THIS WEEK CHICAGO READER | JANUARY | VOLUME NUMBER
T R IN THIS ISSUE - @ 12 News A case of disappearing Broken Nose the Bechdel Test has 36 Early Warnings Rescheduled hoops in gentrifying neighborhoods been tweaked concerts and other updated listings P P T B 15 Isaacs | Culture Tim Samuelson 36 Gossip Wolf Good Willsmith P E C K H Chicago’s fi rst and only cultural return with an acidfried live album E C S K FILM C L R H historian 25 Movies of Note Promising Cinchel drops an ambient cassette G D A H Young Woman is a candycoated that doubles as an art object M E P M killer of a fi lm Some Kind of Heaven and Bob Nanna’s mids band TDE K R INDOOR DELIGHTS C E B W 04 Snack Break How oyatsu makes is an unfi ltered look at life’s fi nal act Orwell releases an oddsandsods A E J L the Chicago winter bearable and The White Tiger off ers a salty compilation S W M D L G D I B J M S take on the ragstoriches story E A S N L FOOD & DRINK OPINION P M K W 06 Sula | Feature For the fi rst time 37 National Politics Who’s really L C S C -J S J R in the midwest a Wisconsin farmer controlling Trump’s impeachment F A M R brings rare and delicious heritage C E B N B hog breeds to market L C M D L C M C N L C J F S F J H I H B J C M J M K S K N D LM M T M J R N J N M O A P-A K S D S C S 16 Tu Stuff Rugmaking is ------experiencing a revival MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE D D J D 18 Book Drop Finding happiness in 26 Feature Chicago improvisers S M C J G empty bookshelves Tim Daisy and Matt Piet have SS P A T A 20 Chill Out A psychology responded to the challenges of 38 Savage Love Dan Savage off ers professor dismantles the “Laziness COVID by learning new ways to advice on when to disclose that S I D M N Lie” record you’re HIVpositive D D C W M P C Y NEWS & POLITICS 21 Turn Off Moving away from 30 Shows of Note A pandemic D 08 Joravsky | Politics John harsh lighting reduces anxiety and can’t stop the music and this week CLASSIFIEDS E A S L K Catanzara’s “apology” is classic improves coziness the Reader reviews current releases 39 Jobs M P D A A C MAGAdefl ection projection and 22 Shopping Spree Support local by Hospital Bracelet Wardruna 39 Apartments & Spaces S EC K K media bashing secondhand shoppers without the Third Patricia Brennan Shame 39 Marketplace An stepping foot outside and more ADVERTISING 10 Dukmasova | Housing -- @ eviction court judge slams the 35 Chicagoans of Note Steve O I S C moratorium as “utter idiocy” It’s not THEATER Walters artist and screen printer at T F T ’ - @ on the record 24 Plays to Watch Out For At Screwball Press V P S A M S D A N C R M T P S A R L M -H L S C S M W R THIS WEEK ON CHICAGOREADER.COM N A V M G -- - J L S B ------D C [email protected] -- CHICAGOREADERLC BP D R L T E R A- S V
READERINSTITUTEFORCOMMUNITY JOURNALISMINC C E R T C B D A C V F K L H J K -P D R Even more at risk Memorial The ‘big gap’ L S V Violence against people Alejandro Morales’s death Domestic violence survivors ------experiencing homelessness has doesn’t just leave a hole in battle to keep legally protected R ISSN - R LC advocates worried. Chicago’s DIY music scene. housing subsidies. S M S C IL --
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RACHEL HAWLEY While the water burbles, I rummage in the cab- inet for a blue ceramic teapot and two teacups mind. “Winter is coming,” I found myself pro- with saucers. Once the water is done boiling, claiming wildly to my husband, unabashed that I pour a bit into the teapot, swish it around to I sounded like an extra from Game of Thrones. warm the inside, then pour the plain water into “We have to strategize how we’re going to the teacups to warm them too. I fi sh a tea bag survive this season!” I began to research out of a drawer, something herbal and without snowshoeing. I bought wool socks. I vowed to ca eine so I don’t keep myself up worrying half haul myself out of the house every day to walk the night, and plunk it into the teapot, covering outside, no matter the weather. it with steaming water. I pour the hot water Enter: oyatsu. I say oyatsu because it is the from the teacups into the sink and use it to word that is most familiar to me. Oyatsu (some- scrub a few spots of grime away. times called osanji) is an Edo-period word re- The smell of peppermint and ginger winds ferring to what was then considered the eighth its way out of the pot. I place it and the teacups hour of the day, around 2-3 PM, when people onto a brightly patterned tray next to a plate would break to eat a light meal to tide them with whatever cookie I decided looked interest- over till dinner. As a child in Japan, I was raised ing at Devon Market. Last week it was a sleeve to follow this practice, eating breakfast, lunch, of fudge-covered Oreos, on sale near the en- and dinner without snacks in between, only the trance of the store, wedged between gallons of designated 3 PM break for something sweet. Of vegetable oil and boxes of Medjool dates. This INDOOR DELIGHTS course, the practice of taking a break midday week, it’s a sort of Ja a cake-digestive hybrid, for something hot to drink and delicious to nib- a crumbly, wheaty biscuit wearing a shiny cap ble is hardly unique to Japan. There is fi ka and of orange-flavored chocolate. The energetic, Giving myself a break: khavi and tea time and merienda. One winter sky-blue box informs me the cookies are Lithu- my mother went to Finland and came back with anian. I carry the tray into the living room and on oyatsu stories of a deeply snowy country where people meet my husband, who has just turned o his of all ages stopped what they were doing to own computer. We sit for 30 minutes and chat How a snacking ritual makes the Chicago winter bearable drink dark, bitter coffee and eat sugary pas- about nothing in particular, sipping tea and tries. She explained that it was a way to ride out eating cookies. At 4 PM, the half hour is done By N L C the frigid sunless winter, taking an intentional and my husband takes the tray into the kitchen break to eat something sweet and connect with (he handles cleanup). I return to my desk and he idea to return to oyatsu fi rst came in the need for continued social distancing would others. I was enchanted by this story as an resume working. September, when the weather was still curtail the indoor gatherings that I had always eight-year-old, and, recalling it nearly 20 years The ritual is soothing, nostalgic. It reminds Tgentle, fall just beginning to work itself found a necessary reprieve from the dark and later, I fi nd that I remain enchanted by the Finn- me to slow down, to be kind to myself, to untan- into a fantasia of crimson, gold, and auburn. cold. Glowy, long dinners held at a friend’s ish pastry hour. But more importantly, I found gle my being from the capitalist slurry of work- Because I’ve lived in Chicago for nearly 15 years table, peeling tangerines in my parents’ living myself inspired. life-work-life that the pandemic has wrought. now, I knew that winter, with its fl at white sky room, sitting in the half shell of a shrugged-o I never did take up snowshoeing. Instead, I’ve I give myself a break. I indulge in aimless con- and toothy chill, was not far o . Every year I down coat in the dusk of a movie theater; these instated a ritual tea time. A few minutes before versation. I savor something sweet. I pour out suffered through it alongside everyone else, were the things that made Chicago winter bear- 3 PM, I close the lid on my laptop and pad into the last of the tea, its soft steam warming my slipping on iced-over sidewalks and com- able. And they were precisely the things that the kitchen. I fi ll my small copper kettle, bought palms. v plaining bitterly that spring never arrived in a would likely be impossible. Panic and anxiety in the home goods aisle of Joong Boo Market on timely fashion. But this year, the pandemic and began to dance a two-step at the edge of my Kimball Avenue, and put it on the stove to boil. @nlcoomes
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ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 5 Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants FOOD & DRINK at chicagoreader.com/food.
FOOD FEATURE When the Mangalitsas meet the Red Wattles For the fi rst time in the midwest, a Wisconsin farmer brings rare (and delicious) heritage hog breeds to market. By M S
ig Red slumbers in a nest of wood chips, leaves, and straw. If he weren’t pushing B550 pounds, he’d look like a fuzzy dirigi- ble moored to the fl oor of his pen. Across the barn are the three Blonde sows that over the last four years helped him produce more than 60 pure-blooded Mangalitsa pigs, a friendly, wooly-haired, slow-growing Austro-Hungar- ian breed that had almost gone extinct in the early 90s. If you step over the boards into the pen that houses the sows Flu y, Big Sister, and Little by a good amount of oats and barley. “That galitsas from Europe, to Alabama, California, that’s Big Red—and together with the sows, Bossy, they’ll lurch to their trotters and come goes to the fat quality,” says Lee. “It makes for and Georgia—but mostly to a couple of breed- they produced about a dozen piglets. at you, softly squealing, nuzzling your jeans a really white, buttery fat.” And that’s precise- ers in Michigan, one of whom sold Lee his fi rst “They take a really long time to raise,” about and boots, and submitting to ear scratches ly the quality the Mangalitsa was historically three sows in 2016. There’s now an official 18 months to two years, Lee says, but they’re and pets. Meanwhile, their stablemates, fi ve raised for. U.S. Mangalitsa breeder’s organization that’s given indoor-outdoor access 24 hours a day. rust-colored sows of the Red Wattle breed, Earlier this month, Lee walked me out on beginning to document lineages as the breed Lee harvested his first Mangalitsas after 20 are barely distracted, committed to their long one of his pastures where his third-generation slowly disperses around the country. months, stored their meat in a chest freezer, afternoon nap. Mangalitsa and Red Wattles roamed, digging Lee grew up raising horses on his family’s and gradually started selling to neighbors, “The Mangalitsas are like Labradors, like deep holes in the earth and scratching their farm in Morton Grove, the Freedom Woods friends, and friends of friends. “Quite a few very friendly dogs,” says Russell Lee, who is itchy fl anks on tree trunks. When they saw us equestrian stable. While attending the Mil- Latinx, Asian—mostly Filipino—and Euro- back in Big Red’s pen, where he’s coaxed the coming, they trotted over in a slow wave, the waukee School of Engineering, he started pean customers come by the farm for meat,” Swallow Belly Mangalitsa boar to an upright Mangalitsas snouting around our pant legs building Russell Road Farm on the Pleasant he says. “Popular items are pork skins for position so he can scratch his back. “The Red and the Wattles tugging at our bootlaces. Prairie property that his family purchased a chicharrones, shoulder for carnitas, belly, and Wattle is a more docile pig, easygoing, laid I wrote about Mangalitsas back in 2009, few years before. He didn’t expect to become heads. Europeans typically come for the Man- back. It’s not attention-seeking, though it does when they were making a comeback among a serious heritage hog farmer—he operates a galitsa fats, hocks, soup bones, organs.” like to get pets or belly rubs. The Mangalitsa is chefs and Slow Food partisans. A Washington soil and sustainable material recycling compa- About six months after he started with kind of a needier pig.” state fi nancial analyst had imported a herd of ny—but he thought he could breed and raise a the Mangalitsas, he got into Red Wattles, Lee is a 35-year-old mechanical engineer 25 from Austria at tremendous expense and few high-value animals and sell their meat as named for the fatty appendages that dangle and farmer who owns Russell Road Farm in was slowly propagating feeder pigs, while the a way to pay the bills on the farm. He raises from their jowls, a more muscular breed that Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, just south of food press salivated over their deep red pork, lambs, goats, and chickens too—all of which produces dark, beefy, but tender pork. He Kenosha. For the past five years he’s been densely marbled with creamy fat. But since he help keep the pastures in good health. He raised 50 pigs total in 2020, and as word got slowly growing a herd of heritage breed swine controlled all the breeding stock, their genetic initially considered himself a hobby farmer, around, “I was selling to some di erent little on about 60 acres of open pasture, where they diversity in the United States was limited. but now that he’s putting in 60 to 80 hours a groups of foodie type people from Chicago and forage on native plants, roots, and the occa- Since then, there have been four more im- week—not so much anymore. Madison,” he says. “People will travel for that sional burrowing critter—and supplemented ports of Blonde, Red, and Swallow Belly Man- A friend had her own Mangalitsa boar— stu .” 6 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll FOOD & DRINK Ain’t it time? By Saunté Harden-Tate
I was asked… Time to grieve… Time to be blunt… What does revolution feel Time to stay… Time for authenticity… like to you…? Time to leave… I stared at that question… Time to focus… Time for justice… waiting for a clear image… Time to be loud… Time for peace… And all I could see were Time to love ourselves Time for hate… these words Time to be black, safe, TO FINALLY CEASE! and proud… AIN’T IT TIME?! Time to be still… Ain’t it time….? Time to live… Time to realize… Ain’t it time… Time to right wrongs… Time for strength… Time that we realize… Time to forgive… Time for allies… Time to heal… Time to accept Time to stand… Time to recognize…. Time to let go… Time to kneel… Time to grow… Time to be open… Time for reform… Time to see… Time to grow… Time for repeal… Time to understand Time for deep thought… Time for humanity… AIN’T IT Time…? Time for refl ection… Time to acknowledge pain Time to realize… Time for safety… Time to apologize… Time to be quiet… Time for protection… Time to unite… Time to strategize… Time to be wise! Time to give… Ain’t it time…? Time to breathe… Time to receive… Time to realize… Time to hear…. Time to question… THE REVOLUTION…is Time to stand… Time to believe… happening… Time to conquer fear. Time for US… BUT NOT WHAT’S Time to love… Time for inclusivity, TELEVISED!
Le : Friendly, fuzzy Mangalitsas; above: Red Wattle piglets MIKE SULA NORBERT RUM
Saunté Harden-Tate (Sahn-tay) is a Black American Chicago Westside Native, creative writer, Looking ahead to this year he decided walk-in freezer on the farm to handle meat Advocate, Community Educator, proud mother of two, and wife. With a deep-rooted passion for to go bigger, planning on 100-120 pigs, and he’d hoped chefs would take off his hands healing, advocating, and educating the community on trauma, Saunté teaches the community about Sexual abuse, Sexual violence, body safety, and the rights of survivors as a Community Educator. introducing some more conventional Berk- when it was fresh from slaughter. He contin- Saunté has an affi nity for uplifting and educating the community on the traumas and struggles that shire-Duroc crosses for customers leery of ued to sell directly to customers on the farm, disproportionately affect the black community. the higher fat heritage breeds. He was hoping and in mid-November, Village Farmstand Poem curated by Nikki Patin: Featured in The Guardian, Chicago Tribune, HBO’s Def Poetry Jam to build a wholesale business selling pork to became the fi rst retail outlet in the midwest and on international television and radio, writer, producer, designer and survivor Nikki Patin has been advocating, performing and educating for 20 years. She has performed at the National Black restaurants when the pandemic hit. That’s to sell Mangalitsa and Red Wattle pork. Cur- Theater in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum, the Goodman Theater, EXPO Chicago and many other spaces when he connected with Matt Wechsler, who rently that’s ground pork, chops, steaks, and throughout the US, New Zealand and Australia. Nikki Patin holds an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction opened Evanston’s Village Farmstand last fall roasts, sold separately or in $85 pork bundles. from the University of Southern Maine. Patin is the Community Engagement Director for the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation and the founder and Executive Producer of Surviving the Mic, to help small farmers operating with sustain- But Lee and Wechsler are developing a line of a survivor-led organization that crafts brave and affi rming space for survivors of sexual trauma. Her able regenerative practices get their produce sausage and naturally cured hams and bacon work can be found at nikkipatin.com. to a retail market. Sustainable practices that they hope will be ready for purchase A biweekly series curated by the Chicago Reader and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation. include, among other things: no pesticides, starting in February. no GMOs, and the use of methods that can Even at retail, Mangalitsa and Red Wattle reverse climate change by improving the soil. pork sells at a premium (at Village Farmstand, “I just noticed how incredibly di cult it is to two Red Wattle chops go for $16.50, four get started as a small farm, and make ends Mangalitsa chops, $18.50). The animals grow Free online events with the Poetry Foundation meet, and create a business out of it in a world slow and are expensive to raise, but the pork Event information and registration at PoetryFoundation.org/Events of agricultural consolidation,” says Wechsler, has come a long way from its fetishized luxury Drinking Gourd Chapbook Launch: a filmmaker who’s made two documentaries status. Darrel Alejandro Holnes on sustainable agriculture. Last August he And this year, with the help of one of the Launching the winning chapbook Migrant Psalms, teamed up with Marty Travis of downstate’s Blonde sows and Thor, the gargantuan Red which includes an introduction by Ed Roberson. Spence Farm and head of a network of small Wattle boar that resides a few pens away Wednesday, January 27, 2021, 7:00 PM farmers looking for new markets after the from Big Red, “we’ll have our fi rst Red Wat- pandemic shut down the restaurant industry. tle-Mangalitsa hybrids,” Lee says. “The meat Open Door Reading Series: Kristy Bowen, Between Village Farmstand’s retail operation is supposed to be really red, a little meatier, laaura goldstein, Dominique Dusek & Damon Locks and CSA programs managed by organizations but still maintaining the quality of fat of the Highlighting Chicago’s outstanding writers. like the Urban Canopy and Star Farm, Travis’s Mangalitsa. We will have some of that come Tuesday, February 9, 2021, 7:00 PM network saw a 39 percent increase in sales in March, so we shall see.” v 2020 over the previous year. Meanwhile, Lee built a 150-square-foot @MikeSula ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 7 NEWS & POLITICS
“There was very little destruction of property.” favorite target: the media. Uh huh. Just ask Senator Bill Cassidy, who took “It’s a whole side of the argument and, this photo of the riot’s a ermath. BILL CASSIDY primarily, your profession is at the root of it . . . basically championing Joe Biden the whole ican fl ag. I support my president. And the 2nd time.” Amendment.” OK, where to start . . . As a lefty with Libertarian impulses, I sup- Number one, there was looting, and de- port Catanzara’s right to hold that sign. Even struction, and violence. as I condemn him for vowing to oust from the Number two, I realize Catanzara’s not a union any member who takes a knee in sympa- detective, but he has a curious attitude toward thy with Black Lives Matter protesters. evidence. There’s not a shred of evidence to Liberty for me but not for thee being the even remotely suggest, as he put it, that “an MAGA philosophy regarding free expression. election was stolen” or that MAGA’s been Back to Catanzara’s apology . . . “ignored.” As you know, on January 6 hundreds of And their clearly fabricated accusations— Trump supporters—fired up by a speech championed by Trump—have been investi- from Trump—marched to the Capitol, broke gated by lawyers, judges, and election bureau- through police lines, ransacked congressional crats all over the country. o ces, smashed windows, hit one cop over the Catanzara seems to believe that if someone head with a hockey stick, apparently beat an- says something, it must be true, even if there other cop to death with a fi re extinguisher, and is no evidence to support it. Otherwise, why threatened to kidnap and/or murder Nancy would they say it? Pelosi and Mike Pence. Good thing he wasn’t in charge of the Jussie In the aftermath, Catanzara minimized the Smollett investigation. He’d still be out there siege as something like a harmless romp by looking for the guys who attacked Smollett. aggrieved citizens, rightfully upset at the in- Now here’s a question: What’s more delu- justice they have su ered. sional—MAGA’s insistence that the election Let’s quote Mr. Catanzara himself from an was stolen, or Jussie’s story about the mugger POLITICS interview he gave with Chip Mitchell from in the MAGA hat? WBEZ on the evening of the riot. Once Mitchell released his story on WBEZ, “There was no looting, there was very little the shit hit the fan, leaving Catanzara with the Self-pity party destruction of property. . . . It was a bunch of same challenge Congresswoman Miller faced: pissed-o people that feel an election was sto- how to get out of a bad situation without actu- John Catanzara’s “apology” is classic MAGA—defl ection, projection, len, somehow, some way.” ally saying he did anything bad. and media bashing. And . . . His response was his own version of the “I don’t have any doubt that something dog-ate-my-homework explanation. Bad By B J shady happened in this election,” he said. timing. “You’re not going to convince me that that He claimed he didn’t know the full extent many people voted for Joe Biden. Never for of the damage at the Capitol when Mitchell t has been a bad month for apologies from downstate Illinois. She got into hot water for the rest of my life will you ever convince me of called. Had Mitchell called only a few hours MAGA, as no one is as bad at apologies as uttering the three words that even a MAGA that. But, again, it still comes down to proof.” later, he’d have a di erent response. In other IMAGA. person should know enough not to say . . . And . . . words, It’s Chip Mitchell’s fault! Generally, a MAGA apology consists of “Hitler was right.” “Evidence matters . . . until that appears, Catanzara also said: “I was in no way con- misdirection, defl ection, projection, and self- After several days of denunciations from shame on them for what they did, but it was doning the violence in D.C. I certainly would pity—lots of self-pity. people throughout the civilized world, Mill- out of frustration. There’s no fights. There’s never justify any attacks on citizens, democra- No one wallows in self-pity as much as er grudgingly stitched together a typically no, obviously, violence in this crowd. They cy, or law enforcement.” MAGA, just as no one has so little reason to self-pitying statement where she more or less pushed past security and made their way to Well, actually, he was doing just that. feel so sorry for themselves. apologized for saying “Hitler was right” even the Senate chamber. Did they destroy any- In that original interview with Mitchell, Think about it: they never actually won as she made it clear that she still sorta sub- thing when they were there? No.” Catanzara sounded less like a law-and-order more votes in any presidential election, and scribed to that general notion. And . . . policeman and more like a bleeding-heart con- yet for the better part of the last four years, Now I feel compelled to consider the apol- “They’re individuals,” he said. “They get to servative, justifying the lawlessness of rioters they’ve controlled the White House, the Sen- ogy of John Catanzara, president of the Fra- do what they want. Again, they were voicing on the grounds that they felt overlooked and ate, and the Supreme Court. Not to mention a ternal Order of Police Lodge 7, one of the most frustration. They’re entitled to voice their maligned. television network, several newspapers, and prominent Trump supporters in Chicago. frustration. They clearly have been ignored Too bad Catanzara can’t fi nd such empathy too many conservative radio outlets to count. Catanzara loves Trump so much that he and they’re still being ignored as if they’re for people in low-income areas of Chicago’s Last week, I analyzed the so-called apolo- went so far as to post on social media a picture lunatics and treasonous now, which is beyond west and south sides. v gy of Congresswoman Mary Miller, a newly of himself in police uniform holding a sign that stupid.” elected Republican from the 15th district in said: “I stand for the anthem. I love the Amer- And fi nally, the obligatory shot at MAGA’s @bennyjshow 8 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll NEWS & POLITICS
HOUSING recordings they’re allowed to do without After finally getting the right information, explicit guidance from the chief judge,” says the landlord’s lawyer was able to transition Malcolm Rich, director of the Appleseed Fund to the other Zoom call; the tenant—who faced ‘Utter idiocy’ and the Chicago Council of Lawyers. Indeed, eviction for allegedly not letting the landlord legal aid attorneys told the Reader that when into his unit to make repairs—wasn’t. He had Cook County let online eviction court go unrecorded for six months. they’ve asked judges to record proceedings in asked Denmark if he could get the hearing recent months—either with Zoom’s built-in rescheduled because 45 minutes after he got By M D recording feature, or using the courtroom on the call his work break had run out, but she equipment if the judge or clerk was logging in refused. Even though he’d shown up to court from the courtroom—they’ve been told that on time and ready to present his side of the t was close to 11 AM on Tuesday, January 5, dismissed are further undermined by the fact it’s not possible. story, the case was decided without him and when Cook County circuit court Judge Mar- that 80 percent of them never have a lawyer “We ended up hiring court reporters,” in the landlord’s favor. Itin Moltz said in open court that he thought (compared to 80 percent of landlords who says Michelle Gilbert, legal director at the In recent years public awareness about Governor J.B. Pritzker’s eviction moratorium do). Though litigants can fi le appeals, with- Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, elected Cook County judges has been stimu- is “utter idiocy.” According to an attorney out a transcript of what happened their only recalling a contentious case last fall. Her cli- lated by the judicial election guides compiled representing a property owner, the eviction option to substantiate their arguments would ents ultimately settled with the landlord but by Injustice Watch and civic groups. Histori- case before Moltz, which had been filed in be with a “bystander a davit,” a statement “there were legal issues raised that we would cally, retention has been a breeze for judges, October, was a “post-foreclosure matter.” The given by someone who happened to be in have appealed for sure if we hadn’t settled,” most of whom work in obscurity and can former owners who had lost their house had court that day and overheard the proceed- she says. “We were denied a jury, we were de- easily count on 60 percent of voters choosing allegedly illegally reentered it. The new own- ings. Such affidavits are difficult to obtain, nied discovery—these were really important to keep them on the bench at every election. ers, Kirkland Group—a Tennessee-based real and unlike actual transcripts their accuracy issues we would have appealed.” The expense Though that’s still true for most of the coun- estate investment fi rm—were trying to get an can be challenged. of private court reporters is out of reach for ty’s 238 elected “circuit” judges, criminal eviction order from the judge, but since this The fi ght to put eviction court on the record the typical eviction court litigant—wheth- justice reform advocates have succeeded in a was a residential case, Moltz was bound by the stretches back to more than five years ago, er a low-income tenant or a mom-and-pop few recent campaigns to unseat judges with moratorium. when a coalition of legal aid organizations, landlord. unsavory histories of prejudiced statements, “I understand they’re squatters and they’re tenant advocacy groups, and court watch- Every day in eviction court a few judges inappropriate behavior, and appellate court owed no duty of any kind,” Moltz told Kirk- dogs led by the Chicago Appleseed Center for also handle more than one courtroom’s worth reversals. Though the county’s 141 “associ- land’s attorney Aaron Nevel in a kind and sym- Fair Courts mounted a campaign to get the of calls. The day he slammed the eviction ate” judges are elected by the circuit judges pathetic tone. He apologized that he couldn’t state supreme court to fund installation of moratorium as “idiocy,” Moltz oversaw cases (and can’t preside over felony cases), records order the eviction. “In a case with squatters recording equipment in these courtrooms. assigned to two courtrooms; a few days be- about their courtroom actions are still we should be able to get them out right away.” The funding was secured in 2019 and, after fore that he had handled fi ve courtrooms. In important. Nevel was perplexed that the people couldn’t another four months to get the recorders up a statement, the chief judge’s o ce cited va- “We want court reporting or court record- be put out simply for the crime of breaking and running, eviction court was finally on cancies, COVID-19, and overlapping vacations ing in order to provide for accountability in and entering. However, he had no evidence the record for the fi rst time since 2003. Five and sick days as reasons for the short sta ng. every Cook County courtroom,” says Rich. It that they were engaged in any illegal or dan- months later the pandemic hit. Though resi- “When a single judge handles two Zoom would be di cult to scrutinize the qualifi ca- gerous activity on the premises—something dential evictions have ground to a near-halt, courtrooms, the Zoom process is extremely tions and behavior of judges whose words and he’d need to prove for an emergency exception landlords are still fi ling cases and claiming adaptable and can accommodate the extra actions in open court are never on the record to the moratorium. emergencies to get exceptions to the mora- cases,” a spokeswoman wrote. But judges and whose decisions aren’t regularly subject To a tenant or anyone advocating for ten- torium. Commercial evictions, which aren’t clearly struggle with the technical challenges to appellate court review. ants in eviction court, these kinds of state- covered by the moratorium, resumed in July. of online court, too. Some keep litigants in This week, after receiving the Coalition’s ments by a judge may sound biased. Especial- With court held on Zoom, proceedings are the Zoom waiting room until ready for their letter and questions from the Reader, Chief ly if a tenant is accused of being a squatter. easier than ever to record, but they haven’t case—something that isn’t explained ahead Judge Evans’s o ce confi rmed that all evic- Moltz hadn’t asked Nevel to provide any proof been. of time, making open court functionally tion court proceedings are to be recorded that his claims were true. In addition to o¡ er- “We are not only no closer to our initial closed and leaving people unsure if they’re via Zoom. In addition, court reporters were ing his sympathies, Moltz also warmly told goal of ensuring that all eviction proceedings in the right place. At least one judge, David assigned to some of the Chicago eviction Nevel to pass on a greeting to his father, an- are recorded, we have lost what little progress Skryd, habitually has his camera o¡ . courtrooms. “At the onset of the pandemic, other local attorney. If a litigant wanted their we made last year,” the Coalition to Ensure a On January 5, Judge Sondra Denmark kept the court’s digital recording system was not case transferred to a di¡ erent judge because Court Record—a group of seven legal aid or- litigants who were supposed to be in another available because it was not possible for the she felt she couldn’t get a fair hearing from ganizations and the Appleseed Center—wrote Zoom room waiting for more than 30 minutes personnel who handled digital recording to Moltz, or if she wanted to appeal his decision in a letter to Cook County chief judge Timothy before she finally helped figure out where operate it from home,” a spokeswoman for in her case, it would be nearly impossible to Evans last week. They asked Evans to “ensure the case was supposed to be and gave them Evans wrote in a statement explaining the six- do so because none of what happened in the that all parties to current and future eviction the right numbers to dial. This was despite month absence of recording. “When it came to courtroom that day had been recorded. court proceedings in Cook County have a the fact that she had instructed them at a the court’s attention that recording of evic- As the Reader has reported in the past, court record available to them.” previous court date to get her attention and tion proceedings had not resumed, the court eviction court outcomes usually favor land- The Illinois Supreme Court issued guid- ask for the correct Zoom coordinates at the decided that recording should resume.” v lords: more often than not when a case is fi led ance in March that specifi cally states Zoom beginning of her call that day. The landlord’s it ends with a judge’s order for the tenants proceedings can be recorded by judges lawyer attempted to do this several times, but @mdoukmas to clear out. Tenants’ odds of getting cases and clerks. But they are “unlikely to do the Denmark reprimanded her for interrupting. 10 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 11 NEWS & POLITICS
Katiana Edwards (le ) with Maya Wallace at the doing to Black people, it does scare us.” She Mason Park basketball court in Evanston continued. “Just the looks that they give us ALISON SALDANHA just constantly riding around. They’re pur- posely trying to like, get us out of the area.” around colorful play structures. A handful of This is a common experience for Black adult caregivers minded them, occasionally people on the north side, where Chicago Park glancing in the direction of the noise. District data shows there are fewer basketball Fitted with nine rims, the sprawling Mason rims than the south and west sides of the city. Park basketball court is an oasis. Not many Others I interviewed similarly described parks have enough hoops for girls to play feeling unwelcome when they traveled to without having to ask boys to share, Katiana gentrified, white neighborhoods to play said. The challenge of fi nding a place to play basketball. Their feelings of exclusion are was a problem even before the COVID-19 pan- not unfounded. An analysis of Chicago Park demic closed many facilities. District data obtained through Freedom of The girls picked a hoop closer to the shade Information Act requests shows that the great of the maple trees near the soccer fi eld. They majority of basketball courts removed over circled around and divided themselves into the last decade were located in the north and teams. Once the final player arrived with a near west sides of the city, in areas that have new battery-powered black portable speaker, rapidly gentrifi ed. Katiana set it on the ground behind the pole anchoring the rim. As the clear beats and verseeing 8,800 acres of park space, the synth of rapper Moneybagg Yo’s summer hit Chicago Park District is the largest mu- “Said Sum” drifted over the court, a sense of Onicipal park manager in the United States. relief took hold and the girls started to play Between 2010 and 2020, the park district with a little bounce in their step. Passersby, decommissioned 260 sports amenities across mostly young boys and men, stopped to watch. city parks, according to data received through NEWS When the city started to reopen in June, a FOIA request. Basketball courts, along with Katiana managed to find a few basketball tennis courts, made up the largest numbers of courts closer to home, in other neighborhoods decommissions, and the neighborhoods from A case of disappearing hoops in on the city’s north side. But at these parks she which both were removed seem to have sig- doesn’t feel welcome. For example, she often nifi cance in a city where virtually every aspect fi nds residents walking their dogs by the park, of public policy and daily life is infused with a gentrifying neighborhoods simply staring at her. “Especially if I’m by legacy of segregation and inequality. myself. It’s kind of weird because I’m Black,” Basketball courts and backboards were In the last decade the Chicago Park District has removed 12 of 16 basketball she said. “And I’m playing basketball in a pre- removed primarily in gentrifying neigh- courts from neighborhoods that have doubled and tripled in value, further dominantly white area.” borhoods where in many cases the white marginalizing communities facing displacement. Sometimes when Katiana and her friends population is increasing and Black population go to play basketball in these predominantly is decreasing. That means it’s often hard for By A S white neighborhoods, they find the hoops people on the north side, like Katiana, to fi nd removed the next day, she said. “See, we used a place to play basketball. Meanwhile people to have basketball runs, so like a lot of people on the south and west sides have less access n a hot sunny Saturday in August, end of the court, trying hard to minimize the would show up to the parks and we would to tennis. (There are also basketball courts 15-year-old Katiana Edwards, dressed distortion it spat out instead of tunes. play games like a tournament. And I think the and tennis courts at schools and on private in a gray sports bra, matching shorts, That peak summer noon, the sun bore police or somebody in the area reported that property, but these are often inaccessible to and white shoes, readied herself for down on the asphalt painted green and red and the next day the hoops were gone. So ev- neighborhood residents. The park district a game of basketball. With no access with white lines to mark the three-point erybody had to either stop playing basketball data doesn’t include these facilities, though Oto a court within a mile radius of her home in arc, the foul line, the half-court line, and the or fi nd another place to go to play,” she said. sources I spoke to say the same trends follow West Rogers Park, Katiana had to hop into her boundaries. Lush green maple trees threw Other times, the police just show up, casu- here too.) father Ralph’s gray Jeep Cherokee, driving past little shadows along the edges. Four tall lamp ally driving up and down the street as the kids In the last decade, 16 basketball courts and Chicago’s northern boundary to Mason Park in posts dotted the midline of the playing fi eld. try to play a game. “Like when we fi rst show 42 backboards have been removed from Chi- Evanston, for nearly four miles to get here. The Beyond the manicured hedgerow on the north up, they’re not there. And then after a couple, cago parks. Twelve of the 16 courts were re- point guard joined her friends Dafi na Ukaj and end near Church Street, large three-storied like 20 minutes, they’ll show up and they’ll moved in Rogers Park, Albany Park, the Near Maya Wallace and others, and waited for a few houses with red brick walls and gray roof just be sitting in the area and hanging out,” West Side, East Garfi eld Park, Bronzeville, and more to arrive from the Evanston Township tiles peeked overhead, their window sills she told me. “I wouldn’t say we were neces- West Town. Prices of single family homes in High School basketball team. The girls huddled and frames freshly painted white. On the sarily confronted, but like, we were scared o¢ . these neighborhoods have doubled and tri- around to pick some music on a phone. Katiana southeast end, a few feet away from the din of Just from the police just riding around like pled since 2000, the steepest rises among all fi ddled with an old, black loudspeaker plugged the sound system, little children ran around constantly back and forth, back and forth—it neighborhoods in Cook County, according to into a power outlet at a fi eldhouse on the east a playlot, swinging, sliding, and crawling scares us. ’Cause knowing what the police are an analysis of DePaul University’s House Price 12 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll NEWS & POLITICS
Index for the region. Another court was re- closure. The police have shared information man James Cappleman, then freshly elected rates are likely to be higher than the city’s moved from Washington Park, adjacent to the on two 911 calls reported at Willye B. White to lead the 46th Ward that covers Uptown, overall crime rate; this is also true of other high-profile Hyde Park neighborhood, one- park in 2017: one was a complaint about males removed the basketball hoops at Broncho public spaces that attract crowds, like shop- time home to the Obamas and former Mayor gambling at the recreational center, and an- Billy Park for similar reasons. “The police ping malls. On August 18, the park district Harold Washington among others. Housing other call about a 24-year-old male playing recommended this change to help alleviate agreed to respond to a set of questions I sent a prices here grew over 75 percent, the index basketball with a broken ankle. accelerated gang activity in the area,” Cap- week before on removing facilities. I have yet showed. With gentrification often comes Meanwhile, between 2010 and 2020 the pleman wrote in a ward newsletter then. He to receive their responses. tensions around class and race, and the infl ux park district removed 64 tennis courts across added he was working with youth programs In April, a resident of Rogers Park posted a of higher-income residents in these parts has the city, mostly from Black and Brown neigh- to place the removed hoops at two other picture of fi ve Black minors on the neighbor- not led to general, communal prosperity. borhoods on the south and west sides. Inevita- neighborhood parks—Clarendon and Chase— hood social networking app Nextdoor. The A median 44 percent of renters in these bly, these decisions, however innocuous they or a local alternative high school and Boys & picture showed the children spaced from each seven neighborhoods live below the poverty may truly be, reinforce the stereotypes asso- Girls club. The news led to a heated discussion other around a basketball backboard rim on line, often in unaffordable units as rents ciated with tennis as a predominantly white, in the comments section of hyperlocal news private property near Touhy Park. The post rise, according to an analysis of data from exclusive sport. When contrasted with the site Uptown Update. complained the children were not practicing the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul data on deactivated basketball courts, their “We aren’t talking about bored youths—we social distancing. “Unless you all live togeth- University. In fact, the share of renters below racial underpinnings become starker. are talking about people dealing drugs and er THIS is not social distancing,” it read. the poverty line now living in unaffordable shooting and killing people. Do I want this be- Some residents reacted to the post angrily, housing in these neighborhoods has grown month before the COVID-19 shutdown, havior o¤ my block at the cost of some hoops? recommending the user call the police next 6.3 percentage points between 2012-2014 and during the harshest weeks of winter, Chi- YES! Do I care if teenagers have to fi nd anoth- time; some others pointed out the picture 2015-2017. Acago, largely considered the “Mecca” of er basketball hoop? No. I don’t want people doesn’t seem to present any danger. A few Residents and experts say it seems clear the sport, hosted the NBA All-Star game. The get killed [sic] in front of my home anymore. suggested she could have politely asked them that basketball courts are being removed city’s legacy begins with one of the country’s This is my home and I feel like I have much to disperse. A couple called the children in because some residents—perhaps newer, pre- first all-Black basketball teams, the Harlem more a right to not worry about getting shot the picture “assholes” and “morons.” Similar dominantly white ones—feel threatened when Globetrotters, and extends to producing some than the youth do to play basketball. Call me exchanges marked Nextdoor conversations they see Black people hanging out. The o cial of the fi nest NBA players, from Isiah Thomas self-serving but until you live here with kids around complaints about loud music, tran- response on why these courts are deactivated, and Tim Hardaway of the old guard, to Dwyane you don’t know how you would feel,” read one sitional housing, or long lines outside Jew- however, is harder to fi nd. I checked the min- Wade and Anthony Davis of the last decade. comment from 2011. el-Osco fi lled with the “food-stamp crowd.” utes and agendas of the park district’s board The annual multimillion dollar exhibition Cappleman restored the Broncho hoops a Bonita Nwachukwu, 33, a new resident meetings, available online for the last seven event took place at the United Center, where few months later as it continued to garner of south Evanston and former Rogers Park years, to see if there had been any discussion Michael Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to six criticism from his constituents. An investi- neighbor, asked the chat forum why the police on the closure of basketball courts at these NBA championships in the 90s. About two gation by the Reader’s Mick Dumke found no should be called on minors standing around parks, but could fi nd none. miles away, at Roberto Clemente Park in the connection between basketball and reported a backboard rim on private property. When Based on data I received through an earlier gentrifying West Town neighborhood, the crime in the area around Broncho Billy. “The white people move to the area, the neighbor- FOIA request, I trained my search on four basketball court has been removed. bottom line: if there’s a connection between hood has to change to accommodate the way courts that the park district provided details Alderman Daniel La Spata of the First the basketball hoops and neighborhood they would like the place to be, she observed. on the year of closure: Willye B. White basket- Ward, where the park is located, said public crime, the numbers don’t show it,” wrote “I guarantee you that the bad things that ball court in Rogers Park, Jane Addams court safety is often used as a reason for deactivat- Dumke, after analyzing crime reports from have been going on in those neighborhoods, in the Near West Side, and the court at Gately ing basketball courts. La Spata previously the area before and after the hoops were law-abiding, long-time residents have wanted Park in the less gentrifi ed Pullman neighbor- worked as a planning and policy associate for removed. those things to change for years,” she said. hood on the south side along with Edgebrook Friends of the Parks, a 46-year-old nonprofi t In 2016, Carol Quinlan, a trustee of Oak “But complaining about basketball? About court in Forest Glen. I perused meeting agen- watchdog dedicated to protecting equitable Lawn village, a predominantly white south- someone being constructive with their time? das for the year preceding their closure, ran park access across the city. He said that while western suburb, appeared before the local That doesn’t make sense.” keyword searches, and supplemented this the Clemente hoops were removed before his park district board to demand that all bas- research with FOIA requests to the Chicago time in o ce, he guessed that racial tension ketball hoops be removed from the village’s n 1982 the federal government filed a Park District to see if there were any records was an underlying reason. parks, local news network Patch reported, lawsuit against the Chicago Park District available. “There were young Latinx boys and men after a group of teens clashed over racial slurs Ifollowing investigations into racial discrim- I requested all documents, complaints, let- who were using the court and who were in the area a month before. She complained ination over the district’s capital improve- ters from constituents, and e-mails from park perceived as creating a public safety threat children could no longer use the parks be- ments, sta ng, and programming. This result- managers and councils for a year preceding and I would believe that was why they were cause young adults and teens from Chicago ed in the 1983 consent decree that set strict their shutdown. The park district said there taken down,” La Spata said. “That’s a horrible were coming to the area to play basketball. standards for construction and improvements are no such documents or fi les related to the reason to take down a basketball court, but “People aren’t feeling safe. I believe that by of park amenities, especially in disinvested basketball courts at Pullman, Forest Glen, and that is something that frequently happens in taking down the hoops . . . it would remove minority neighborhoods. the Near West Side. the city. The fallout is that’s really a collective some of that outside element,” Quinlan said. The decree ran through 1989 and was lifted For the basketball court in Rogers Park, punishment on the neighborhoods when usu- To date there is no conclusive evidence to when the park district convinced the federal deactivated in 2018, the district has asked for ally 90-95 percent of folks are doing nothing show removing basketball courts from neigh- government that it had created a five-year more time. Separately, I fi led a FOIA with the wrong but still lose access to recreational borhoods will make them safer. A 2011 study plan that would meet the underlying goals of Chicago Police Department to see if any 911 amenities.” on Philadelphia’s neighborhood parks found the consent decree. calls were recorded in the year preceding its Almost a decade ago, in June 2011, Alder- that with or without basketball hoops, crime Two years ago, however, the Friends of the ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 13 NEWS & POLITICS
continued from 13 said of the removal of hoops on the north side. hood, if that’s a way of whites kind of under there,” he said, “Where they do, you don’t Parks alleged that the park district continues “That’s just bullshit—hell no—what do hoops the table saying, ‘We don’t want Black people want to go there because there are gunshots, to discriminate in the way it invests across have to do with crime? That’s stereotyping and in our parks, taking over this sport.’” there are crack addicts, and just a lot of vio- the city. The group’s 2018 State of the Parks labelling kids who just want to play the sport.” Edwards said that in Rogers Park, it’s even lence. No one wants to go play in the park like report found that parks on the south side have A reformed gang member himself, Edwards harder to fi nd basketball courts in gentrify- that.” significantly smaller budgets compared to works with high-risk youth to end gun violence ing areas where Black and white people live Woods, a mental health worker with Heart- the north side, where programming is likely on the north side. uneasily together, than in predominantly land Alliance, an anti-poverty organization to be more robust than in other parts of the Steven Foy, an associate professor of so- white parts of the neighborhood where based in Chicago, lived in Uptown before city. Most importantly, the report found ciology at the University of Texas Rio Grande courts are anyway few and far between. moving to Logan Square. She said the racial that Chicago’s Latinx community has the Valley, whose research has focused on race, “If you go far into the white neighborhoods, tensions over basketball courts in gentrifi ed least amount of park access, and that capital social psychology, and mental health, said you can see their rims are still up so it’s plain- neighborhoods often boils down to a lack of improvement requests in Black communities the way crime gets racialized in sports facil- ly obvious they don’t want us playing and empathy and understanding of the realities are approved at half the rate as those in white ities or public amenities is often due to “bad they clearly say it too,” he said. “They don’t for Chicago’s Black children. communities. For its part, the park district statistics.” want to spell out they don’t want Blacks, but “These kids grow up in neighborhoods vehemently denied the report’s fi ndings, call- “Take, for example, drug use: there are they do say, ‘We don’t want no congregating’ where there is a lot of violence, and with that ing it “incendiary and divisive” and claiming pretty decent surveys that suggest that white you know what I’m saying, so y’all know that comes a lot of trauma they still don’t know it “distorts” the data. people are doing drugs as much as Black folks Blacks are the only ones basically congregat- how to process,” she said. “And white people, In the listening tours and community sur- are, but they are getting arrested at much ing at these courts.” they don’t know anything about the type of veys that helped shape the report, Friends lower rates,” Foy explained. “Part of it has He likened it to modern-day segregation. life these kids are living; they are going to of the Parks found a dissonance between the to do with wealth and income and part of it “Just the fact that kids are getting up and look at them di¥ erent. They’re going to look perception of danger in parks and the reality. is also that some people are actually getting planning their day, and they want to go play and say these kids are uneducated, they’re In 2017, nearly half of all parks (46.7 percent) targeted directly as a result of race. Even basketball but they end up saying, ‘Oh, well, not the same, they don’t deserve much, and reported zero crimes, the report noted. In with the stop and frisk policy, we now know we can’t go here, we can’t go there, we can’t this is our land.” 91.8 percent of the parks where crimes were for certain Black and Latinx people are more go here’ . . . A lot of this stuff going on out Katiana and her friends said that without reported, there were fewer than ten incidents likely to be stopped by the police.” here, it creates feelings among us people,” Ed- access to courts in public parks it’s harder for over the course of 12 months. Elvia Ochoa, director of neighborhood wards said. “And then society says, ‘They’re girls to fi nd safe places to play and practice “There are real concerns about the num- parks at Friends of the Parks, said she has in gangs,’ they make it sound like we’re stupid basketball. It reduces their opportunity to bers of crimes that occur on park property also witnessed an “anti-youth” and racist at- or the scum of the earth. They snatch our excel and create space in the world of sports creating risks to personal safety,” the report titude around basketball in her conversations resources and then they wonder why is there where female athletes routinely find them- said, noting that citizens who participated with stakeholders in the city’s neighborhood an uptick in violence—it’s all a setup man, selves undervalued. In the summer, the girls’ in the listening tours cited gun violence parks. She found this was especially the case it’s just a setup. Put the goddamn basketball school cut their basketball program over and gang-a liated activities as some of the for outdoor courts. ramp back up. Simple.” COVID-19 concerns though the boys program reasons that their parks feel unsafe. “There “It was never very overt, but it was always continued without disruption. The girls said are also real concerns stemming from the ex- around that language of ‘those people’ kind ne balmy summer evening in July, Ken they get why people would want to remove tensive perpetuation of racism and other dis- of stu¥ . ‘We don’t want those people coming Mason, 26, and his girlfriend Danielle the rims for safety reasons during the pan- crimination that cause park users to continue into our park,’ or, you know, ‘Those people OWoods, 26, headed up to Clarendon Park demic but they look forward to the day they to feel excluded from using certain parks.” that are playing basketball are the ones that in Uptown so Mason could play basketball for come back everywhere. Julia Epplin-Zapf, a former policy associate are bringing the problems,’” she said. She the fi rst time since the shutdown. Light breez- “I like playing basketball because there’s at Friends of the Parks, who worked on the said she heard similar conversations two de- es from Lake Michigan blew over the court and always new things you could be learning, report’s chapter on public safety, said park cades ago in Pilsen, when the southwest side the sun stayed out late. A heavily pregnant things you can improve too,” Katiana’s friend restrooms and basketball courts were the community was on the cusp of its gentrifi ca- Woods, dressed in a light blue tank top and Maya Wallace said. “Like I get really bored two most commonly shut down amenities for tion boom. jean shorts, rested on a pillar by the perimeter if I’m doing the same, like repetitions, but security reasons. “And then there’s kind of Foy suspects the exclusion of Black bas- as she watched Mason, dressed in a red James with basketball, you’re always learning new an abstract timeline of after [the crime] hap- ketball players and basketball courts in Harden Houston Rockets jersey, play. things. There’s always something else you pened, when would it be allowed to be a public white neighborhoods may also be an indirect During the shutdown Mason, who grew could do and like.” amenity again,” she said. response to the sport’s increasing identi- up in Austin on the west side, noticed the For Katiana, the sport is therapeutic and Parks have a tremendous capacity to be a fication as a “Black” rather than “white” basketball rims were gone, but the tennis and o¥ ers a support system that is uniquely able space for people to have freedom, she said. sport. At the collegiate level, in Division I volleyball nets remained. “We couldn’t move to meet the challenges of a growing teen. “It Especially for people who might be excluded schools 53 percent of male players are Black, around in the west and south sides, but they takes my mind o¥ of things, when I feel down from a lot of other areas, who might be po- while at the NBA level, 74 percent are. In the weren’t policing people up here,” he said. “We I can just come and play basketball. When liced or experiencing surveillance in so many summer of 2020, as the nation roiled over found all the white people were just walking you play basketball you’re not involved in other areas of life. demonstrations against police brutality, NBA their dogs, and going for runs like there was anything else that comes to mind,” she said. players protested in solidarity and moved the no pandemic.” “You just have your teammates, your sisters, hat’s some racist-ass shit right there,” multibillion dollar association to embrace the Despite the paucity of courts here, Mason your family, and I love that. I love being with Ralph Edwards, Katiana’s father and Black Lives Matter movement. “It does make still prefers playing on the north side. “If you my family on the court.” v “Ta program manager at community me wonder whether when people are opposed go on the west side or the south side, they organization Metropolitan Family Services, to basketball courts being in their neighbor- don’t have a lot of opportunities or resources @alisonsald 14 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll NEWS & POLITICS
Tim Samuelson COURTESY OF CITY OF CHICAGO DCASE
sion on Chicago Landmarks. In 1997, he moved to the Chicago Historical Society as curator of architecture. While he was still at the Landmarks Commis- sion, however, he met artist Barbara Koenen. She was a new hire at the Cultural Center, and her boss, public art program head Mike Lash, had sent her to Samuelson to learn enough about leaded glass windows to supervise a project involving them. Samuelson was imme- diately smitten: “She came into my o ce, and, I swear to God, it was love at fi rst sight,” he says. They married in 2000. Two years later, Koenen summoned him to a Department of Cultural A airs Christmas party at Maxim’s where Commissioner Lois Weisberg took him aside. “We’re gathering a team in dif- ferent cultural disciplines,” Weisberg told him. “I want to do history, and you’re the person I want to do it.” She gave him a two-word job description: “help everybody.” Samuelson estimates his personal collec- tion at 20,000 to 25,000 objects. Some of it is stashed at Mana Contemporary, where he has a studio, and some is in the basement of the Trader Joe’s at Wabash and Roosevelt. If you’re CULTURE Rogers Park childhood, when he somehow “just looking at the salmon display there, it’s directly gravitated to older things.” He was the nerdy under your feet. kid at Armstrong grade school who put up a Lately he’s been thinking he should get these Tim Samuelson, Chicago’s fi rst fuss over a plan to tear original metal cornices objects documented and digitized, because “if off the building. At Sullivan High, he “kept I drop dead, nobody will know what they are.” them from painting over WPA murals when He’s created a nonprofi t to help fund that, and and only cultural historian the art teacher thought they were ugly.” And says he decided on the nominal retirement in on his college application, he told Roosevelt order to have the freedom to do it. He’s not history yet. University that he aspired to matriculate there, The plan at the Cultural Center is for a rotat- not to get an excellent education, but because ing display in a space to be designed by Chris By D I “I want to go to school in Adler and Sullivan’s Ware. It’ll be housed in its own room just o Auditorium Building.” the Washington Street entrance, and will spill By the time he enrolled at Roosevelt, he al- down the west corridor, which Samuelson ast week the city announced an upcoming That means he’ll still be in his artifact-packed ready had a signifi cant mentor: photographer considers prime exhibit space because, in this event honoring the retirement of Tim fi fth-fl oor o ce in the Cultural Center, planning and Sullivan scholar Richard Nickel. It was a gloriously free venue, it leads to the restrooms. LSamuelson, its first and—since there’s exhibits and serving as a public resource on the connection facilitated by an astute librarian “I love it that everyone goes through that cor- no plan to hire a replacement—only, cultural city’s history. Only now, it’ll be as a volunteer. at the Art Institute’s Burnham Library. “I met ridor, even if you’re coming in o the street to historian. And the major project he’ll be working on is a [Nickel] when I was 16 years old; he would take use the bathroom,” he says. “It’s the most trav- After 19 years on this job, and a total of 33 new, long-term Cultural Center exhibit of his me along to Sullivan buildings on the south side eled, most seen area in the building.” years as a city employee, Samuelson will be own vast collection of historic Chicago stu . that were being demolished,” Samuelson says. COVID permitting, the exhibition could open feted with a free public (but virtual) send-o Never mind that the city council last month “I would help him salvage pieces and document by fall. v next week. It’ll be hosted by WTTW’s Geo rey passed a resolution congratulating him “on the the buildings.” On April 13, 1972, the day that Baer, with local luminaries including Mayor occasion of his retirement from city service”: Nickel was killed in a demolition collapse at Celebrating a Living Landmark—a Tribute to Lori Lightfoot on hand to pay tribute to this he says there’s no way he’ll be giving up the job the Stock Exchange building, “I was supposed Tim Samuelson is scheduled for 4 PM, Thurs- legendary scavenger, official packrat, and, in that’s been “a dream gig for a classic obsessive to be with him,” Samuelson says: “He got there day, January 28. Register by January 26 at Lightfoot’s words, “walking encyclopedia of history nerd like me.” earlier than I did.” eventbrite.com/e/celebrating-a-living-land- Chicago history.” Samuelson has a passion for bringing the After college Samuelson worked for ar- mark-a-tribute-to-tim-samuelson-tick- The next day, Samuelson, who’ll turn 70 in fl otsam and jetsam of history to life by telling chitect John Vinci (who recreated the Stock ets-136364807811 June, will be back at work, as the city’s first the stories that give those objects meaning. Exchange Room at the Art Institute), and in the cultural historian emeritus. He says it’s an obsession that dates back to his early 1980s, he took a job with the city Commis- @DeannaIsaacs ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 15 For artist Nora buy a machine to make their rugs. Tim Eads, a Chin, humor is just as important as Philadelphia-based artist and founder of Tuft nostalgia when it the World, is quite literally selling out of his comes to rugs. equipment and materials for rug-making. In COURTESY NORA CHIN 2018, Eads founded an online community for tufters and then began selling yarns and guns for interested rug-makers. Most folks find their equipment through his website, and since COVID-19 sprung into our lives, his business has bubbled over with orders. The tufting gun—in- vented in the 1930s—has been brought to the everyday consumer by Eads and he has found his gun orders skyrocketing since March. They are currently on preorder only. Not only are we seeing sold-out rug supplies, we also see the incredible growth in popular TikTok videos in the #rugtiktok community where you can find time-lapse videos with millions of views. While perusing the app, it’s interesting to see the wide range of folks making rugs. Their styles all differ and their followers seem entranced. Between this and the Instagram surge, it seems that while everyone’s has made its comeback in fashion, typography, separated and quarantined, this new tufting The rug circle has united folks from all over the world to home decor, and music. Burnt oranges and mus- tard yellows are infi ltrating our lives. With this unplug and create. comes the shag rug, a popular rug that gets its revival name from the deep pile of yarn and that gained first discovered Joanie Faletto’s work in Tu ing their way through the pandemic prominence in the 70s. Originally inspired by 2020 when I learned about her rug-mak- Flokati rugs from ancient Greece, the shag rug Iing collective with her partner, Myles By S N L isn’t just something that lies on the fl oor. Wall Emmons, called Zoi Zoi. Although Faletto has hangings—which are really just large rugs— been making rugs since before the pandemic, also started to become popular in the 70s. Sym- she used the time to really dive into the prac- bols like mushrooms, owls, fl owers, and warm tice. In 2019, she made a doormat-sized rug ora Chin thinks about rugs all of the are exploding into the quarantine art scene. colors can be found on DIY vintage shag wall with a punch needle which took her more than time. “I fall asleep at night thinking In my personal social media bubble, I started hangings. Shag wall carpeting even made its two weeks to fi nish. She decided she needed to Nabout rugs [that] I want to make and to notice an influx of rug-making during the way to interior design when folks decided they invest in a rug tufting gun, which is basically a new things I want to try,” she says. The lifelong beginning of quarantine. I even got into the wanted their walls to be a bit shaggy, too. handheld sewing machine. The machines are Chicagoan was raised by artists. Spending her hobby myself. While sitting in my living room, The resurgence of interior design has infl u- quite an investment—the price ranges between childhood fi gure skating and some of her early staring at all of my objects, spending more time enced how people are redecorating or what they $300 to $800—but they made her two-week 20s skating professionally for Disney On Ice, with them than ever before, I started picking are looking for in a future home. Industrial de- rug projects something she could create in an she’s dipped her hands in various mediums apart what I wanted to change. I also longed to sign like concrete, steel, and cement are out of afternoon. Faletto, a painter, says that some after attending the School of the Art Institute create something physical, something I could fashion. The outdoors—including warm colors, people call rug tufting just painting with yarn. of Chicago. Working in photography, drawing, hang on my wall. Redecorating became an ob- plants, outside patios—are hot on the market However, she tends to disagree. “My process for painting, and ceramics, she says that “humor session of mine. After hours of scrolling through for folks looking at new spaces to rent and live. each is completely di erent, and so is the end is important to me in my work and I try to use 1970s-themed rugs for my living room that cost Fast Company wrote in a recent article that the result. Just like painting, rug tufting with yarn it to tap into ideas of nostalgia and as a way to hundreds of dollars, I realized I have all of the 70s are coming back because so much of the is its own medium.” After a month of trial and access more di cult or serious themes like the time in the world. I purchased a latch-hook kit design is rooted in nature. Being trapped inside, error with her new machine, she learned how to pain of growing up and millennial anxieties.” from eBay for $30 and made my fi rst rug. Doing we crave the natural world. Why not decorate create large-scale designs. Ultimately, she landed on rug-making during something with my hands felt good and it con- our insides like the outside? Faletto quarantined with her mom in Lemont the pandemic. veniently distracted me from the pains of what Now that so many people are working where she set up a makeshift rug-tufting studio Chin isn’t alone in this newfangled desire to was going on in the world. remotely, their space at home is incredibly in her basement. During the pandemic, Faletto create something from which she derives com- Rug designs were originally rooted in a per- important. I used to come home to eat dinner, says that her new hobby was a big distraction fort. The draw of some pandemic hobbies—like son’s tribe, village, or town. The design signifi ed watch Netfl ix, and sleep. Now, I don’t leave my from the news cycle and a way to spend her puzzles, rollerblading, or sewing—takes us back their identity, their city of origin, and their apartment for a week straight. Staring at my alone time. “It was kind of freeing to work in to simpler times. Folks have been feverishly home. In 1848, the power loom was invented walls, my plants, my furniture, and my floors this way; living in quarantine there are no dead- searching for distractions, excuses to log o and for carpets, and in the 1940s, manufacturing dominates my mind. I want my home to be lines, and that took the stress out of needing to escape their blue screens. People are reading switched to tufted carpets, which still dominate comfortable, to be warm, to be the best place I fi nish a project and fi nish it perfectly. There is again. People are making things. DIY has stolen the carpet industry today. A rug is still consid- want to be. It’s no surprise then that this type virtually no pressure when you’re looking at an the show. Whether it’s sewing your own face ered to be an interior statement piece. It can tie of design is coming back to inspire folks in their unending timeline,” she says. mask, taking up weaving, embroidering small a room together or it can pull it apart. everyday lives, but also their creative lives, too. Faletto begins with a colored pencil sketch of objects, domestic art—particularly fi ber arts— In the past few years, the 1970s aesthetic Most everyday folks weave, hang knot, or a design. After the design is made, she gathers 16 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll the yarn she needs, stretches backing rug-making is a way to cope. Learn- Since I’m still relatively new to tuft- fabric onto a wooden frame, and then ing a new process like tufting has ing I’m still kind of fi nding myself in she draws the image onto the fabric been benefi cial for Chin, who lost her the work so I’m defi nitely doing lots RUG-MAKING with soft vine charcoal. She then fi lls job and “a lot of control” in her life of experimentation,” she says. in the design with her tufting gun, during the pandemic. Engaging with Like any creative practice, line by line. rug-making has been a distraction rug-making is meditative. For these TECHNIQUES Since the pandemic, Faletto’s rug and a way to gain back the confi dence two artists, creating a physical object Hand tufting work has changed. She explains that that everything will be okay. is absolutely essential during the This method uses a tufting gun creating a much faster and easier produc- her COVID work takes a “detour into “It’s also given me a small source massive changes happening in the tion of a rug. Makers stretch a foundation cloth on a frame and then use a joyful escape from reality.” She of income that makes a huge di er- world. For some TikTok followers, the gun to shoot loops of yarn from the back to the front. sees her rugs as a “ticket out of the ence. Financially the pandemic has just watching the making of a rug is pandemic for even a minute.” Her put me in a somewhat precarious entrancing. Whether it’s by hand or Hand hooking designs are colorful and loud. Zoi Zoi spot, so every time I sell a rug I feel so with a gun, creating a drawing with This method is when a maker pulls yarn from the back to the front of a launched during the pandemic with grateful. Thank you to everyone who yarn has taken storm during the pan- foundation cloth using a rug hook tool. their collection of work called “Club- has bought a rug from me and to any- demic. Whether it’s our yearning for house,” which focuses on nightlife one who is supporting independent domesticity, looking to make extra Flat weaving and how it’s forever changed due to artists during this time,” she says. cash, or just being an artist, there’s This type of rug-making process requires no foundation cloth as the the pandemic. Chin’s works are currently smaller no doubt that this new medium is maker makes the foundation and pattern at the same time with a loom “I think the idea to pay homage to as she’s working from home. She here to stay. v machine. They are typically smoother in texture. nightlife subconsciously transpired,” finds the beauty of working on a she says. “Dancing and dance music smaller scale as it helps her decide To purchase Joanie Faletto’s rugs, Hand knotting is really important to both of us per- what works and what doesn’t—she’s contact her through her Instagram Persian, Tibetan, and Indian rugs typically use this labor-intensive tech- sonally, and is one of the main things still experimenting with the process. or Zoi Zoi’s Instagram. You can also nique. The method requires a loom and weaving weft where they warp that brought us together in the fi rst “I like the intimacy of them, being e-mail her at joaniefalettoart@ strands and tie small knots one at a time. This is a much slower process place. The collection is both celebra- able to hold them in my hand and gmail.com. To purchase rugs from for high-quality rugs. tory and mournful, but has a thread really explore them up close. Larger Nora Chin on her Instagram, or of hope that dancing until the early rugs are like another body in the e-mail her at businesscasserole@ Machine making hours of the day aren’t gone for good. room with you which [is] kind of the gmail.com. In the modern era, machines are able to loom, weave, hook, and tuft. Fingers crossed.” opposite. Now the rug is holding you! These automated loom machines are used in factory settings and can For artists like Faletto and Chin, I want to experiment with all sizes. @snicolelane create intricate patterns with technology supplied by a computer.
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ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 17 #TVKUV9TKVGT 2GTHQTOGT! DMITRY SAMAROV %4'#6+8' 51.76+105 (14 %4'#6+8' 2'12.' In mid-March 2020, my place was begin- 5WRRQTVKXG #HHKTOKPI CPF )QCN ning to fill up with moving boxes, but now there was much more time to pack since &KTGEVGF 2U[EJQVJGTCR[ CPF leaving the house was all but forbidden. I *[RPQVJGTCR[ HQT #FWNVU didn’t pick up every single object and peer into its soul and its relationship to me, but I /#: - 5*#2'; .%59 did log considerable hours digging through .QECVGF KP &QYPVQYP 'XCPUVQP the fl otsam of my life. I make art and books so accumulating both is an occupational haz- ard. But, thankfully, I’m not a true collector. YYYOCZUJCRG[EQO I don’t covet the rare or valuable. The things OCZUJCRG["CQNEQO I love have personal meaning but often little NWG TQUU NWG 5JKGNF 2TGHGTTGF 2TQXKFGT commercial worth. So, forced to dig through KIPC 2TGHGTTGF 2TQXKFGT piles of what I’ve amassed, return on invest- ment wasn’t much of a consideration. I carted many books to the Open Books warehouse in Pilsen. Their store was of course closed in late March and early April, connecting but there was a drop-slot in the side of the building. A friend who works in another creative bookstore recently told me that many, many Chicagoans had the same idea. With most people other charitable operations e ectively shut to down over the past year, Open Books was practically the only game in town. It’s amaz- unique ing how much lighter I felt after I deposited every successive rolling suitcase full of books. spaces Moving into my new place in May sparked another reassessment. As I unpacked each box I once again pondered whether I really needed to keep this record or that book. I made two new piles: one to sell, the other to give away. eBay, Etsy, Discogs, and a million Finding and one other sites make it easy to sell just about anything. I got rid of headphones, LPs, CDs, and a digital camera. But the other happiness in pile was far more rewarding. Unable to see friends and family in person I mailed them letting go books, records, and art that I thought they might appreciate. It was a simple way to let MELISSA Empty bookshelves aren’t a bad thing. them know they were on my mind and eased STANLEY the task of setting up my new living arrange- By D S ments—a true win-win. The new habits I’ve learned out of necessi- ty have become part of my everyday routine. Now when I fi nish a book, instead of putting Visit www.arthousechicago.com it on the shelf, I immediately send it to the email: [email protected] o one has ever used the words joy or a valuable exercise for both my physical and person it made me think of. In this way, even spark to describe me and I haven’t mental health. though we are apart, in a small way I can feel or call 773.320.9234 Nread Marie Kondo’s book or seen My plan to move was in place in late 2019, present in their lives. And who doesn’t like her TV show. Yet, in the past year I’ve shed so as 2020 began, the process of culling receiving a package out of the blue? I don’t house more than half my belongings and drastically books, records, and clothes was already un- know if doing this “sparks joy,” but it defi nite- changed my relationship to what remains. I derway. My criteria for keeping or discarding ly makes me feel like a little more than just rt moved last May and have been forced to stay wasn’t as philosophical as Ms. Kondo’s; I was another consumer. Perhaps my place will be inside with my possessions as sole company more concerned with how much I wanted to completely empty someday—that sounds like A like most people, but there’s more to it than schlep to the new pad. If the process brought happiness to me. v chicago that. Reconsidering and reorganizing the happiness, so much the better. Then the lock- objects I’m surrounded by turned out to be down came. @Chicago_Reader 18 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll Chicago Readers Thank you for nominating us Best clinic to get a medical cannabis card!
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ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 19 Devon Price COLIN QUINN RICE information overload, and “achievement hunting.” But this idea doesn’t just have conse- dissertation defense in spring 2014, Price de- quences for the overworked white-collar veloped a nasty fl u and had to present their employee. Price says the Laziness Lie has research while fevered. The fl u persisted into contributed to working-class infi ghting and the summer, along with a newly diagnosed a stigma against marginalized people who heart murmur and anemia. To fully heal from receive public assistance, like food stamps what had become a year-long illness, Price and disability benefi ts. “It has really created forwent all work and social obligations for a cultural outlook where we don’t trust other two months. With this rest came a new re- people,” Price says. “We think other people alization. “No matter how much I set out to are gaming the system, instead of realizing achieve . . . it was never going to be enough,” all of us are overextended.” Price tells me. To help combat the Laziness Lie, each This pressure to be constantly productive chapter offers actionable advice, from pri- led Price, now a psychology professor with oritizing meaningful tasks over busywork Loyola University of Chicago’s School of Con- (e.g., maintaining inbox zero) to “consciously tinuing and Professional Studies, to write a [fi nding] time to experience awe” in nature viral op-ed for the online publication Human and new experiences. However, unlike other Parts in 2018 entitled, “Laziness Does Not releases in the productivity and self-care Exist.” In it they argued that what seemed genres, Price wanted to balance tips with like laziness was often a sign of overwork, structural analysis of why we would feel trauma, or mental health struggles, and that overworked (i.e., stagnant wages, discrim- educators needed to o er more empathy and ination, mental illness, workplace surveil- accommodations in the classroom. lance). “Me taking more bubble baths isn’t For the next year, Price would receive going to fi x [huge social problems].” e-mails, comments, and messages every day Price also wants to clarify the goal isn’t to from people who shared emotional stories of relax so you can get more work completed. cruel parents, abusive bosses, and teachers Overconsuming news, for example, is a com- who gave up on them. “If this many people mon pitfall disguised as a moral imperative. were going through this problem, it’s be- “It may feel productive, because it keeps our cause everybody’s being asked to do way too minds busy and engaged, but it actually saps much and the way we defi ne a person’s worth us of the energy to put up a genuine fi ght,” is totally distorted,” they say. writes Price, who organizes around trans That article, originally written to blow rights, decarceration, and destigmatizing off steam, became Price’s first book. Lazi- autism. ness Does Not Exist (Atria Books) is a sci- Instead, change comes about from making ence-based self-help manual for those run small life changes (being “gentler with your- roughshod by capitalism. It’s an accessible self and others”) and pushing for structural read, blending the latest in psychological change for those who can’t quit their jobs, research with real-life stories from artists, take more breaks, or live o the grid. What activists, students, gig workers, white-collar inspired Price the most while writing their According to employees, disabled people, and others buck- book wasn’t the success stories of people ling under the strain of impossible expec- rebuilding their lives. It was the people who tations. The chapters are arranged as affir- carved a path for themselves despite having Dr. Devon Price, mations: “Your Achievements Are Not Your to stay in a terrible job for the money or man- Worth,” “You Deserve to Work Less,” “You age all-consuming disabilities. Laziness Does Don’t Have to Be an Expert in Everything.” “There’s a lot of work we need to do to Feelings of productivity-related guilt, stand up for people who are in those situa- Not Exist shame, and exhaustion originate from what tions and get them what they need materially Price calls “The Laziness Lie”—the idea that so they actually can set boundaries in their The Loyola psychology professor dismantles the “Laziness Lie.” “people who do more are worth more,” they life,” Price says. “It just politically calls me to write. Price traces the origin of this destruc- action over and over again.” v By T M tive worldview to Puritans settling in the U.S. in the 1600s, who believed hard workers @taylormooresays were predestined for salvation, and anyone deemed lazy was damned. The confl ation of r. Devon Price had always been an on their to-do list, and still made time for hard work and moral worth was later used overachiever. They sacrifi ced social activist work, live lit performances, and re- as justifi cation for slavery and exploitative please recycle Devents to get top grades (aiming to watching Mad Men. Daily life was exhausting labor practices in the Industrial Revolution, fulfill a teenage dream of getting a PhD in but somewhat manageable. says Price. Now the Laziness Lie manifests this paper psychology), mechanically ran through tasks Then they got sick. Two weeks before their itself as burnout (“a public health issue”), 20 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll piece of furniture so only the beam is visible. Another indicator you might see on light Fixtures that fully enclose the bulb cast the kind bulb boxes is the color rendering index, or CRI. Attain nirvana by of di use light that instantly mellows a space. When that number is closer to 100, the light Once you’ve opted for your non-ceiling light will render the colors in our homes more faith- sources, pick the right bulbs. fully—something to keep in mind if you’d like turning off your “Warm white” or “soft white” bulbs are the to properly light an artwork, for example. But pro-coziness choice. Clanton recommends pay- lower CRI numbers indicate a more yellow light, ceiling light ing attention to the Kelvin color temperature which is the sort of mood lighting that’ll help (or KCT) of the light bulb. The warmest light the brain prepare for a good night’s sleep. Moving away from harsh lighting reduces anxiety and sources, candles, have a KCT of 2,000. Incandes- Changing how you light your home doesn’t improves coziness. cent lights are typically around 2,700 and many have to be a big expensive project, and in fact it LED light bulbs are designed to match that. The can be one of the simplest and cheapest ways to By M D higher the KCT, the more blue wavelengths in renovate. Clanton tells all her clients to install the light—blue light is antithetical to a restful dimmers wherever possible. “Because people ew things make the indoors less de- the walls, faces, and other vertical surfaces we atmosphere for the eyes. are going to LED lighting, the dimmers need to lightful than harsh, overhead light. tend to look at while indoors, explains Nancy “We have a circadian rhythm regulation be designed for electronic loads,” she cautions. FThe cold months combined with the Clanton, founder and CEO of Clanton & Asso- where at night we should minimize our expo- “You can’t use the old-fashioned dimmers for raging pandemic spell more time than ever in ciates, a Colorado-based lighting design firm. sure to blue light,” Clanton explains. As bluer incandescents because the lights will start our homes and making them cozier and more Overhead lighting creates shadows, glare, and light naturally disappears toward nightfall, our fl ickering.” relaxing can be as easy as fl ipping a switch. If can provoke anxiety because it irritates the brains begin to produce melatonin, which is When you do need your space brightly lit and you’re in a room with multiple types of light eyes. “Get rid of the overhead light, it’s so un- critical for quality, restful sleep. Night mode on daylight from windows is scarce, opt for tall right now, try it: turn on the overhead light and natural,” she advises. “You should not use your our electronics is designed to eliminate the cold, fl oor lamps that point their bulbs at the ceiling. take a look around. Then turn it o and light a ceiling for lighting.” blue light that keeps the brain awake and alert. With a bright bulb they’ll accomplish the same wall sconce, table lamp, floor lamp, or some To experience comfortable lighting, our eyes But this digital help is useless if the lightbulbs effect as the ceiling light without any added candles. Compare how your kitchen feels when should never be exposed directly to the source. in our home are emitting the light that will keep harshness. To help set the mood for work rather lit only by overhead light with the vibe of using Track lighting on the ceiling can be soothing us awake. Clanton adds that if we have outdoor than relaxation, Clanton recommends tabletop under-counter lighting, if you have it. The mood when the individual fi xtures are pointed toward lighting we should extend the same care to the task lighting. It can be brighter and cooler with- of the space will change in an instant. the walls or the ceiling instead of down. Make natural world as we do to ourselves—never out interfering with the overall comfort of the Overhead light that points straight down— sure your lamp is positioned at a height that have lighting pointing to the open sky and turn space. v especially in the form of exposed “bright white” allows its shade to hide the bulb. If using an it o when not in use to give animals and plants or “daylight” bulbs—lights the fl oor, rather than open-top lantern on the fl oor, hide it behind a the darkness they too need to thrive. @mdoukmas
ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 21 The vintage shop Nido Mori is all about bright profi ts go to a local nonprofi t; she o ers free de- eclectic items. COURTESY NIDO MORI livery to Chicagoans who supply used packaging materials, so that everything she sells is 100 per- giving discarded items new homes. She notes cent recycled; essential workers and teachers the importance of resale platforms sourcing get 10 percent discounts; the list goes on. Since items that are more rare or kitschy, rather than October, Kain and her customers have donated basic necessities like winter coats or pots and more than $500 to Brave Space Alliance, CPS, pans. and a range of other causes. She also stands “If you do decide to sell these [basics], you fi rmly against the gentrifi cation of thrift shops, can give back by donating to a nonprofit that combats the reselling of cultural pieces with her serves the community you source from.” Instead Thrifted A© rmation Project (#thrifteda© rma- of common objects, she says, “I always lean to- tionproject), and constantly works to support wards items that make my friends go, ‘Who on her Filipinx community and BIPOC resellers. earth would buy this?’ and that’s a promise.” Ziba Finds SheaButterQueen Elhom Karbassi, the 28-year-old owner of Ziba Originally launched on Depop in August of 2019, Finds, started her business in early 2018. Origi- SheaButterQueen (@shopsheabutterqueen) is nally called “elle0elle collection,” it began when an online thrift store for sustainable and unique Karbassi moved from her hometown of Savan- fashion. The Instagram account shows countless nah, Georgia, to Chicago. She ended up leaving photos of SheaButterQueen herself, the 23-year- her 9-to-5 job just weeks before the COVID-19 old Black woman who runs the shop, modeling shutdown, hoping to run her shop full time. colorful clothing from a range of decades: a clas- She rebranded to Ziba Finds—ziba is Farsi for sic Chicago Bulls jacket, gold silk pieces, pastel “beautiful”—at the same time rebranding her 90s looks, leather jackets, and more. own identity from Elle, as she had been called SheaButterQueen works at Round Two, a most of her life, to Elhom, in an e ort to “live my popular Wicker Park thrift shop, but she still most authentic self” as an Iranian American. enjoys working for herself and being an entre- Today, Karbassi runs Ziba Finds (@zibaf- preneur online. A typical day of thrifting for her inds), a vintage and thrifted clothing shop and Thrifting own shop means hunting for items from 9 AM to personal shopping account on Instagram with 7 PM: “I’m there that long not to grab everything nearly 600 followers. Thrifting for others is I see, leaving no options for others, but to fi nd therapeutic and utterly joyful for Karbassi, and what I know my audience is looking for.” it comes naturally after the upbringing she had: from home More than anything, SheaButterQueen just a struggling artist/environmentalist mom and Support local secondhand shoppers without stepping foot loves to shop, and she always enjoys styling “very Persian” dad concerned with appearance outside. her fi nds and discovering unique pieces for her despite income gave her the skills to fi nd hidden more than 1,000 followers. Her local thrift store treasures and to understand taste. By T A is her go-to for stocking the SheaButterQueen Karbassi stocks Ziba Finds at yard sales, es- shop, and in an upcoming Ebook she’s writing, tate sales, and her favorite: the Goodwill outlet SheaButterQueen will share exactly where that in Gary, Indiana. Part of her goal is obviously is, as well as other tips on how to thrift like her. to turn a profi t, but Karbassi is always open to hether you’re decorating your lock- Nido Mori negotiation, especially for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ down living space, buying unique Former full-time dog walker and self-described Quarantini Vintage: Anna’s folks: “I get it, capitalism has created a system Wclothes only your COVID bubble “unsuccessful painter/illustrator” Darcy Marti- “Stay Home” Goods where we all gotta make some money, but I truly will see, or trying to replicate that long-gone nez started her Instagram vintage shop in the After COVID-19 hit, Anna De Ocampo Kain think fashion and clothes that make people feel thrift shopping high of snagging a one-of-a- summer of 2020, after COVID cut back most of watched thrift shop after thrift shop appear good, confi rmed, and beautiful should be acces- kind piece before anyone else, Instagram start- her clients. Martinez, 23, is a fi rst-generation on Instagram, but it wasn’t until October that sible to everyone.” v ups are a surprisingly simple and engaging way American of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent she, as a lifelong secondhand shopper, decided to shop secondhand from home. The accounts and newly out as gay, and thrifting o ers her to start her own. The 27-year-old Portage Park @tarynallen are highly curated, and many sell out quickly, both supplemental income and a creative out- reseller and realtor also freelances in the music meaning there’s an addicting rush that comes let. Her shop Nido Mori (@nidomori)—“forest world, but her Instagram store, Quarantini Vin- MORE LOCAL RECOMMENDED from sending a DM and a Venmo payment and nest”—has acquired more than 1,700 followers tage: Anna’s “Stay Home” Goods (@quarantini. RESELLERS ON INSTAGRAM suddenly owning whatever just appeared on in just a few months. vintage.chi), has taken o in just a few months, @run_it_back_vintage your feed. Martinez sources most of her items from on- with more than 300 sales and more than 1,500 @openprofi le.us Most accounts offer shipping to anywhere, line or from thrift stores near her North Center followers. Kain sells all sorts of home goods that @vintagetagss but choosing a local option means you can di- home. A glance at her account shows a range of lean mid-century modern and vintage, thought- @distortedvintage rectly support your neighbors during the pan- bright eclectic items, from Otagiri frog trivets fully sourced from Goodwills and other local @thriftedil demic (Instagram as a platform doesn’t steal and ceramic pig trinkets, to ornate ashtrays and places. @eskiji_vintage a share) while also treating yourself, maybe stunning mirrors. Kain is Filipina American, queer, and dis- @dusty5anddime even snagging free local delivery along the way. Whether she’s searching for a requested item abled, and all of her work as a reseller revolves @whatsthatvintage Meet a few Chicagoans whose shops are very or stumbling upon a hidden gem she’d rather around giving back to these communities and @alsellsthings worth checking out: keep for herself, Martinez is all about the hunt, to the planet. Every month, 10 percent of her @eggysgems2020 22 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll PRIMARYPRIMARY CARECARE FROM YOUR COUCH
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ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 23 THEATER R READER RECOMMENDED b ALL AGES F
Bechdel Fest 8: Realign playwrights of trans and nonbinary, and the assumptions COURTESY BROKEN NOSE THEATRE that can follow both words. McAllister is not new to writing. At six, she was reviewing both ifi cation so extreme nobody’s even tried it yet the books she read and the movies that she IRL. The synopsis sounds akin to Black Mirror watched with her family. (Billy Jack got high meets Nip/Tuck meets Desperate Landscapes. marks.) “I think decentering men is at the core of McAllister’s theater training also started what the Bechdel Test is about,” Caudill says. early: Her mother directed student plays at “For the Fest, we’ve been and we are expand- North Chicago and Proviso East high schools, ing ‘women’ to include anyone who doesn’t so McAllister and her siblings were often identify as a cis man. From an institutional pressed into duty. They made costumes, fold- standpoint at Broken Nose, it has always been ed programs, stuffed envelopes, and some- about expanding the canon of American the- times took to the stage itself. ater. We have plenty of Glass Menageries and “I played Travis in A Raisin in the Sun at Hairsprays. Broken Nose is about creating North Chicago High School when I was in empathy for communities that haven’t been sixth grade because they couldn’t get enough amplified by that canon. And that’s not just boys to audition. It was always like, ‘Mom ‘women’ as they were defi ned years ago, it’s needs help with this, so let’s go,’” McAllister nonbinary and queer and trans people.” recalls. “When I was a senior, we did Crowns Iris Sowlat is in her rookie year with Be- and Fences, and I got to play Rose in Fences.” chdel Fest. While she’s primarily known as “But being on stage was never my main a director, she penned The Ladies Next Door thing,” she continues. “I wanted to write. The PLAYS TO WATCH OUT FOR (February 26) during the pandemic after her summer before my freshman year, our [Girl two directing gigs (Romeo and Juliet for Acci- Scout] troop leader took us to this health and dental Shakespeare and The Black Knight for wellness expo, and one of the events was this Bechdel at 36 Lifeboat Productions) were indefi nitely post- group called Reality Theater run by Omni poned due to COVID. “To me, the defi nition of Youth Services. They did an original play and At Broken Nose, the test has been tweaked. a woman is basically everybody who doesn’t I was like—hey? What? I can write a play? experience male privilege,” Sowlat says. That’s a thing people do? I asked them to let By C S “The original test was all about saying ‘let’s me join without acting, but they said no, I had not make men the default,’ and that hasn’t to do everything. So I did.” changed.” After that, she and her mother began scout- lison Bechdel’s iconic eponymous Be- Chicago’s Broken Nose Theatre has been an Sowlat’s 15-minute playlet toggles between ing for plays by Black authors and featuring chdel Test isn’t the same exam it was outlier, since 2013 scoring season after season the 1970s to the present as a young queer Black characters that they could bring to the Awhen the award-winning graphic writer of straight As on the Bechdels, even as ev- woman navigates a breakup in the very same schools. “We’d really hunt,” McAllister says. (Fun Home, Dykes to Watch Out For) created erything from Broadway (Harper Lee told To apartment where her lesbian aunt once had “We’d write our own things, do monologue it back in ye olden 1985. A quick refresher if Kill a Mockingbird from Scout’s POV, not her her own heart broken. nights we called ‘Different Perspectives.’ I you’ve been under a rock since then or are still father’s, but Aaron Sorkin’s 2018 stage ver- Sowlat wrote The Ladies Next Door over the mean, I just love stories. That’s how we com- entrenched in the patriarchy: In order to pass sion ignored that) to books (hello, Jonathan summer, but the idea for the piece came over a municate. That’s how we connect. Telling the Bechdel Test, stories—be they on stage, Franzen) kept failing. year ago, when she found herself openly sob- stories.” page, or screen—have to include at least two This year’s Bechdel Fest 8: Realign sallies bing in the middle of the Art Institute’s Andy The stories of Bechdel 8 face challenges like female characters. And those two women forth this month, pandemic be damned, with Warhol exhibit. Heartache (Sowlat demurs no other. have to talk at least once about something a virtual lineup of eight new 10- to 15-minute from specifi cs) propelled her to the member “As a director, it’s my job to make the room plays dealing with the theme of realignment. lounge, where she started a Google doc on an energized, positive place,” says Caudill. They’ll stream free every Friday from Jan- her phone. She reopened it post-lockdown, “That’s a whole lot harder to do on Zoom. You B F R uary 29 through March 26, on the theater’s eventually coming up with a four-character can’t rely on your body language. You’re ba- / -/ : available anytime through YouTube, brokennosetheatre.com F YouTube channel. (Currently, the plan is for drama that explores both family and romantic sically seeing people from the waist up. And each new play to replace the previous week’s relationships. everybody is under incredible stress. We’ve o ering.) “I wanted to write a kind of queer romantic all been depressed. We’ve all been miserable. other than men. Extra credit: The women have But the test itself has evolved since Bechdel comedy—I don’t think we see a lot of those,” It’s all di© cult. names. Fest debuted in the heart of the Obama admin- Sowlat says. “I also loved the idea of working “But I’m excited to do this play because When the test started exploding all over istration, says director JD Caudill, who marks history into it, and the concept of these inter- it shows trans and nonbinary people being pop culture in 1985, mainstream entertain- their fourth Fest this year. Bechdel 8, they generational relationships.” messy. I think there’s a tendency to show us ment overwhelmingly flunked. Today, we’re point out, includes pieces centered on tran- Asha McAllister is also writing for her in- as perfect people or as the villains. No room doing better: If 1985 was a straight F, we’re swomen, nonbinary, and queer characters. augural Bechdel Fest. Her work, How Strong in the middle, no room to be messy like every- now at a solid D-. (You can Google those re- Caudill is directing Lane Anthony Flores’s is Your Tree Pose? (February 12), takes place body else.” v ceipts yourself. As a femme of some 58 years, I going green (March 12), a futuristic tale of at a virtual yoga class, where the teacher and have grown weary of explaining it.) dysmorphic beauty standards and body mod- student attempt to navigate the definitions @CateySullivan 24 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll R READER RECOMMENDED b ALL AGES N NEW F Get showtimes and see reviews of everything playing this week at chicagoreader.com/movies. FILM
The White Tiger Stallone, Frank That Is R “If you have to have a friend, have a friend like Frank Stallone.” The newest documentary from Branded Some Kind of Heaven Studios, Stallone, Frank That Is, takes an in-depth look at R Some Kind of Heaven off ers an unfi ltered look the lesser-known of the Stallone brothers—Frank. From at life’s fi nal act. Following a small group of people his Italian upbringings in the northeast to a tumultuous living in Central Florida in The Villages, America’s larg- career, the documentary follows the highs and lows of est retirement community, the documentary calls to one of Hollywood’s most versatile performers. The doc mind early Errol Morris. Contrasting The Villages’ o en will charm those unfamiliar with Stallone’s career from refuted but persistent reputation as the “Disney World boxing to acting. It’s refreshing to take a look at an artist for old people,” the fi lm focuses on the residents who whose journey is mostly punctuated by several misses are unable to fi nd happiness within its walls. Most inter- and almosts. The fi lm also has incredible access with esting, perhaps, is Dennis, a lifelong partier who lives in interviews from Frank’s loved ones as well as Hollywood NOW PLAYING In the Shadow of Women); it makes sense, then, that his van but visits The Villages daily in hopes of fi nding a giants like Frankie Avalon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, these fi lms are of a piece in how they explore scenarios rich woman to take him in. Both necessity and delusion and Billy Dee Williams. What sets the movie apart from Promising Young Woman centered on younger people while still conveying hard- fuel his desire, which comes to a head when he remarks other similar where-are-they-now documentaries is that R Promising Young Woman is a candy-coated killer learned profundities about life. This in particular evokes that one can have comfort or freedom, but never both. Stallone explores the challenges of carving your own of a fi lm. Following Cassandra (Carey Mulligan), who, like a sublime futility that makes one question not just Whether about the local gri er or a recent widow, each path when you’re living in the shadow of an uber-famous the movie itself, is sweet on the outside and a little scary love, but existence itself. Luc (Logann Antuofermo), an story is beautifully shot and allowed to unfold organically, celebrity. What’s it like to be the brother of Michael on the inside, viewers are treated to a timely thriller that assistant joiner who aspires to attend the École Boulle enabling an authentic rumination on life and the rela- Jackson or the sister of Beyoncé? You’ll have to watch takes on society’s history of favoring men’s futures over in Paris so that he may become a cabinet maker—the tionships that sustain it. —B J 81 min. Facets Stallone to fi nd out. —N D L 73 min. Wide women’s lives. A er Cassandra’s best friend Nina suff ers dream of his wizened and warmhearted father (André Virtual Cinema, Gene Siskel Film Center From Your release on VOD a campus sexual assault, which goes unaddressed by Wilms)—starts seeing Djemila (Oulaya Amamra). Soon Sofa, Music Box at Home peers and professors, she takes matters into her own a er he takes up with Geneviève (Louise Chevillotte), The White Tiger hands, avenging Nina by torturing all involved. Her and then Betsy (Souheila Yacoub). Luc is a cad, albeit Spoor R This tightly wound drama off ers a salty take on tactics are wicked and are sure to raise some questions a gentle one, who regularly mistreats the women in R Spoor is the latest fi lm from one of Poland’s the classic rags-to-riches story, here set in India. Balram about justice, thanks to writer-director Emerald Fennell’s his life under the pretense of being skeptical about most prolifi c and infl uential fi lmmakers to hit the United (Adarsh Gourav) is a driver for the wealthy Ashok creative and cutting work. This debut feature suff ers, love; the tables are turned when he fi nally does fall in States. Adapted from the novel Drive Your Plough Over (Rajkummar Rao) and Pinky (Priyanka Chopra Jonas). however, from an at-home viewing. From its captivating love with Betsy, only for her to require that her other the Bones of the Dead, Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor One night, an accident sets off a chain of events that visuals, which off er an array of stylized girliness, to its lover join them in their small apartment. The pitfalls of follows Duszejko (Agniezska Mandat), a retired civil cause the cruelty of contemporary capitalism to come fantastical plot, to a banger scene soundtracked by Paris unripe romance are balanced here by a distinct timeless- engineer who loves astrology and taking care of animals into sharp focus, leaving both Balram and the audience Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind,” it’s a shame this one isn’t safe ness: cellphones are around but not omnipresent, and in a remote mountain village on the Czech-Polish border. in the wake of a series of dizzying moral dilemmas. to see on the big screen. —B J 113 min. In the characters haunt quaint cafes and inconspicuous But when her precious dogs suddenly go missing—and Gourav’s performance as Balram is particularly winning, wide release on VOD back-alley discos. Renato Berta’s melancholy black-and- gruesome, unexplained murders start to occur during displaying a talent that exhibits equal parts baroque white cinematography and the tranquil soundtrack by diff erent hunting seasons—Duszejko is determined to fl exibility and emotional subtlety. Readers of the Booker The Salt of Tears Jean-Louis Aubert heighten the fi lm’s elegiac sentiment. fi nd out what exactly is going on, even if nobody takes Prize-winning novel by Aravind Adiga upon which the R The three screenwriters of this fi lm were all A choreographed dance scene at the aforementioned her unusual theories seriously. Holland colors the town fi lm is based may fi nd the adaptation lacking in the dark born before 1950, yet it aptly probes the experiences of club feels somewhat out of place but injects the som- with a dynamic cast of characters, but it’s Duszejko’s sense of humor that so eff ortlessly carried the novel’s several modern-day young people as they navigate their ber narrative with a feeling of life waiting to be lived; unreliability and paranoia that command this fi lm. Spoor social critiques. Still, director Ramin Bahrani makes up precarious romantic aff airs. Veteran French director sporadic narration seems to warn, however, that this is can feel a bit bloated and sprawling at times, but Hol- for the occasional dourness with a relentless pace that Philippe Garrel cowrote this with fellow luminaries Jean- a tale of the past, that the characters’ fates are already land keeps its audience engaged with every confusing delivers a harrowing, anxious, all-too-familiar story. In Claude Carrière and Arlette Langmann, with whom written. —K S 100 min. Gene Siskel Film and confl icting step of the mystery. —C C English and Hindi with subtitles. —N L C 126 he’s written his last couple features (Lover for a Day, Center From Your Sofa 128 min. In wide release on VOD min. Netflix v
ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 25 Matt Piet at the Hungry Brain pre-COVID MORGAN CIESIELSKI FINDING WAYS p TO lay
26 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll Chicago improvisers Tim Daisy he joined Ken Vandermark’s fl agship band, the Instead, Daisy busied himself mostly with As Mori sent back fi nished tracks, Daisy heard and Matt Piet have responded to Vandermark 5, and his loose, propulsive sense parenting. “I have a son who’s four and a daugh- his sounds doing things he never does. “My solo of swing and knack for enhancing his collabora- ter who’s one,” he says. “These kids are both marimba playing is linear and one note at a the challenges of COVID by learning tors’ strengths in totally unscripted situations so wonderful! Also, they are quite a handful, time. But her process of reimagining it included new ways to record alone. kept him in demand as a sideman. especially with limited childcare during the adding echoes of what I had done, and all of this Daisy didn’t wait to launch his own projects, pandemic. They have afforded me an ability other material, which added this depth that I By B M though, and in 2003 he made Relay Signals, his to connect on a deep level with them, because think can be lacking when you only hear the solo fi rst album as a bandleader. In 2011, determined I’m with them so much—I’m not traveling, and marimba,” he says. “She really fi lled it out. And he COVID-19 pandemic has put tens of to have an outlet that would let him put out my wife is working. It has given me something for some of the other material on the record, she millions of Americans out of work, but records promptly—as opposed to the European really positive to focus on during what has not would take two fi les, so one would be, for exam- even considering that bleak landscape, labels he’d been depending on, which often took been an entirely positive year. I’m really thank- ple, just the rims of the snare drum, like a very musicians have been hit especially more than a year—he founded his own label, ful that I have them to take care of, because if Morse-code approach, very pointillistic, and hard—most of their jobs only barely exist Relay Recordings. they weren’t here and it was just me, I feel like then something with mallets and a fl oor tom. By Tnow, and the infrastructure that might allow Up through 2014, Daisy toured the U.S. and I would be sitting in front of my computer not using her sounds and her processing, she sculpt- them to return someday is in danger of collaps- Europe frequently, often in bands led by Rempis doing anything or thinking a little too much ed them into this completely new piece.” ing. Festivals have been canceled, larger concert or Vandermark. Then in 2015, he re organized his about what’s going on and going into depres- On Light and Shade, which comes out Feb- halls closed, and smaller clubs either shuttered priorities. “I absolutely love being on the road. sion. If you want a cure for depression, man, ruary 1 through Relay Recordings, Mori not or restricted to fractions of their usual audienc- I love everything about it, even the stuff that have a couple kids, because you don’t have time only creates new music by disassembling and es. At least in the States, no one is touring. In sucks,” he says. “But when my wife and I made a to be depressed.” reassembling Daisy’s tracks; she also draws out Chicago, many of the venues that stage jazz and decision to raise a family, I did not want to be an Daisy also returned to his drum set, this time and enhances the movement in his playing by improvised music have either been streaming artist who wasn’t around very often.” playing it put together. “After the process of adding ephemeral events that scatter and swirl pay-what-you-will concerts or sitting dark So Daisy cut back on touring, restricting him- going through all of these di erent solo record- around his drumbeats. The effect creates the since March. The disappearance of in-person self to one or two weeks per year in Europe and ings with turntables and radios and different mercurial excitement of live performance even performance opportunities hurts worse in this all but giving up on the stateside circuit (a deci- materials, I went back to the four-piece drum set though the two artists were never in the same context, since the music thrives upon—and in sion most of his peers had made years earlier, with two cymbals,” he says. What he found, and room. fact usually requires—real-time interaction deeming it a losing proposition). He redirected what he demonstrates on the September 2020 Daisy is still pondering where this project between players. his energy to local activities and the occasional digital release Room to Breathe, was that several might point him next. “Usually, after I fi nish a Percussionist Tim Daisy, 44, and pianist Matt weekend trip within the midwest. He ramped up years of managing an array of sound sources by project, I put it down and I’m thinking about my Piet, 34, have lost all or nearly all their gigs, like Relay’s release schedule and took an active role himself had sharpened his ability to work with next move,” he says. “I can’t think of anything most performers. But in other ways these Chi- in curating and presenting the Option Series, a the rudiments of rhythm and silence on the kit. yet. I know it’s going to come to me, but right cago musicians have been fortunate—because hybrid concert and salon hosted by Experimen- Over the summer, Daisy played a live- now, I have to sit for a while before I decide neither depends on performance income to tal Sound Studio. streamed concert and three outdoor duos with what’s next.” survive, the worst of the pandemic’s e ects have With his extra time at home, Daisy also Rempis. But as 2020 drew to a close, he set out passed them by. Piet, who lives in La Grange, has focused on a solo practice he’d recently begun to do something that acknowledged the limits nlike Daisy, Piet embarked on some lengthy held a day job in sales since before COVID, and evolving. He’d already added marimba and the year had imposed on his music. “I thought detours on his way to playing free jazz in it allows him to work from his apartment. Daisy vibes to his instrumentation, and he began of doing a record with somebody processing UChicago. He grew up in Palos Park, where is married and lives in Evanston with his wife, experimenting with disassembling his drum kit my solo sound, to kind of take advantage of the he took up piano at age ten. He showed early Emma, who works as a family physician and and spreading out its components on the fl oor, remoteness of 2020 and the COVID pandemic.” promise, and before he reached his teens he geriatrician, and for most of the past four years alongside a collection of transistor radios and He reached out to New York-based electronic was playing cocktail piano and classical music he’s been a stay-at-home dad who also teaches Califone turntables. A series of Relay releases musician Ikue Mori, who’d played a 2017 trio at parties, charity events, and recitals. He also private drum lessons. documents the deeply psychedelic e ect of Dai- concert at the Hungry Brain with him and fellow accompanied a local children’s choir outside That’s not to say that either Daisy or Piet had sy’s real-time mash-ups of unpredictable audio drummer Phil Sudderberg. Mori, who drummed of school, an experience that taught him how anything like the 2020 he’d expected. At the from the radios, vinyl surface noise, and struck for no-wave trio DNA four decades ago, has be- to engage with an ensemble. “That was really beginning of the year, both men were ready to metal and wood. come a master improviser on the laptop, using it instrumental in developing my ear beyond just spend the year developing new projects and Daisy released the last of those records, to marshal sounds into dreamlike sequences of what you do at the piano,” he recalls. renewing others—Daisy wanted to reinvest in Sereno, in January 2020, and considers that line color and event. Daisy is no stranger to working Piet first heard jazz at age 17, when he at- ensemble playing after concentrating for years of musical inquiry closed (at least for now). He with electronic musicians who sample and tended a summer camp at the Berklee College on cultivating a solo practice, and Piet was was looking forward to rededicating himself to tweak his acoustic output, but he’d always done of Music in Boston, and he went on to study it ready to return to making music in general, hav- ensemble ventures: In July, he planned to recon- so in real-time exchanges. This time, he submit- there. After graduating from Berklee in 2008, he ing recovered from an incapacitating personal vene his chamber ensemble, Vox 4, for a concert ted to virtual collaboration. “It’s a selection of briefl y enrolled in Indiana University’s graduate crisis. The pandemic derailed their plans, but and recording. In September, he was going to re- solo material on drum set, turntables, radios, program and then went to work on cruise ships they adapted by drawing on the improvisational vive Trio Red Space, with saxophonist Mars Wil- marimba—everything that I’ve been using up to for several years as a solo pianist and bandlead- spirit that informs their music. Each ended up liams and trombonist Jeb Bishop. And in Octo- this point,” Daisy says. “I sent her a total of 12 or er. “I would sometimes return to Chicago, and trying an unprecedented experiment and mak- ber, he intended to record a series of duets with 13 fi les, and I said, ‘You reimagine the material.’” one of those times that I returned was in 2013, ing an album that might never have existed if locals (including Piet) and out-of-towners. “I In an e-mail, Mori explains the process from when Constellation opened,” he says. Feeling COVID hadn’t happened. did have one tour on the books that I was real- her end. “Tim’s Light and Shade was all about stifl ed by his cruise-ship work and inspired by Born and raised near Waukegan, Daisy moved ly looking forward to, with the great Austrian remixing and reconstructing. He asked me to the musicians he’d heard back home, Piet reset- to Chicago in 1997 expressly to play jazz and pianist Elisabeth Harnik,” Daisy says. “She put a do whatever I liked with his percussion tracks. tled here in 2014. improvised music. He fi rst fell in with a group band together with myself, Fred Lonberg-Holm, I was very excited, not only adding my sounds, Alongside the gigs he took to make money, of players, among them Dave Rempis, Jason and Dave Rempis, and we had planned to do a but using all the beautiful materials to make playing cocktail piano and accompanying choirs, Adasiewicz, and Frank Rosaly, who were near tour of Europe for her 50th birthday celebration new composition. I have done a few remixing Piet began seeking out people with whom he his age and shared his DIY mindset. In 2002, in May. Of course, that didn’t happen.” projects, but not a whole album before.” could improvise freely. He frequently attended ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 27 continued from 27 “I thought, how am I supposed to think of Piet had stopped booking creative-music gigs interactive and improvisatory.’” Sound of the City, a Wednesday-night workshop what I did a year ago as anything special, when after the June 2018 release party for City in a At the end of June, Piet spent a single day in at Constellation that combined a set by an es- this person did this for years and years and Garden, and in October of that year he started the studio. Inspired by the overdubbed exper- tablished ensemble with a jam session. “That’s really put so much work into it?” Piet says. “I his current day job. This allowed him to get iments of Lennie Tristano and Bill Evans, the where I met a lot of younger people, or contem- woke up to what a long game being an improvis- back on medication—this time a new treatment multipiano compositions of Morton Feldman poraries of mine who were going on a regular er or even being a musician really is. And so I had that included antidepressants to alleviate his and John Adams, and the composition Tone- basis to jam,” he says. to reconcile what I had stolen from him, if I had, anhedonia. He rented his La Grange apartment burst (Piece for Three Trombones Simultane- During this period, Piet attended to more for the ways that he had inspired me, but also in January 2019, and by the end of the year, he’d ously) by trombonist George Lewis, he set him- than his musical development—he also decided the ways that he had paved the way for someone stabilized and felt ready to return to music. “I self the task of recording three layers of his own to call in reinforcements in his fight against like me to just get up and play a lot of notes on was hoping to get back out there more regularly, piano. First he’d improvise from a set of cues, alcoholism and mental illness, which had been the piano and have an audience say, well, we’ve maybe try to switch up what sort of groups I was and then he’d play two accompanying tracks in brewing since his early 20s. “Right as I was heard Cecil Taylor, so we accept that.” leading,” he says. “But moreover, I was just on quick succession, listening to what he’d already moving to Chicago and I quit ships, I was fi nally Taylor hadn’t just expanded the universe of the precipice of saying, OK, I know who I am as played through headphones and improvising taking some steps to address my issues with musical possibility, thus giving Piet space to do a musician, I know how to let that music out.” responses to it. addiction and with mental health,” he says. “In what he wanted; he’d also provided an example Instead, he spent the spring locked down at his “I think it’s funny that in order to get myself hindsight, I was probably improperly medicated of how to survive and thrive as a queer man in parents’ home in the south suburbs. outside of what I thought would be really for several years, because it’s tough to get the jazz. Piet was keenly aware that he hadn’t faced Piet turned the circumstances to his ad- self-indulgent, which would be a solo piano right thing going. I was immediately diagnosed the same challenges as Taylor. “I’ve never had vantage by honing his piano skills. “By June, I record, I had to make more of myself,” Piet with bipolar disorder and thrown into the any issue within the community with being had been in quarantine with my folks for three says. “It helped rein me in to a degree, because world of heavy antipsychotics, which felt like I knew that if I just shot out all of these notes on a chemical lobotomy for a while. I think that the fi rst take, I would be muddying the waters what kept me stable from the time that I came somewhat. I was really concerned about using to Chicago was actually much more sobriety and these three passes to bring out things that were the access to music than it was the psychiatric specifi c to the timbre of the piano itself.” medication.” The 15 tracks on (Pentimento), released last By 2016, Piet was clicking not only with his week by Bill Harris’s Chicago-based Amalgam peers (including saxophonist Jake Wark and label, are sparser and more lyrical than the drummer Bill Harris, who play with him in Four mercurial music that Piet has played in his Letter Words) but also with improvisers ten regular trios. “I didn’t want to ask too much of years his senior. The night after the 2016 presi- the audience’s ear,” he says. “That’s why it’s only dential election, he played a concert with two of 30 minutes, and that’s why each track is two to those older musicians, Dave Rempis and Daisy. three minutes at most. They’re all part of a set “We all sort of came in and aired our grievanc- of vignettes that are exploring what the piano es about what we had just found out, and then is capable of doing if there were three people after that we just played,” Piet says. “It was very playing.” good.” “It’s something that I only would have done Between May and July 2017, Piet recorded under these circumstances,” Piet continues. “It’s Rummage Out (Clean Feed) with Daisy, Josh both a document of a time and an experiment Berman, and Nick Mazzarella; Throw Tomatoes Tim Daisy MAREK LAZARSKI that maybe I would have done at some point in (Astral Spirits) with Daisy and Rempis; and City my life, but I probably won’t ever do it again. So in a Garden (Ears & Eyes), a collection of small- it’s nice to fi nally get a creative work fi nished group encounters with a variety of other local bisexual; it has never been a source of shame months. That’s where my piano resides, and in a solid way and be able to ask myself, ‘What players who were all finding their footing at or really any trouble for me, except for how you that’s where I started to really get my chops in comes next?’ Because I don’t know. It won’t be around the same time. In every setting, Piet is an have to come out to people,” he says. “In my line on multiple fronts,” he says. “Each day I another one of these records, and it won’t be assertive and fl exible improviser, equally adept case, as someone who is largely involved in ro- would sit down, and maybe I was juggling a few anything I’ve ever done before, but it will be a at managing his own dense fl ows of sound, using mantic relationships with women, it’s this other di erent plates of concepts—you know, general continuation of these things.” darting figures to set up his partners’ forays, thing that, if it doesn’t come up, it doesn’t come technique, classical music, tunes, improvisa- Given the impossibility of reproducing (Pen- and putting his hands into the piano’s interior to up. But at the same time, it is part of my identity. tional music—and I would just sit down and feel timento) live, Piet’s fi rst step was to celebrate its wrench out rainbows of resonance. If anything, I’m just all the more aware of any- out what I wanted to do at that time. If I wanted release by playing a livestreamed concert last By all appearances, Piet should’ve had a good one like Cecil, who never had the generational to play Chopin for an hour, I played Chopin for week at Constellation with Four Letter Words, year in 2018, but things went seriously awry. He luxury to really be out. That added to the guilt, an hour. If I wanted to play bebop, I’d do that.” his trio with Wark and Harris. Daisy hasn’t lost his insurance and went o his meds (with- to say OK, this guy struggled in so many other Soon Piet started itching to do something scheduled any sort of record-release event, out insurance, they cost him more than $2,000 ways, but I shouldn’t.” more creative. He considered making a conven- but between the virtual collaboration on Light per month), and the death of pianist Cecil The negativity that consumed Piet came as tional solo album, but he didn’t want to record and Shade and the all-acoustic solo drum-kit Taylor in April hit him hard. Taylor had been a his recording career took several leaps forward without an audience. He needed a different explorations on Room to Breathe, he’s opened a personal hero of Piet’s, and as he refl ected on in quick succession. “At the time that I had two approach. “The idea went from ‘OK, I gotta do range of creative options for himself. It’s futile Taylor’s life, his increasingly intrusive thoughts and then a third big release coming, I couldn’t something and I gotta do it in the studio because to guess what form each artist’s next recording cast a pall over his ability to take satisfaction handle it mentally, and that crept into my there is no other way,’ to maybe 15 minutes later will take, but even if the music business returns in his own accomplishments. He felt fraudulent playing, where I was not able to play or to enjoy saying, ‘I don’t know, I hate the idea of over- to something like normal in the foreseeable because he’d benefi ted from Taylor’s creativity music of any kind,” he says. “If I went to a show, dubbing things, but I think I have to do it that future, they’ll still need the fl exibility and cre- and struggle for acceptance but hadn’t needed I was restless, and I really didn’t purchase much way. I have to challenge myself to construct, in ativity they had to learn during the pandemic in to put in as much e ort himself. music most of 2019 or listen to anything.” the same process every time, something that is order to stay in the game. v 28 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 29 Recommended and notable releases and critics’ insights for the week of January 21 MUSIC
PICK OF THE WEEK Patricia Brennan, Maquishti Valley of Search Chicago emo trio Hospital Bracelet burst out of the gate patriciabrennan.bandcamp.com/album/ maquishti with South Loop Summer When used in the improvisatory style pioneered by performers such as Lionel Hampton, the vibra- phone is traditionally a clanging, percussive, hard- charging instrument. The marimba is arguably best known for providing the hip-shaking back- bone for many traditional Latin musics. New York composer Patricia Brennan takes both instru- ments in more delicate and less sweaty directions. Her debut album, Maquishti (Valley of Search), is a solo tour de force in which she uses unusu- al techniques to create gossamer fl utters and cas- cades of crystal tones. Less percussive charge than ambient meditation, the music invites you to lean back and fl oat into its shimmer, and it works nice- ly as a pleasant background for work and/or a nap. Thankfully the album also rewards closer listen- ing, as songs coalesce out of the improvised bliss. The first single, “Sonnet,” is almost six minutes of brief bursts of sound that wander around spa- cious pauses, alternating stochastic touches with elegant scales. “Solar” makes an explicit connec- tion between Brennan’s approach and electroni- ca: she adds eff ects to make each mallet-fall bend and doppler, creating smears of sound and pitch from the vibraphone’s usually distinct notes. “Magic Square” works up a bit more speed, with figures that resolve into patterns of repeated rhythms that suggest a more laid-back version of the minimalist Midori Takada masterpiece Through the Looking Glass. Part of the joy of Maquishti is its oddity; in the computer age, almost no sounds feel strange in and of themselves, but there’s something won- derful about hearing instruments you thought you knew turned to such counterintuitive but lovely purposes. —N B
Crazy Doberman, Two Tales of Lost Witness Marks Aguirre aguirrerecords.bandcamp.com/album/two-tales- of-lost-witness-marks
Crazy Doberman are an Indiana free-improvisation and jazz collective created in 2016 as an off shoot of the group Doberman, started three years before. MATT PETRYGAL Core members, including Tim Gick and Doberman cofounder Drew Davis, appear on many record- ings, but Crazy Doberman’s lineup is loose—it var- Hospital Bracelet, South Loop Summer ies on each of the band’s 40-plus albums and has Counter Intuitive featured dozens of musicians, among them Wolf hospitalbracelet.bandcamp.com Eyes’ John Olson and percussionist Tyler Damon. While diff erent albums have diff erent fl avors—This Land God Has Abandoned is all brooding mystique, while --- / Haunted, Non / Haunted features some of INCHICAGOANERICCHRISTOPHER launched Hospital Bracelet topher brought to their solo acoustic material, most obviously on new their most acerbic electronics—there’s a tightness and sustained energy on every recording. Their lat- as a solo act: they began by releasing a couple of loose singles, whose versions of two songs from Neutrality Acoustic. On South Loop Sum- est LP, Two Tales of Lost Witness Marks (Aguirre), disarming mix of overca einated, looping acoustic guitars and ten- mer, Hospital Bracelet strap a rocket to “Sour OG RPG,” intensifying the employs eight performers on two long-form tracks der, showstopping vocals bore fruit with 2019’s Neutrality Acoustic song’s frenzied spirit while maintaining their own fi rm composure. The that unfurl at a steady, enveloping pace. “Tale One in Five Parts” begins plainly enough, with chimes EP. They’ve since recruited bassist Arya Woody and drummer Manae tight, muscular feel that Hammond and Woody bring to the music helps and droning, and then revs into something more Hammond (of synth-pop duo Oux) to turn Hospital Bracelet into a full make Hospital Bracelet one of the brightest emerging bands in town. ominous by bringing in synths, a steady bass line, band. The trio’s new debut full-length, South Loop Summer (Counter “Sheetz vs Wawa,” which balances airy guitar against a tidal wave of and weeping strings. It’s equal parts murky and mischievous, and when its first section eventually Intuitive), draws even more deeply on the supercharged energy Chris- a chorus, is already on my list of 2021’s best emo songs. —L G comes to a sudden halt, it segues into a cavernous 30 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll MUSIC
Patricia Brennan NOEL BRENNAN 엔도 Endo COURTESY THE ARTIST
soundscape defi ned by fi ligrees of piano, voice, and raps, but he’s also keen on complementing gentle ed light rays into sound. The album’s name evokes West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, and Os more strings. The piece goes on to mutate into two instrumentals by dialing back his vocals to a simmer. another aspect of cleaning out your closet—that of Mutantes. other distinct passages, but the thoughtful pacing On “Everything,” Endo plays off the rubbery bounce being lost in uneasy reverie a er being confronted These heady influences also appear on The and arrangements consistently maintain a disori- of the chattering instrumental with a carefree joy anew with parts of your life that you’ve tucked away. Ghost Host Vol. 1, the new album from Vaus’s trio enting mood that leaves listeners ready for whatev- that could propel the track onto a pop-centric Spo- While Family Secret doesn’t sound like anything else Reality Anonymous, formed in 2018. They recorded er sonic reverie the band provide next. The B side, tify playlist. —L G that Mueller’s done, it shares similarities with his the album at Chicago studio Mystery Street, which “Tale Two in Four Parts,” by contrast opens with previous work in its uncanny ability to use sounds to bills itself as the city’s only solar-powered recording numerous sharp edits that disrupt any smooth fl ow. stir nameless emotions. —BM facility. The lead single, “I Love Her Everywhere,” This heady passage acts as an intoxicating entryway Jon Mueller, Family Secret recalls innocent minor-key 60s garage bands such to a loose, spiraling psychedelic jam that eventual- American Dreams as the Rising Storm and Lazy Smoke, alongside ly climaxes with noisy haze. The track’s second half rhythmplex.bandcamp.com/album/family-secret Reality Anonymous, The Ghost Host 80s San Francisco Paisley Underground bands the grows even more immersive, and by its final sec- Vol. 1 Three O’Clock and the Rain Parade (the latter of tion it sounds like a live improv set in the middle of When COVID-19 shut down live music last March, Night World which Vaus has called a personal favorite). Reali- a tornado. But even through a storm, Crazy Dober- Jon Mueller was among the many musicians nightworldrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ ty Anonymous adorn the mournful opening track, man stay cohesive. Play Two Tales loud and feel its who found himself with an empty schedule. The reality-anonymous-the-ghost-host-vol-1 “Penny,” with some great fuzz- and vibrato-soaked power take hold of you. —J M K Wisconsin-based percussionist found some time guitars, and on the epic organ dirge “New Fire” I during lockdown to clean out his closet, where he Chicago’s music scene is rich, colorful, and full of hear a heavy Jim Morrison influence (or maybe a found a box of unmarked CD-Rs that bore record- variety—even during the pandemic—but in recent bit of Phantom’s Divine Comedy, an early-70s band 엔도 Endo, Gemini ed evidence of music he’d made in the past and long years I haven’t noticed much of what I call “weird that folks who suspected Morrison had faked his Self-released forgotten. A er listening to these artifacts, he start- pop,” exemplified in decades past by strangely death thought might actually be the Doors). Vaus’s endo96.bandcamp.com/album/gemini ed editing their best parts into new tracks, which hooky local acts such as the Children’s Hour, the postpunk roots show on the subliminally catchy he donated to a couple of compilation albums, Aluminum Group, and Bobby Conn. I guess we “Fry Guy” and “Out of Nowhere,” which recall the Chicago rapper 엔도 Endo began releasing his including Pandemic Response Division (on local just needed some fresh blood—for example, Lyn second Television album, literate Aussie new-pop dance-indebted tracks in 2018, and he’s since gravi- label Spectral Electric) and We Hovered With Short Vaus, a seasoned musician who moved to Chica- geniuses the Go-Betweens, and arty UK janglers tated toward a loose collective of experimental pop, Wings (on UK label Gizeh). Over the past decade, go in 2016. Vaus grew up in Los Angeles, Iran, and such as Felt and the Chameleons. The 16-track hip-hop, and dance musicians supported by pro- Mueller’s albums have documented his performance Boston, where he had a noisy postpunk band called album concludes with the darkly dreamy “The Rest duction company Reset Presents. It booked Endo concepts, so it was a freeing paradigm shi for him Carnal Garage. A er “State of Shock,” a song from in Peace,” whose loner private-press vibe reminds for his fi rst live set in February 2019, on a show that to construct music with no thought as to wheth- the group’s lone cassette album, landed on the me of rarities such as Damon’s late-60s psych- also featured rising locals such as R&B artist Hxry er he could play it live when he was done. He’s car- soundtrack for the 1992 movie The Lawnmower folk masterpiece Song of a Gypsy. Together, these and rapper Mohawk Johnson. (In March of that ried that practice into the new album Family Secret, Man, Vaus started working in the fi lm industry. But deep songs look to the past and future, and ought year, Johnson appeared on the volcanic Endo sin- created using recordings of gongs and singing he retained his Boston music connections and split to help Chicago become a weird-pop haven once gle “Burn It Up.”) Endo recruited Reset founder bowls he made in 2020 at his Door County home; his time between there and LA while recording his again. —SK Camden Stacey to coproduce his new self-released its four pieces of music are simultaneously dense 2010 project, The Floating Celebration. In a 2011 album, Gemini, a taut blend of ostentatious dance, and ethereal. Sometimes the ringing of struck metal interview with It’s Psychedelic Baby, Vaus described eff ervescent pop, and exacting hip-hop. Endo raps brings to mind the centering sounds of Harry Ber- his vison as “a late night coming down or Sunday Shame, Drunk Tank Pink in English and Korean, switching between the two toia’s metal sculptures, and elsewhere the album’s morning record, with a somewhat jazzy-psychedelic- Dead Oceans languages as casually as he might fl ip a light switch. long, layered passages of sustained reverberations chamber-folk-vibe,” and name-checked influences shamebanduk.bandcamp.com/album/drunk-tank- He sharpens every single syllable of his staccato seem less like music than a translation of refract- from psychedelia and tropicalia such as Love, the pink ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 31 Find more music reviews at MUSIC chicagoreader.com/soundboard.
Jon Mueller STEPHAN ANDERSON Lyn Vaus of Reality Anonymous COURTESY THE ARTIST continued from 31 explaining that when the constant stream of band made the right call when they decided not Saba, Noname, Mick Jenkins, and Chance the Rap- In the face of uncertainty and fear, some people shows stopped, Shame suddenly found themselves to sweep their private problems under the rug— per. Among them is Aurelius “Trey” Raines III, an would rather climb back into the proverbial womb. struggling with questions of adulthood—especially instead they battled them head-on and opened a educator and rapper who records as the Third. On For Shame vocalist Charlie Steen, “the womb” was how to form personal identities outside the band. hard-earned new chapter. —J L his 2019 debut, Cursive, he gives his listeners the a nickname for a tiny laundry space that had been Those themes coalesce on Drunk Tank Pink, lay of the land with “Soundcloud Rapper”: in a fi rm converted into a bedroom in the apartment he where Shame move beyond the electrifying albeit fl ow that makes him sound like he’s fl oating on air, shared with guitarist Sean Coyle-Smith. It proved somewhat pro forma postpunk of their debut The Third, Director’s Cut he names several of Chicago’s fi nest young MCs, itself the perfect place for him to draft lyrics for to explore new sounds and rhythms. The single Self-released whose visions have inspired him. When Trey name- the UK postpunk band’s second album, Drunk Tank “Nigel Hitter” feels like a tribute to the propulsive solo.to/thethirdraps checks, say, Femdot and Matt Muse, his intimate Pink, named for the supposedly calming shade of rhythms of ESG, cited by Coyle-Smith as a major familiarity suggests that his interactions with them paint on the room’s walls. The five-piece group, influence, while the disjointed textures of “Harsh The past decade of Chicago hip-hop would be go deeper than fandom. He’s definitely learned formed in 2014 when its members were still in Degrees” beg to be unraveled like a puzzle. No entirely diff erent without Young Chicago Authors from many young local greats fi rsthand; he’s a You- high school, rose to international fame with their matter your age or background, if you’ve spent and the Harold Washington Library’s YouMedia Media open-mike veteran and a 2019 recipient of breakout 2018 debut, Songs of Praise. During a nearly a year in some sort of pandemic-related lab. Both have served as creative hubs for local a John Walt Foundation young artist scholarship break from heavy touring in 2019, the bandmates isolation, Steen’s soul-searching lyrics ought to feel teens, and their storied weekly open mikes—You- (the foundation also connected him with mem- realized that diving into the unconventional lifestyle relatable—they sometimes come across more like Media’s Lyricist Loft and YCA’s WordPlay—have bers of Pivot Gang). Trey’s got his sights set on a of working musicians at such young ages had taken an inner monologue than a journal entry. Plenty of given many beloved Chicago rappers their starts. spot among his hometown heroes, and on his new a toll on them mentally, emotionally, and socially. punk attitude remains, notably on “Great Dog” and In the 2020s, a new generation of emerging MCs self-released EP, The Director’s Cut, he makes a “We were like tourists in our own adolescence,” opener “Alphabet,” but Shame’s relatively mature has already begun building atop the hip-hop eco- great case for himself. He sounds as assured as Steen told The Independent in a recent interview, swagger and experimental turns prove that the system nurtured and reinforced by the likes of any of the seasoned rappers in his sphere, and
32 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll MUSIC
Shame COURTESY THE ARTIST Wardruna COURTESY THE ARTIST
that confi dence gives his smooth delivery a strong the infl uential Gorgoroth—they’re also inspired by of those values. Of course, the Nazis borrowed mal spirits. (“Kvitravn” means “white raven,” a famil- backbone. Trey brings sun-dappled joy to the light, Norse folk traditions, so their sound isn’t express- lots of Norse symbolism when they aligned them- iar spirit Selvik has often invoked.) The band play slippery funk of “Be Water (H20 Flow),” and his car- ly metal. I wouldn’t say it’s not metal at all, though: selves with the delusional occult ideal of a master with the energy of metal, and even the album’s ing self-encouragement is contagious—it’s helped the emotional scope of the music makes it feel race, and since then it’s been abused by adherents gentlest moments, such as “Munin” (“Memory,” me fi ght the grayness I’ve felt all around me for the like metal, but because it’s played on tradition- of other far-right and extremist ideologies. “QAnon and also the name of one of Odin’s ravens), have past ten months. As long as people like Trey keep al Norse instruments, it also has an organic vibe Shaman” Jacob Chansley (also known as Jake a stiff-spined, elegiac quality. “Kvit Hjort” (“White contributing to our world, bad times will be tempo- that feels steeped in ancient history. That combi- Angeli), for instance, whose face paint and horned Deer”) opens with a reverent, tender sound like a rary. —L G nation has resonated far beyond the underground headdress made him a poster boy of the January 6 hunter’s horn over so drums (as close as Wardru- metal scene: in 2014 the band worked with com- attack on the U.S. Capitol, is covered in runic tat- na get to jazz), then turns into a soul-stirring chant. poser Trevor Morris on the score for the Histo- toos. This sort of appropriation is a huge problem Kvitravn culminates in the nearly 11-minute “And- Wardruna, Kvitravn ry Channel’s Vikings series (and Selvik also made in the Norse-based pagan community as well as in vevarljod” (“Song of the Spirit Weavers”), which By Norse on-screen appearances). The success of that proj- the metal scene, where the taint of fascism is still unites the record’s themes—forest-based pagan wardruna.com ect helped propel the band’s third album, 2016’s so strong that it’s become important for artists to spirituality, animism, and rising above and resist- Runaljod–Ragnarok (the third chapter of a trilogy stand up and make their positions clear. Selvik, who ing political dominance, cultural theft, and reli- Wardruna’s fi h full-length was due last June, but inspired by the 24 runes of pre-Germanic alpha- also gives lectures about pagan history and spir- gious imperialism—into the satisfying climax of due to the pandemic, the Norwegian neo-prog-folk bet the Elder Futhark), to the number one spot on ituality, has emphatically used his music to reclaim what’s essentially been a ritual performance. This band bumped the release date of Kvitravn to this the Billboard world albums chart. Norse imagery, Nordic folk from the far right. intense, unrestrained album has been held back for January. Though Wardruna were born out of Nor- and Norse runes in particular, have been appropri- Kvitravn is an elaborate production that involves far too long, but now it can fi nally give listeners a way’s black-metal scene—two of the band’s three ated by fascists and white supremacists, but Norse more than a dozen traditional instruments, a Norse spectacular, well-earned, primal release. —M founders, Einar Selvik and Gaahl, are veterans of mythology and culture don’t inherently carry any vocal choir, and shamanic invocations to sacred ani- K v
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327397_10_x_9.875.indd 1 1/6/21 8:39 AM
34 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll MUSIC
Steve Walters in his studio in 2016, holding an for me. artwork he screen printed for a client. GREG AYER I named my business Screwball Press with no thought that I’d still be working at this 30 years later. The name was based on for a little while. And then I was a DJ at the a few things, like screwball comedies from college radio station. Music has always been the 1930s and Warner Brothers cartoons. I a big part of my life, but I’m not a great didn’t want the name to suggest that I knew musician. what I was doing. It’s that whole Generation I didn’t study art at school. I always kind X thing where everyone was mocking the of messed around with it—I mean, it’s in establishment. Other people I knew had their the family. My grandfather was an artist. He own record labels, and the sense was, “See? If painted his own stu , and his job was doing I can do this, anyone can do this!” illustrations for magazines and catalogs and I started teaching screen printing to other stu like that. people as part of the business when I started I moved to Chicago after Iowa in 1986. At having kids, and the business was in our liv- one point, I was working at a grocery store ing space so I could stay at home and watch down by the Wiener’s Circle and I got laid the kids. I had friends who were designers off. I got unemployment, so I spent some and wanted to hire me to print posters, and I time messing around with art supplies. I didn’t always have time between the kids and made some of my fi rst art for bands then—I other gigs. So I o ered to let them come down had some friends in bands that were coming to the basement, and I could show them how through town. At that time, you’d see all xe- to do it themselves. roxed black-and-white fl yers, so I wanted to After some time, I moved the business out make fl yers in color, to make my fl yers more of our house to a bigger space and started noticeable. I would do the xerox stuff and teaching small groups. I advertised the class- then I’d go back and paint on them. es at one point—I made posters, of course. Eventually I started doing some linoleum Most of my students have just come to me via block prints, and my friend Scott Rutherford word of mouth. Word of mouth has been very CHICAGOANS OF NOTE wanted me to do 2,000 covers for his mag- kind to me over the last 30 years. azine Speed Kills. Halfway through that I About a year ago I got a space about two realized it was going to take me, like, 12 years. blocks from my house in Rogers Park, allow- Steve Walters, artist and screen So I went and bought a screen-printing kit at ing me to work close to home during COVID. the art store, learned how to do it to finish Twenty-twenty was a nightmare. I thought the covers, and then just kind of stuck with at first we’d be down for a few months and printer at Screwball Press screen printing. just weather it out, but yeah, it’s going to I hadn’t known a lot about screen printing be a while still. I turned my workspace into “I named my business Screwball Press with no thought that I’d still be working before that, but then I got a part-time job a gallery and shop to sell my stu and work at this 30 years later. . . . I didn’t want the name to suggest that I knew what I at a T-shirt place. I did some album sleeves from other local artists, and I started renting was doing.” during this time for Ajax Records using the some of the upstairs space to other printers. T-shirt screen-printing presses at my job My girlfriend Allison and I named the store As told to S C -J after hours, as artists do. Burgoo (she’s from Kentucky, and burgoo is When I was starting out, computer pro- a kind of Kentucky stew). Jon Langford has grams for this kind of design were pretty some pieces there. Jewelry makers, wood- primitive and prohibitively expensive. And workers, a lot of my friends that make art are Steve Walters, 57, is a Chicago artist and I think all of her classes this semester were at this point I still don’t really know what I’m selling it there. screen printer. In 1991 he founded Screwball online. I think she’s been tested for COVID doing with the computer. I still work a lot by It’s hard to guess what 2021 will bring. I’ve Press, which he still runs today; it’s come like four or fi ve times over the semester. hand, and I’ve gotten better and faster. But I been trying to do my own art for fun, but I’m to be recognized as a pioneering and influ- I grew up in the suburbs, Hinsdale, and do use a computer for typesetting and a few fi nding that I really relied on having deadlines ential local institution in the business of then went to college in Iowa City. I hung out other things. to get stu done. Anything I can do to get by screen-printed rock posters. He creates orig- in Iowa for a year after I graduated and I There were a lot of good shows going on and get through this—short of getting a real inal art for bands and venues and does pro- worked, because I still had a lot of friends then. Red Red Meat was a big band for me. I job. After 30 years of this, I don’t really have duction printing for other artists’ projects. there and didn’t have any solid plans. It was don’t know what I’d be doing now without the any skills that are useful in the real world. To This past fall he opened Burgoo, a shop and the George Bush Sr. years, and there weren’t encouragement of the people at the Lounge be honest, there are days that I would kill for gallery space in Rogers Park. really a lot of jobs out there, especially for Ax back then. I loved most of the bands that a real job, to not have the responsibility of someone who studied sociology. they booked there. I met the Coctails and got doing everything. But mostly I like working drove down to Atlanta this week to pick up I played bass a little bit in some bands, but to see their practice loft, and they were doing for myself. v my daughter, and then I’ll bring her back I wasn’t very good. I got a set of drums at an letterpress stuff there and making all their I next Tuesday. She’s going to college there. auction in Iowa City, and I was a drummer own merch—so that was really inspirational @hollo ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 35 CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME
EARLY WARNINGS b ALL AGES F WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK UPCOMING Never miss a show again. Agnostic Front, Sick of It All, Crown of Thornz 4/25, 8 PM, Sign up for the Subterranean, 17+ newsletter at Align, Tvvin, Levity 5/13, chicagoreader. 8:30 PM, Schubas, 18+ GOSSIP Nicole Atkins 8/13, 8:30 PM, com/early Lincoln Hall, 18+ Banda MS 4/30-5/1, 8 PM, All- WOLF state Arena, Rosemont b Hlday Magik 2/13, 7 PM, live- Barenaked Ladies, Gin stream at noonchorus.com/ A furry ear to the ground of Blossoms, Toad the Wet hideout b Sprocket 6/28, 7 PM, Chicago Hollyy 2/10, 4 PM, livestream the local music scene Theatre b at audiotree.tv/stream/hollyy Paul Bedal Quartet 2/20, 8 PM, F b IMPROVISING DRONE trio Good livestream at youtube.com/ Illinois Philharmonic Orches- constellationchicago b tra 1/23-2/12, Silian Kirov, Willsmith —aka Natalie Chami of TAL- Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys conductor (performing sounds and Hausu Mountain cofounders 8/28, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Valerie Coleman's Red Clay & Max Allison and Doug Kaplan—dropped Berwyn Mississippi Delta and Mozart). their previous release, a collaboration Brevet 4/9, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, Prerecorded; view with ticket 17+ purchase until 2/12/21 at with avant-pop duo Dustin Wong & Taka- Luke Combs, Ashley McBryde, ipomusic.org b ko Minekawa called Exit Future Heart, in Ray Fulcher 11/4-11/5, 7 PM, Wynonna Judd & Cactus 2018. Somehow that seems like decades Claude KAIT O’KEEFE United Center b Moser 7/30-7/31, 8 PM, ago, but if any local band can bend the Cradle of Filth 2/20, 4 PM, SPACE, Evanston b livestream at veeps.com b Mariza 1/29, 7 PM, livestream at laws of spacetime, it’s Good Willsmith. NEW at audiotree.tv/stream/lever Ohmme, Parker Callahan, Christopher Cross 3/19, 8 PM, uchicago.edu b Two weeks ago Hausu Mountain finally F b Monogamy, Maggie Winters, Genesee Theatre, Waukegan Alanis Morissette, Garbage, released a new Good Willsmith album: the Gary Allan 4/29, 7:30 PM, Ri- Ramsey Lewis 1/30, 1 PM; 2/27, Nnamdï, Bone Reader, Meg b Liz Phair 9/11, 7 PM, Holly- live tape HausLive 2, recorded from the alto Square Theatre, Joliet b 1 PM; 3/27, 1 PM; 4/24, 1 PM, Indurti, Grace Freud, Julia Ekali 10/2, 8 PM, Concord wood Casino Amphitheatre, Artifacts featuring Nicole livestream at stageit.com/ Shiplett, and more 2/11, 7 PM, Music Hall, 18+ Tinley Park b audience by band pal Joel Berk during an Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, and ramseylewis b livestream at noonchorus.com/ Elephant Stone, Al Lover, Nella 4/28, 8 PM, City Winery April 2019 set at Sleeping Village. It’s near- Mike Reed 1/22, Live the Spirit Residency hideout b Tinkerbelles 3/24, 9:30 PM, b ly 30 minutes of captivating acid-rock syn- 8 PM, livestream at youtube. presents the Young Masters We Series: Screens featuring Sleeping Village Palaye Royale 7/9, 6:30 PM, ergy, with an elevated incidence of prog- com/constellationchicago b directed by Ernest Dawkins work by Chengan Xia, Kat- Damien Escobar 11/7, 5 and House of Blues b Verzuz presents Ashanti, 1/30, 8 PM, livestream at you- inka Kleijn, Norman Long, 8 PM, City Winery b Primus, Wolfmother, Battles gy riffs—and “Third Eyebrow” and “The Keyshia Cole 1/21, 7 PM, tube.com/ Sonnenzimmer, and Jordan Dirty Knobs with Mike Camp- 7/20, 7 PM, Chicago Theatre Burning Orphanage Sidequest” could give livestream at instagram.com/ constellationchicago b Martins 1/26, 7 PM, livestream bell 10/6, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ b Pink Floyd’s most zonked-out early-70s verzuztv F b Loona Dae 2/8, 5 PM, live stream at twitch.tv/elasticartschicago Ferris & Sylvester 3/27, Rufus Wainwright 1/22, 4 PM; jams a run for their money. Allison says the Billy Strings 2/18-2/24, 8 PM, at audiotree.tv/streams F b 7:30 PM, Martyrs’ 2/19, 4 PM; 3/4, 4 PM; 3/12, livestream at fans.live b Lord Huron 2/18, 7 PM; 3/18, 5 Seconds of Summer 6/18, 4 PM; 3/19, 4 PM; 3/26, 4 PM, band are “using this live album release as Black Country, New Road 3/6, 7 PM; 4/15, 7 PM, livestream at UPDATED 7 PM, Huntington Bank livestream at veeps.com b a springboard for music that will see the 2 PM, livestream at dice. noonchorus.com/ Pavilion b Russ 5/22, 7:30 PM, Aragon light of day sometime in the future.” fm b lord-huron b Carsie Blanton, Milton 11/14, Flora Cash 6/18, 8:30 PM, Lin- Ballroom b Jason Shanley, aka ambient musician Boombox (DJ set) 1/22, 9 PM, Moon Taxi 1/22, 8 PM, live- 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, coln Hall b She Past Away 12/1, 8:30 PM, livestream at stageit.com/ stream at fans.live F b rescheduled Flotsam & Jetsam, Wrath, Thalia Hall, 17+ Cinchel , seems to release an exquisitely thisisBoomBox b Over the Rhine songwriting Delta Spirit, Hideout 5/2, Creep, Spare Change 5/23, Watsky 4/23, 7 PM, Metro b designed project whenever this wolf is in Celtic Thunder 2/2-2/6, 6 PM, workshop 2/13, 1 PM, online 9 PM, Thalia Hall, canceled 7:30 PM, the Forge, Joliet b The Weeknd, Sabrina Claudio, the mood for contemplative, otherworld- livestream at stageit.com/ workshop hosted at Every Shiny Thing: A Tribute Halestorm 7/14, 7:30 PM, Rialto Don Toliver 6/21, 7 PM, Unit- ly sounds. Shanley’s new Arcane Object CTLive b oldtownschool.org to Joni Mitchell featuring Square Theatre, Joliet b ed Center b Claude 2/4, 4 PM, livestream Jaret Reddick 1/25, 4 PM, live- Andrea Bunch 1/28/2022, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Max Weinberg’s Jukebox 9/23, (out last week via a local cassette label at audiotree.tv/streams F b stream at stageit.com b 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town Squeeze, KT Tunstall 8/26, 8 PM, City Winery b also called Arcane Object) consists of two Brian Culbertson 5 /4 , Arsena Schroeder 1/24, 5 PM, School of Folk Music, resched- 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Susan Werner 10/22, 8 PM, half-hour tracks from separate universes. 7:30 PM, Rialto Square The- livestream at stageit.com b uled b Amphitheatre, Tinley Park b Maurer Hall, Old Town School “String Line Distance” fl oats so tones on atre, Joliet b Soul Rebels with Roy Hargrove Front 242, Consolidated 4 /4 , Halsey 6/26, 7 PM, Hollywood of Folk Music b Dakhabrakha 9/23, 8 PM, Patio 1/27, 7 PM, prerecorded stream 8 PM, Metro, canceled Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Widespread Panic 4/1-4/3, a river of feedback, while “Long-Standing Theater b of a 2015 Brooklyn concert; Colin Hay 3/26/2022, 8 PM, Park b 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, 4/2 Nightmare” smears Shanley’s guitar into Glass Hand 1/29, 8 PM, watch at fans.live F b Thalia Hall, rescheduled b Tigran Hamasyan featuring and 4/3 are sold out b a howling digital storm. The Bandcamp livestream at youtube.com/ Southern Culture on the Skids JoJo 5/10, 7:30 PM, the Vic, Arthur Hnatek & Evan Wilco, Sleater-Kinney, Nnamdï download is “name your price,” and each constellationchicago b 10/13, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, canceled Marien 6/10, 8 PM, Lincoln 8/28, 6 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Goat Girl 1/27, 7 PM, live- Berwyn Gilbert O’Sullivan 3/11/2022, Hall, 18+ Millennium Park b $20 cassette comes in a unique box with stream at dice.fm b Laura Stevenson 2/13, 7 PM, 8 PM, City Winery, resched- Sarah Harmer 2/12, 8 PM, David Wilcox 10/15, 8 PM, preserved leaves, an art booklet, stickers, Grandson 1/24, 2 PM; 1/31, livestream hosted by the Sub- uled b Szold Hall, Old Town School Szold Hall, Old Town School and a card printed on handmade paper. 2 PM, livestream at youtube. terranean at gctv.stream b Judith Owen featuring Pedro of Folk Music b of Folk Music b In the mid-90s, Braid’s Bob Nanna brief- com/grandson F b Jeff Tweedy, Trevor Hall 1/23, Segundo 5/12, 8 PM, SPACE, Hawktail 3/7, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Dar Williams 2/14, 7 PM, Mau- Happy Traum workshop 1/24, 7 PM, livestream hosted by Evanston, canceled Evanston b rer Hall, Old Town School of ly led local emo band Orwell, with Deme- 10 AM, online workshop for Constellation; access provided Rose Tattoo, Enuff Z’nuff , Hots, Martin Hayes Quartet, Martin Folk Music b trio Maguigad and Sean O’Brien (both intermediate guitarists on with ticket purchase b Criminal Kids 7/19/2022, 7 PM, Hayes & Dennis Cahill 10/8, Alicia Witt 4/16, 7:30 PM, from Gainer) and Fred Popolo and Billy arranging Dylan's songs, Valentine’s Day Concert featur- Reggies’ Rock Club, resched- 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town Uncommon Ground b Smith (both from Haymarket Riot). Last hosted at oldtownschool.org ing Liba Shacht & John Sharp, uled, 17+ School of Folk Music b Wood Brothers 11/6, 8 PM, Kara Jackson 2/18, 1 PM, Ariella Mak-Neiman & Adam Tokimonsta 2/13, 7 PM, Metro, Justin Hayward, Mike Dawes Riviera Theatre, 18+ week, Orwell dropped a comp of rare and livestream at audiotree.tv/ Neiman, Duo Diorama 2/13, canceled 5/23-5/24, 8 PM, City Winery Steve Wynn, Linda Pitmon 1/31, unreleased material called 1995—a must- streams F b 7 PM, livestream hosted by the Weathers, Moby Rich, Kenzo b 7 PM, livestream hosted by have for midwestern-emo obsessives! Keller Williams Trio 1/30, 9 Unity Temple b Cregan 2/28, 7 PM, Schubas, Hives 1/22, 2 PM; 1/23, SPACE at stageit.com b —JRNLG PM, livestream at fans.live b A Very Special Valentine’s canceled 6 PM; 1/29, 5 PM; 1/30, 1 PM, Yam Haus 6/25, 8 PM, Beat Le over Salmon 1/23, 9 PM, Day: A benefi t for Chicago Jontavious Willis 1/28, 8 PM, livestream hosted by Jam; Kitchen, 17+ livestream at fans.live b Community Jail Support SPACE, Evanston, postponed access provided with ticket Zucchero 3/10, 7:30 PM, the Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail Lever 1/27, 4 PM, livestream featuring A.J. Marroquin, b purchase b Vic, 18+ v [email protected].
36 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll OPINION
NATIONAL POLITICS paign that killed thousands of innocents and dismal performance during the pandemic. transformed Libya from the African country Most other governments around the world rec- with the highest standard of living into a war- ognized that if you require businesses to shut Who’s really controlling Trump’s torn failed state. down, you must take care of workers. Coun- War is incredibly profi table to the weapons tries like Australia, Britain, Spain, France, manufacturers and Wall Street. Thus our Italy, Germany, and Canada are all providing impeachment major corporations will never support im- subsidies and support for furloughed workers. peachment hearings for war crimes. The cor- But here in the wealthiest country on earth, Don’t be fooled that their motives are moral. porate donors demand that future presidents Congress responded to the pandemic by pass- be free to lie us into disastrous (but profi table) ing the CARES Act, which protected the profi ts By L CG wars without fear of impeachment. of the investor class and left most workers out Trump may well deserve to be impeached in the cold. Many Americans are understand- for inciting a riot, even though his trial in the ably feeling desperate and betrayed. Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal de- pays poverty wages, forcing its workers to rely Senate will be largely symbolic as it won’t take On January 3, 2021, Pelosi was reelected fense attorney. on food stamps to survive while its head, Je place until after he has left the White House. speaker of the House. Not one member of the Bezos, has increased his net worth by nearly But the focus on Trump as the villain will allow progressive “Squad” withheld their vote or he second impeachment of President $70 billion since last March. BP is one of the other culprits to avoid scrutiny. For example, used the opportunity to make a fl oor vote for Trump, this time for inciting a riot, got a world’s biggest polluters; its 2010 Deepwater the assault on the U.S. Capitol was planned Medicare for All a subject of protest during Tbig boost last week when dozens of large Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which for weeks out in the open on social media plat- the proceedings. The speed at which the Squad corporations endorsed the effort. Amazon, covered 68,000 square miles, killed 11 people, forms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. has been co-opted into the fold of the corporate American Express, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BP, and infl icted untold ecological damage. Black- Tens of thousands of Trump supporters who Democrats is demoralizing for the true pro- BlackRock, Dow Chemical, Goldman Sachs, and Rock is the world’s biggest fi nancial backer of believe the election was stolen were encour- gressives who supported their campaigns and other major companies announced their sup- fossil fuel companies and has worsened the aged to come to the Capitol on January 6 and believed their promises. It shows that people port for impeachment by stopping donations to global climate crisis exponentially. stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden as don’t change the Democratic Party, it changes Republicans who refused to certify the Electoral The sole objective of these corporations president-elect. Yet our well-funded Depart- them. It also illustrates why it is time for a Peo- College vote. Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook is stability, which they expect President Joe ment of Homeland Security and 17 intelligence ple’s Party that is not funded by corporations. have banned Trump from their platforms, while Biden to restore. They already got their tax agencies somehow failed to protect the Capitol. The spectacle of another impeachment trial his lender Deutsche Bank has reportedly cut o cuts, deregulation, and bailouts from Trump. The Capitol Police has more than 2,000 also lets the mainstream press off the hook funding to his golf courses and hotels. Now they want him to leave the stage. They o¥ cers and a nearly half-billion dollar budget, for its part in fueling the rage that erupted on These moves by major corporate donors don’t care if the president is a Democrat or Re- bigger than the budgets for police depart- January 6 at the Capitol. Once great bastions helped convince ten House Republicans to join publican. They own and control both of those ments like Atlanta and Detroit. It has one mis- of unbiased journalism have become partisan the Democrats in voting for impeachment, parties. They just want someone less erratic sion: to defend two square miles. Yet observers tools of the corporate parties. While half of the even though their defection from Trump will and disruptive. report that only a fraction of the force was on country is told that Democrats stole the 2020 likely invite challengers in future GOP prima- In 2003, President George W. Bush and Vice duty January 6, and that some of those o¥ cers election from Trump, the other half is told that ries. Trump’s impeachment now moves to the President Dick Cheney told outright lies to con- may have aided the rioters. When Black Lives Russia stole the 2016 election from Hillary Senate for trial. The Constitution requires a vince Americans that Iraqi president Saddam Matter protestors were feared to pose a threat Clinton and that Trump is a Russian agent. two-thirds majority to convict a president, Hussein had stockpiles of chemical weapons to monuments and landmarks last summer, the I do want to end the fi rst column of the new meaning at least 17 Republicans would need to and was seeking nuclear weapons. All to justi- National Guard was immediately brought in year with something hopeful. President-elect join all 50 Democrats and independents in the fy a war that killed and maimed thousands of and the protestors were violently suppressed. Biden has nominated a respected and expe- new Senate. American soldiers and hundreds of thousands But this time, requests to bring in the National rienced diplomat to be CIA director. William According to the Associated Press, Senate of innocent Iraqis. When proof of this decep- Guard were denied or delayed. Burns is a former deputy secretary of state majority leader Mitch McConnell spoke to tion came out, House speaker Nancy Pelosi re- An investigation into the failures of law en- and ambassador to Russia. Ray McGovern, “major Republican donors last weekend to jected calls to impeach Bush. No one was held forcement before and on January 6 is critical. former CIA analyst and cofounder of Veteran assess their thinking about Trump and was accountable for this monstrous war crime, nor Especially since President-elect Biden has Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, says told that they believed Trump had clearly for the regime of torture used to cover up the already announced plans to pass a new Patriot “Burns can be counted on to help Biden re- crossed a line.” McConnell now sees the House fraud. To the contrary, CIA Director George Act to combat “domestic terrorism.” In other suscitate the Iran nuclear deal—the more so, Democrats’ drive to impeach Trump as an “op- Tenet, who helped the president perpetrate the words, just like after 9/11, our government since Burns played a key role in getting the portune moment to distance the GOP from the fraud and the coverup, was awarded a Presi- wants to reward its own incompetence by ex- negotiations with Iran started.” There is also tumultuous, divisive outgoing president.” dential Medal of Freedom in 2004. panding its powers. History teaches that agen- hope that Burns will be able to bring the CIA All this is more proof that the big corpora- The failure to hold war criminals to account cies like the FBI will use its expanded powers to back towards its original mission of unbiased tions control the levers of power in D.C. And guarantees that their crimes will be repeated hunt down and neutralize the left. In the 1960s, intelligence collection instead of what the in case you think that these corporations are by future leaders. Indeed, in 2011, the Obama the FBI used programs like COINTELPRO to CIA has become—a dangerous paramilitary taking a moral stand against Trump or to administration again told lies to convince harass civil rights leaders like Martin Luther involved in drone targeting and regime change protect our constitutional democracy, don’t be Americans that Libyan leader Muammar King Jr., and to crush the Black Panthers, the operations around the globe. fooled. These companies have purchased our Gaddafi was supplying his soldiers with Viagra Socialist Workers Party, and the American In- Here’s to keeping hope alive and to better representatives outright, destroying democ- to encourage mass rape, and that he was plan- dian Movement, all under the guise of weeding times in 2021! v racy. They are enemies of working people and ning to massacre civilians in Benghazi. These out “extremism.” the environment. Amazon busts unions and o¥ cial lies spurred the NATO bombing cam- Congress itself deserves scrutiny for its @GoodmanLen ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 37 OPINION
I don’t think your boyfriend and could infect someone HIV-positive himself, WEASS, is morally obligated to dis- with HIV—even if he does which he might be.) If he close that he’s HIV-positive to use a condom, which could seems reasonable you should a casual sex partner, WEASS, leak or break. (There are lots encourage your boyfriend to but in some states he is legal- of other STIs out there we disclose to him. Being told ly obligated to disclose that should be using condoms it’s no big deal from some- fact. While rarely enforced, to protect ourselves from, one your boyfriend wants these HIV disclosure laws including a nasty strain of to fuck before he fucks him almost always have the oppo- antibiotic-resistant gonor- could help your boyfriend site of their intended effect. rhea, but we’re just talking feel less insecure about his Instead of creating a cul- HIV here.) HIV status. ture of testing and disclo- In answer to your question, Finally, you can’t order sure, these laws disincentiv- WEASS, I think it would be your boyfriend to come out ize getting tested—because unreasonable for you to force to his mom about being someone who doesn’t know your boyfriend to disclose HIV-positive, WEASS, but they’re HIV-positive can’t his HIV status to the person you might inspire him to. get in trouble for failing to you want to invite over for a He obviously worries peo- JOE NEWTON disclose. threesome—but, again, HIV ple will judge him or shame These laws were passed disclosure laws might require for being HIV-positive; that’s SAVAGE LOVE decades ago, back when con- your boyfriend to disclose. one of the reasons he hid it tracting HIV was perceived— Now if the presumably from you—and, yes, he should The secrets we learn while snooping for multivitamins mostly accurately—as a death sexually active, sexually have disclosed his HIV status Should my man disclose he’s HIV-positive to the other guy in our threesome? sentence. But they don’t adventurous gay man you’re to you sooner. He obvious- reflect what it means to have thinking about having over ly underestimated you: you By D S HIV today or to sleep with to your place in Christchurch didn’t reject him when you someone who has HIV today. isn’t an idiot, WEASS, he’ll stumbled over his meds after Having even unprotected know your boyfriend—the tearing apart the cupboards : I could really use your to get over the feeling of about asking him to share sex now with someone who guy with the undetectable in his absence while you were advice. I recently found betrayal from the fact that with a therapist or “come is HIV-positive and has an viral load—presents no threat searching for—what was it my boyfriend’s HIV meds my boyfriend hid his status out” as poz to his mother? I undetectable viral load is less to him, at least where HIV is again? Oh, right: a multivita- while I was house-sitting from me for so long but really love him and just want risky than having protected concerned. And while you min. (Sure.) Anyway, WEASS, for him and went into his I’m fi ne with continuing him to be happy and healthy. sex with someone who hasn’t absolutely shouldn’t out tell your boyfriend he’s most cupboard for a multivitamin. the relationship knowing —W E A been tested. Condom or no your boyfriend, WEASS, you likely underestimating his We’ve been dating for a his status now. The thing S S condom, the HIV-positive guy could raise the general sub- mother in the same way he year and I had assumed he is, he told me that only fi ve with an undetectable viral ject of sexual safety and see underestimated you—then was negative. I’m negative people on earth know and A: If you’re worrying about load—undetectable thanks to how this guy reacts. If he let him make his own deci- myself and on PrEP and he his mother, who he talks to HIV at the moment, WEASS, meds like the ones your boy- seems reasonable—particu- sions about who to tell and is undetectable, so I know almost every day, isn’t one of you’re worrying about friend is taking—can’t infect larly if he mentions being on when. v there is essentially zero risk them. He says being poz has the wrong virus. Unless someone with HIV. Undetect- PrEP too—he’s probably not of me getting infected, but really fucked with his self- you’re lucky enough to live able = untransmissible. gonna freak out about your Send letters to mail@ we agreed to some degree esteem and that he has had in New Zealand, you and But a guy who assumes boyfriend being HIV-posi- savagelove.net. Download of “openness” at the start suicidal thoughts because of the boyfriend shouldn’t he’s HIV-negative because tive for the exact same rea- the Savage Lovecast at of the relationship—having his status. Is it unreasonable be inviting men over for he was the last time he son you didn’t: there’s zero savagelovecast.com. threesomes together—and for me to expect him to threesomes right now. got tested or because he’s chance your boyfriend could @fakedansavage I recently found a guy we’d disclose his status to guys Assuming you do live in never been tested? That infect him with HIV. (We’re like to invite over. I’m trying who join us in bed? What New Zealand . . . guy could be HIV-positive both assuming this guy isn’t
38 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll 2020
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Your partners in health and wellness. Find out today if medical COURTESY SUZY TAKACZ cannabis or infusion therapy is right for you. Telemed available! hen the idea to open a bookstore first struck Suzy Takacs, it seemed Serving medical cannabis patients since 2015. www.neuromedici.com 312-772-2313 like there were already enough to go around. But she wanted a space Wthat would combine her love for books with her love for wine, a space nearby her Lincoln Square home that housed two of her favorite things. And when she pitched her business plan for The Book Cellar to the alderman and presidents of the North Center, Lincoln Square, and Ravenswood Chambers of Commerce, it just so happened that they were on the hunt for a new inde- pendent bookstore. Takacs resigned from her career at the time and spent about a year learning about the business, plans, and permits she would need to make The Book Cellar a reality.
The shop opened in June, 2004, and despite the fact that it felt to Takacs like she was opening an independent bookstore in a city with so many long-be- loved others, The Book Cellar has become a fixture in the Lincoln Square com- munity, and that’s what makes Takacs most proud.
During non-COVID times, a trip to her store would include browsing books with a glass of wine, curling up on couches with treats from the café. The events calendar was always full, with something different happening almost every night: author events, storytimes, book groups, wine and bourbon tast- Reader 420 ings, an annual spelling bee, school events, zine launches, play readings, Companion Book Chamber of Commerce events, and much more. A cannacopia of fun! Today, The Book Cellar offers curbside pickup and browsing by appointment CBD / cannabis recipes, psychedelic d awings to color, word puzzles to stimulate only, and supporting them is more important now than ever. your b ain, growing tips, and more! Says Takacs, “Bookstores are an anchor in the community. Bookstores are a Print and digital versions available. place to interact with other people, have conversations and share ideas. . . I am proud to be part of the Chicago bookseller community. Chicago has a unique chicagoreader.com/420book and accomplished community of bookstores and booksellers and it is an honor to be part of the group.” And as long as the community supports them just as much as they’ve supported the community, The Book Cellar will surely be open post-pandemic for many years to come.
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40 CHICA O READER - JANUARY ll The Chicago Reader Author Talk BOOK CLUB Feb. 25, 2021 The Chicago Reader BOOK CLUB Mikki Kendall Natalie Moore Hood Feminism: The South Side Book Club Notes From the April 21 membership Women That a 4/22/2021 includes: Movement Forgot Rebecca Makkai Book Club Month: Exclusive The Great October 20 access to Author Talk: Believers conversations 10/22/2020 May 21 between 5/27/2021 Authors and Sonali Dev the Reader Recipe for Fatimah Asghar Eve Ewing Persuasion If They Come for Discounts to Author November 20 Us your favorite Dr. Eve L. Ewing is a sociologist of education and a writer from Chicago. She is the award- 11/19/2020 June 21 independent winning author of the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919 and the nonfi ction work 6/24/2021 Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side. She is the bookstores co-author (with Nate Marshall) of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. Riva Lehrer She also currently writes the Champions series for Marvel Comics and previously wrote the acclaimed Ironheart series, as well as other projects. Ewing is an assistant professor at the Golem Girl Kayla Ancrum A curated University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. Her work has been published in December 20 Darling monthly The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other venues. Her fi rst book for young readers, Maya and the Robot, is forthcoming in July 2021. 12/17/2020 July 21 newsletter 7/22/2021 Emil Ferris A members- Maudlyne Ihejirika is an award-winning Chicago Sun- only Times urban aff airs columnist with 30 years of experience My Favorite Jessica Hopper in journalism, public relations, and government. Thing Is Monsters (TBD) discussion Building on a B.A. in journalism from the University of January 21 August 21 forum Iowa and an M.S.J. from Northwestern University’s Medill 8/26/2021 School of Journalism, Ihejirika’s work in state government 1/28/2021 and media has resulted in countless achievements, Special off ers including serving as president for both the National from Reader Association of Black Journalists Chicago Chapter and the Eve Ewing Precious Brady- Chicago Journalists Association; ranking one of “The 25 1919 Davis partners Most Powerful Women In Chicago Journalism” in 2019; publishing her book Escape From Nigeria: A Memoir of February 21 I Have Always Faith, Love and War; and launching Ihejirika Media & Been Me: A Maudlyne Ihejirika Communications Group to manage media for members 2/25/2021 of U.S. Congress, Illinois Legislature, and City Council. Memoir Moderator Her awards include the Studs Terkel Award, national and local awards from the Society of Professional Journalists Nnedi Okorafor September 21 and National Association of Black Journalists, and several civic awards, including the Chicago 9/23/2021 Defender Woman of Excellence and African Festival of the Arts Community Servant Award. Remote Control Ihejirika is a frequent guest contributor on PBS-TV’s “Chicago Tonight: Week In Review” and March 21 FOX-32’s “Good Day Chicago,” and she has appeared as a political analyst on CNN, TV One, ABC, CBS, NPR, WBEZ, WVON, and V103. 3/25/2021
She currently pens the Sun-Times “Chicago Chronicles,” long-form columns off ering diverse narratives and untold stories of inspiring people, places, organizations, and issues in Black and Brown communities. Follow her at @maudlynei on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Presented by:
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Learn more at chicagoreader.com/bookclub ll JANUARY - CHICAOREADER 41 the platform The Chicago Reader Guide to Business and Professional Services legal home improvement
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