress returned the professional wrestling I watched as a from its summer vacation and chose not to Ikid was fake. How could combatants show help working people. This should not sur- such contempt for their opponents in the ring prise us. The major donors to Congress are and yet all work for the same company? doing just ﬁ ne. They were saved from any loss Years later, I felt similar distress when I by the CARES Act passed in March in which, learned that our national politics is as fake as the rapper Ice Cube recently explained it, as pro wrestling. On television, our leaders “[Congress] just pulled $3 trillion out their appear to do battle—they tear up speeches, ass and gave it to their friends.” In fact, the name call, and thump their chests. But be- amount injected into financial markets to hind closed doors, our two dominant political save their friends, i.e., donors, was closer to parties are working for the same group of $10 trillion when Federal Reserve credit is wealthy donors. added to U.S. Treasury allocation. As academic studies have shown, the wish- The country faces other crises. But our es of ordinary Americans have little or no leaders’ ability to even propose solutions is impact on the makings of federal government constrained by their allegiance to the donors. policy. (The single exception to this rule is The west coast of the United States is literally for issues that don’t impact the bottom line on ﬁ re due in large part to climate change. Yet of the investor class, such as reproductive neither party will take on fossil fuel produc- rights and identity politics; on these issues tion. Republicans deny the science surround- ordinary Americans can sometimes get their ing greenhouse gasses while the Democrats voices heard.) In other words, your opinion wish away emissions by supporting unprov- about most important issues carries zero en technologies to capture carbon emissions weight unless you are a major donor or a bun- from ongoing fossil fuel operations. Neither dler of donation checks. These truths help approach comes close to saving the planet. explain why the largest voting block in Amer- Most Americans would like to see an end ica—nearly half of eligible voters—choose to to foreign wars and a reduction in the mil- stay home on election day. itary budget that consumes over half our Since the coronavirus forced businesses country’s resources. But these voices cannot to shut down, our economy has lost 40 mil- be heard because wars are too profitable lion jobs, and millions more workers have for the investor class and because the arms had their wages cut or been forced to work manufacturers donate so generously to both part-time. Desperate to maintain their prof- political parties. While Democratic lawmak- its, many large corporations are planning ers like to tell viewers of cable news that additional massive layoffs. The temporary President Trump is a madman and a Russian relief provided to working people included agent, they overwhelmingly approved giving one-time $1,200 stimulus checks and $600 him $740.5 billion to wage wars throughout chicagoreader.com/sulabook unemployment supplements that expired the globe, although Congress has not de- this summer. Tens of millions of Americans clared war on another nation since 1942, and cannot pay their rent and are at risk of evic- despite the Constitution’s mandate that Con- tion. The lockdown has also forced U.S. cities gress must declare war before unleashing and states to cope with plunging sales and in- death and destruction on other nations. come tax revenue by slashing social services In 2019, the United States spent more 42 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll OPINION

money on our military than the next ten about the extent to which the epic battles claims a large cut of our health care dollars the party’s leaders successfully defeated an countries combined. A recent study at Brown between the Sheik and Dick the Bruiser were and imposes on us a nightmarish morass of attempt to include the overwhelmingly pop- University estimated more than 800,000 choreographed. But in our national politics, paperwork and bureaucracy. This useless ular proposal in the party’s platform. people dead and 37 million people displaced open debate has e ectively been squelched industry, which provides no actual care for There is one group of Americans, besides in U.S.-led wars since 2001, at a cost of $6.4 because it is too threatening to the donors. the sick, writes checks to lawmakers in both mega-donors, who have the power to get trillion. As long as the U.S. continues squan- Tens of millions of Americans have lost political parties and is thus protected in the their voices heard. They are professional dering its resources on war, it cannot solve their health insurance during the pandemic. halls of Congress and in the corporate press. athletes. Last month, Milwaukee Bucks other issues like the destruction of the envi- Yet little debate is permitted in the halls of Even in the Democratic Party, where players went on strike to protest the Kenosha ronment, crumbling infrastructure, access Congress or in the corporate press about 85 percent of Democratic voters support police shooting of Jacob Blake. There was to health care, and education. Yet, because national health coverage or Medicare for Medicare for All and where a candidate for reportedly signifi cant momentum among a of the war industry’s ownership of both All, something every other government in president ran on that platform and nearly certain group of players to walk away from political parties, no serious debate is even al- the civilized world provides to its people. won the nomination, debate has e ectively the season to protest police brutality and the lowed. Joe Biden has already assured war-in- Indeed, our neighbor to the north has been been suppressed. Some will recall that disproportionate use of deadly force by cops Bookends & Beginnings dustry donors that if he’s elected, there will far more successful at limiting the spread vice presidential nominee Senator Kamala against Black men and women. So serious be no major reductions in military spending. of COVID-19 than the U.S. due in large part Harris was once a cosponsor of Vermont was the threat posed by these players that 2020 The connection between military spend- to its universal health care system. As a Senator Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All former President Barack Obama was enlisted Armadillo's Pillow ing and the destruction of the planet could Canadian health o cial recently explained, bill in the Senate. But she quickly reversed to talk the players out of striking. While the not be more CHICAGOclear. The U.S. military is the “People INDIE [in Canada] don’t have to pay for a her position, presumably after hearing from NBA season was saved, the episode showed biggest polluter and consumer of fossil fuels test,” and they aren’t “worried that if they the major Democratic donors. This betrayal the potential power of professional athletes in the world. As Oregon battles the worst got sick they would not be able to get care.” of the people didn’t earn her many votes in who someday might join with the voiceless wildfires in livingBOOKSTORE memory, more than half Also, the structure MAP of the Canadian system the presidential primary. But it did earn her majority of Americans to demand some of Women & Children First of the state’s National Guard helicopters are makes it easy for o cials to cooperate and a spot on the party’s national ticket. At last the things the big-money political donors unavailable to help fi ght the fi res as they are consolidate their approach, both nationally month’s Democratic National Convention, won’t let us have; such as health care, jobs, Uncharted Booksdeployed in Afghanistan. and provincially. any discussion of Medicare for All was e ec- a living wage, the preservation of the planet The Mellow At least in professional wrestling, we were But to have an honest debate about health tively prohibited. Even Senator Sanders was earth, and an end to foreign wars. v allowed an open debate about the merits of care in the U.S. would threaten the profits not allowed to discuss his signature issue corporate ownership of the combatants and of a private health insurance industry that during his speech at the convention. Further, @GoodmanLen The Book Cellar Chicago Bike City Newsstand Bucket O'Blood * Unabridged Books and Records POSTERS ON Map Kibbitznest Books, Brews, & Blarney* RoscoeBooks

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July 27, 2020 For updated bookstore map, see chicagoreader.com/indiebookstores By Salem Collo-Julin and Amber Huﬀ

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: I’m a straight man who’s and told her that I couldn’t to leave them. Breakups been dating a woman for do this anymore. She started are the only aspect of our not quite four months. In to cry and begged me to romantic lives where the other the beginning things were give her a second chance. I person’s consent is irrelevant. light. But things started to wound up spending the rest The other person’s pain is get heavy quickly. Two weeks of the weekend at her place relevant, of course, and we in she revealed her very and agreed to stay in the should be as compassionate serious abandonment issues relationship. But I didn’t feel and considerate as possible and then began asking me good about it. When I ﬁ nally when ending a relationship. Reader 420 whether I really loved her and got back to my place, I felt (Unless we’re talking about Companion Book demanding reassurance that anxious, confused, hollow, dumping an abuser, in which A cannacopia of fun! I wasn’t going anywhere and and hopeless. I tried to end case safety and self-care are CBD / cannabis recipes, psychedelic she wouldn’t be “just a single things again a er speaking all that matters.) But we don’t d awings to color, word puzzles to stimulate GET INVOLVED! your b ain, growing tips, and more! chapter” in my life. A er a to my therapist, but she need someone’s consent to Print and digital versions available. month, I met her seven-year- won’t take no for an answer dump them.” old son, her parents, and her and constantly brings up the Voice that it’s over, PRES- chicagoreader.com/420book ex. Then we had a pregnancy promises I made about really SURE, and then refuse to get scare. She told me that if she loving her. I hate this and I drawn into negotiations about was pregnant she would keep feel terrible for her son. Any whether it’s over. It’s over. If it because then I would have thoughts on how to dismantle she needs to cry on someone’s to stay. That alarmed me. I this thing? Or do I just shoulder, she’ll have to call a voiced that we’d been dating need to run? —P friend. And if she brings up for a very short time and R E the promises you made after this wasn’t a good time for SSU she “revealed” her abandon- either of us to have a child. R E ment issues weeks into this She wasn’t pregnant, luckily. relationship, apologize for not Even before this incident, my A: As I explained to a reader being strong enough to resist body had started to manifest in a similar situation: “We her obvious—if possibly sub- signs of anxiety—upset need someone’s consent conscious—efforts to manip- stomach, sleepless nights, before we kiss them, suck ulate you. She shouldn’t have loss of appetite, etc. So, I them, fuck them, spank them, asked you to swear your undy- summoned all of my courage spoon them, marry them, ing love after you’d known collar them, etc. But we do each other for such a short

To advertise, call 312-392-2934 or email [email protected] advertise, call 312-392-2934 To (conversations like this are extremely diﬃ cult for me) not need someone’s consent time and you shouldn’t have

44 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll OPINION

made the promises you did. they respond by melting down new girlfriend is being cagey You failed her and yourself by and bringing up their aban- about where she’s going and not telling her it was too soon donment issues, well, they’ve who she’s with because she’s for that shit—too soon to say just demonstrated that they cheating on you. “I love you,” too soon to know aren’t someone you would The charitable read: Your whether she would be a chap- want a future with. new girlfriend is 31 years ter in your life, too soon to And finally, I’m #TeamAman- old, she was married for ten meet her son (!), her parents za on the issue of meeting a years, and you’ve been dat- (!!), and her ex (!!!). new partner’s children from ing for eight months. Math Demands for premature a previous relationship. You has never been my strong suit reassurances of everlasting should be seeing someone for but assuming her marriage love, like all demands for pre- at least six months to a year— didn’t end five minutes before mature commitments, are you should be well out of you met, TAG, your girlfriend intended to make exiting the the honeymoon phase if not married very young. Which relationship more difficult. quite into the farting-in-front- means she spent her entire Not for the person making the of-each-other phase—before adult life—most or all of her demands, of course; they’re being introduced to your new 20s and possibly a chunk of always free to go. They make partner’s kid(s). her teens—having to answer it more difficult for the per- to a spouse. She only recently son those demands are being : I’m a 32-year-old straight began to experience the kind made of to go. And while I’m man dating a 31-year-old of autonomy most of us get not calling your girlfriend an straight woman. We’ve to enjoy before we marry and abuser, demands for prema- been seeing each other for settle down (if we marry and ture commitments are often eight months and became settle down), TAG, and she red flags for abuse; being “Facebook offi cial” (if that’s may be reluctant to surrender asked to make a premature still a thing) in June. We that autonomy so shortly after commitment after a few are both in our fi rst serious achieving it. weeks or months—by moving relationship a er being She may also have different in together or adopting a dog divorced from relatively long ideas about what being Face- or (God forbid) getting mar- marriages. (Me: eight years, book official means. Does that ried—makes it infinitely hard- two kids. Her: ten years, no mean you’re monogamous? er for a person to leave once kids.) My question is when If it does, does she define the mask slips and they see does suspicion—suspicion of monogamy the same way you the abuser lurking behind it. cheating—become something do? Some other questions: TIRED OF DATING APPS? Again, I don’t think your girl- you should bring up? I tend Was going Facebook official friend is an abuser, but she to spill everything that’s your idea or her idea? Did Meet people the old-school way. weaponized her insecurities going on in my life, which you ask for a premature com- (“It’s nice to meet you, now let she says she appreciates but mitment? You’re only eight me tell you about my aban- isn’t used to doing. She’s a months in—is it possible you donment issues!”) to extract very independent person, involved your kids too soon? what amounts to premature which I’ve never experienced You obviously need to have commitment from you. And before. It’s refreshing to a conversation with your girl- she involved her son in that know that my partner has friend—if you can get her on effort, which is really uncon- her own friends, but there the phone—about your expec- scionable. And while that’s on are moments when I get tations and definitions. If you her, PRESSURE, not you, you stonewalled. Sometimes I expect her to let you know should’ve refused to meet her get vague answers or no where she is at all times and son so quickly and seen her answers about where she is who she’s with, TAG, make desire to introduce you to him or who she’s with. She o en that clear. But if that is what as a red flag. tells me she “accidentally” you expect, well, here’s hoping Learn the lessons, PRES- turned off her notifi cations. she dumps you. Because even SURE: When someone you’ve Sometimes she will say she’s if you lived together, even only recently started dating staying in and then I later if you were married, even says, “Will you love me for- fi nd out that she went out. if she wanted to spend the ever?,” the correct answer is Maybe I’m taking things way rest of her life with you, your never, “Of course I will!” The too seriously considering girlfriend would still be enti- correct answer is always, “I the amount of time we’ve tled to a little privacy and her think you’re a wonderful per- been together but I feel I autonomy. v son and I want to keep seeing have to take things seriously you, but we can’t know—at this since kids are involved. —T Send letters to mail@ stage—what the future will AG savagelove.net. Download bring.” If they respond by say- the Savage Lovecast at ing, “You know what? You’re A: The uncharitable read: savagelovecast.com. FREE at chicagoreader.com/matches right,” keep seeing them. 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Lords said Chicago Reader Pathology, at the Univ Assistant Professor. two papers published visualization to deploy building construction “I’m so over, heavy of IL at Chicago (UIC), Duties: teach, advise in one or more of the capital to generate profi t. projects and assisting metal.” Fun times with Delivered to located in a large students, conduct following journals and/ To apply, mail resume to Senior Engineers on Z. Wild, K. Rock, B. Your Home metropolitan area, is & publish research. or conferences: USENIX, L. Moore, PEAK6 Group, project related tasks. Spears. Where my MTV? seeking a full-time Required: PhD in OSDI, USENIX ATC, 141 W Jackson Blvd, Ste Duties include: Provide Congratulations to A Assistant Professor Marketing, outstanding ACM SOSP, or EuroSys. 500, Chicago, IL 60604. design support for Grande & L. GaGa as of Clinical Pathology/ research record, excellent For fullest consideration, technology systems such 2020 VMTV awards. Sub. Physician Surgeon to recommendations, please submit a CV, cover TransMarket as telecommunications/ To the Tube TV for MTV assist the department teaching ability. Send letter, and 3 letters of Operations LLC structured cabling, videos. Buy CD’s T-Shirts with the following CV, research papers & 2 reference to the attention seeks Self Clearing security and audiovisual - (BAND) & downloads. responsibilities: Assist reference letters to robin- of the Search Coordinator Associates for Chicago, systems, Product Thats cool! department teach, train young@northwestern. via email at steward@ IL to monitor the research and review, and advise medical edu. AA/EOE. uic.edu. The University daily margin process. Develop construction Love, students, residents/ of Illinois is an Equal Master’s in Finance/ phase drawings, Manage Dominick Defanso fellows, and graduate StoneX Group Inc. Opportunity, Affirmative related fi eld+2yrs exp OR drawing changes and Tracy Guns. students in Pathology. seeks a DevOps/ Action employer. Bachelor’s in Finance/ coordinate technology GNR/Aerosmith Monitor the training of Quality Assurance Lead Minorities, women, related field+5yrs exp systems components, 312-206-0867 junior pathologists in (Job Code 540697) veterans and individuals req’d. Req’d Skills/ Perform AutoCAD/ 773-323-5173 the specialty of surgical in Chicago, IL to lead with disabilities are Exp: VBA, Capital IQ, Revit systems design pathology. Provide software development encouraged to apply. executing spot FX and documentation. surgical pathology operations (DevOps) for The University of transactions, FX trading, Candidate must patient-directed clinical the company’s Quality Illinois may conduct currency swaps, currency have Bachelor’s in services. Process, Assurance pipeline for background checks options trades, Nostro Information Technology evaluate, and render our financial software on all job candidates account mgmt, creating and Management or diagnoses on tissues applications products upon acceptance of fin models, quantitative related, and at least six removed by surgical and services. Mail a contingent offer. modeling & risk mgmt, months experience using procedures. Conduct resume referencing Background checks Bloomberg. Background Autodesk. Job based in translational/clinical Job Code 540697 to will be performed in check req’d. Apply Chicago, IL. Send resume medical science Rosemary Carlson, compliance with the Fair online: http://www. 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University service as IL to develop, implement in Food Sci, Food Eng, & trading strategies in GENERAL Someone to help prepare assigned. Requires a & analyze enterprise-wide Chem or rel fl d & 10 yrs financial markets. Reqs for release and help MD degree or its foreign fi nancial planning design, exp in job offer or food Master’s or foreign equiv prepare manuscripts for IDM/EDM DEMOS publication. Be sincere. equivalent in Medicine strategies, policies ind incl ingred funct & in Finance or Financial WANTED. Contact: or Pathology, five years & campaigns. Reqs proc across numb of Engineering 1 yr post- info@prisonersadvocate. vegaanthony915@gmail. org of training in a Pathology Master’s or foreign equiv food categ, incl 10 yrs baccalaureate exp w/ com JOBS residency and fellowship in Finance, Accounting in food chem & food financial derivatives program, a valid Illinois Sci. or related field & 2 proc; starch chem; using trading. Exp must Male seeking a male for ADMINISTRATIVE medical license, and yrs exp as Accountant. stat des; tech mngnt of include work with q/ fun board certification or Reqs CPA license & natl accts in food ind & kdb+ & Python, building Looking for a special SALES & eligibility for certifi cation completion of CFA wrk w/ var food manuf valuation & risk models, RENTALS friend to get to know. MARKETING in Anatomic Pathology or Level I Exam. Exp must proc incl scale up from statistical methods, & Blk. 56 yo male seeking Clinical Pathology. Travel include data migration bench-top to manuf & machine learning. To Apartment for rent. 2 a male for fun and FOOD & DRINK may periodically be for accounting ERP underst of ingred perf in apply, mail resume to L. bedroom. Parking in- conversation. Race is not cluded, laundry, effi cient a factor. Lets talk! required for conferences sys. & exp. in NetSuite, var proc units. 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MESSAGES is an miss Don’t LEGAL NOTICES WANT TO ADD A LISTING TO OUR CLASSIFIEDS? ADULT SERVICES E-mail classiﬁ [email protected] with details 46 CHICA OREADER - SEPTEMBER ll the platform The Chicago Reader Guide to Business and Professional Services books home improvement

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