Newcity Chicago November 2018

IncenseSweaters&Ice MartineSymsSeptember 26, 2018–January 12, 2019 View of Martine Syms: Incense Sweaters & Ice. Courtesy the artist, BridgetGraham Foundation Donahue, New York and Sadie Coles HQ, London. Photo: Nathan KeayMadlener House, 4 W Burton Place, Chicagowww.grahamfoundation.org

Newcity Best of ChicagoPoemsDAREDEVIL Arts & CultureBy Stuart Dybek10 Art Conversing withFaggot with Flowers painter and criticBy H. Melt Peter Plagens16 49Dynamite DanceBy Dipika Mukherjee Ate9 will have you19 dancing to Wilco, sort ofFor Colored Boys Who Considered Gangbanging 54When Being Black Was Too MuchBy Britteney Black Rose Kapri Design29 Have you experienced a Siren Betty design?Blue Line Incident 56By Jacob Saenz40 Dining & Drinking To market, to marketDrive By in Humboldt Park 58By Kevin Coval42 Film A “new” Orson Welleslove jones: that romance movieBy Tara Betts 6146 Lit Sections Four Seasons Rosellen Brown returns BEST OF CHICAGO NOVEMBER 2018 Newcity City Life with a historical look The Seasons 10 at her “new” hometown, Spring Chicago 7 Culture & 64 Nightlife Summer 20 Music 15 The Violent Femmes and Food & Drink their outsider Fall 33 pedigree 27 And Goods & Services Get into Christmas Winter 43 music now, before it’s 37 too much 67 Stage Mikael Burke explores the meaning of blackness 71 Life Is Beautiful The Rites of Fall 74 3

Newcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO EDITOR’S LETTER The Best Season. ince we’ve been making this Best of Chicago edition for twenty-six years now, we do our best each fall to offer a fresh take on a beloved and familiar issue. This usually starts with a brainstorming session with our team of editors. This year, at some point in that conversation, I asked our two editors who were born and raised in other countries (New Zealand and Greece), what made Chicago stand out for them. One mentioned the distinctiveness of our seasons—that we have all four seasons—and we were off and running. And so, this year, we present the Best of Chicago with a distinctively seasonal flair. And writing this letter on a brisk October morning, the very day that Chicago summer has yielded definitively to autumn, reinforces for me in a visceral way the bona fides of our direction this year. The seasons, as metaphor for life itself, occupy the concerns of one of the world’s earlier and best-known poems, Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8, which starts out “To every thing there is a season…”. And I would argue, that in addition to Chicago’s distinctive seasons, our living legacy as a city of poetry sets us apart. From our earlier days as the birthplace of Harriet Monroe’s Poetry magazine, as Carl Sandburg’s “city of big shoulders” and the “We real cool” milieu of Gwendolyn Brooks, to the more recent homegrown creations of the poetry slam, Louder Than A Bomb and the Poetry Foundation, Chicago is a city that builds on, and goes to battle with, verses. To celebrate this, we asked several of our city’s finest poets to share a slice of our town, delivered their way. This visual identity of this issue, as guided by designer Fletcher Martin, is guided by the pen of Tom Bachtell, a Chicagoan who many of us best knew as the longtime illustrator of The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town section. Tom recently ended that engagement, and we’re proud to be able to share his work with his hometown. – BRIAN HIEGGELKE 4

October 19–February 17Major support is generously provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Shawn M. Donnelley and Christopher M. Kelly. Additional funding iscontributed by the Alfred L. McDougal and Nancy Lauter McDougal Fund for Contemporary Art, the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, Desiree and Olivier Berggruen,and an anonymous donor. Annual support for Art Institute exhibitions is provided by the Exhibitions Trust: an anonymous donor; Neil Bluhm and the Bluhm FamilyCharitable Foundation; Jay Franke and David Herro; Kenneth Griffin; Caryn and King Harris, The Harris Family Foundation; Robert M. and Diane v.S. Levy;Ann and Samuel M. Mencoff; Sylvia Neil and Dan Fischel; Anne and Chris Reyes; Cari and Michael J. Sacks; and the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation.Tomma Abts. Fimme, 2013. Collection of Sascha S. Bauer. © Tomma Abts. Courtesy of greengrassi, London.

Newcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGOContributors ON THE COVER Best of Chicago poems by: Illustration: Tom Bachtell Tara Betts, Kevin Coval, Stuart Dybek, Art Direction: Fletcher Martin Britteney Black Rose Kapri, H. Melt, Dipika Mukherjee, Jacob Saenz Vol. 33, No. 1385 Best of Chicago was written by: Alexis Franciszkowicz, David Hammond, Scoop Jackson, PUBLISHERS Ray Pride, Vasia Rigou Brian & Jan Hieggelke With additional contributions by: Associate Publisher Mike Hartnett Manisha AR, John Carruthers, Zach Freeman, Rebecca Holland, Hugh Iglarsh, Lauren Knight, Robert Rodi, EDITORIAL Freda Love Smith, Yetta Starr, David Witter Editor Brian Hieggelke Best of Chicago cover and illustrations: Managing Editor Jan Hieggelke Tom Bachtell Art Editor Elliot Reichert Best of Chicago Design: Dance Editor Sharon Hoyer Fletcher Martin Design Editor Vasia Rigou Dining and Drinking Editor “Blue Line Incident” by Jacob Saenz was originally published in RHINO 2006/ David Hammond “Faggot with Flowers” by H. Melt is from “On My Way to Liberation,” used Film Editor Ray Pride with permission of Haymarket Books/An earlier version of “Daredevil,” Lit Editor Toni Nealie by StuartCDDiynbeerk-N,ewwCaIsty-pBuibglHiesath-e2d01i8n-v1T.haei Mi1d-Am3e/1r6i/c1a8n R1e:v3i4ewPM Music Editor Robert Rodi Theater Editor Kevin Greene meat free Editorial Assistant Alexis Franciszkowicz since ’83 Contributing Writers Isa Giallorenzo, Aaron Hunt, Alex Huntsberger, Hugh Iglarsh,C 10-year consecutive winner, Chicago Chris Miller, Dennis Polkow, Vasia Rigou,M Reader, Readers’ Poll • veggiediner.com Loy Webb, Michael Workman Y ART & DESIGN CM Senior Designers MJ Hieggelke, MY Fletcher Martin, Dan Streeting, Billy Werch CY Designers Jim Maciukenas, Stephanie PlennerCMY K MARKETING Marketing Manager Todd Hieggelke 6 OPERATIONS General Manager Jan Hieggelke Distribution Nick Bachmann, Adam Desantis, Preston Klik, Quinn Nicholson, Matt Russell One copy of current issue free at select locations. Additional copies, including back issues up to one year, may be ordered at Newcity.com/subscribe. Copyright 2018, New City Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Newcity assumes no responsibility to return unsolicited editorial or graphic material. All rights in letters and unsolicited editorial or graphic material will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and subject to comment editorially. Nothing may be reprinted in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. Newcity is published by Newcity Communications, Inc. 47 West Polk, Suite 100-223, Chicago, IL 60605 Visit NewcityNetwork.com for advertising and editorial information.

BEST OF CHICAGO NOVEMBER 2018 Newcity 7

BEST EVOCATION OF TURN Ryan’s, there is little doubt it’s the place to OF THE TWENTIETH celebrate the only saint that even CENTURY WICKER PARK Protestants agree deserves notice. All along SPRING FROM JESSICA Madison, there’s a nonstop party, a HOPPER’S “NIGHT MOVES” complete barf-o-rama around St. Paddy’s Day. (David Hammond)Newcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO EST WAY TO “I took o on the bike into the Chicago fake BEST PLACE TO CHANNEL KNOW FOR spring, and every three blocks pulled up to YOUR INNER BOTANIST SURE THAT the curb to say hello to people I knew, out SPRING HAS in their dapper weekend wear, clasping Adams & Son Gardens SPRUNG their lover’s hand, making a trail for the smoky bar. Everyone I met and spoke with A human-sized cactus with bright pink Mario’s Italian Lemonade today… was a touch wasted.” (Ray Pride) egg-shaped owers greets you at the door as you step into the oasis of the family- When Mario’s Italian Lemonade stand BEST PLACE IN CHICAGO TO owned ower shop which has been in the opens every May, you know winter is over WAKE UP IN SPRINGTIME Humboldt Park neighborhood for more and spring is here. eir lemonade—a kin AND SMELL THE BACON than twenty years. Indoor and outdoor to Italian ice—is served in a range of fresh plants extend as far as the eye can see, fruit avors; any one of which is the perfect Baconfest occupying every corner. Ferns, mums, accompaniment or denouement to an bonsais of all shapes and sizes, and of Italian beef dinner from across the street at ere is nowhere in Chicago to get a better course, cacti, terrariums and succulents— Al’s Beef. Mario’s is one of the last walk-up whi of fatted pork belly, sizzling, than at the kind that ood your Instagram feed. places in Chicago, a joint serving street Baconfest each springtime at UIC Pavillion. Tony Adams, the “son” in Adams & Son, will eats with no indoor seating. It’s a blast from Hundreds of Chicago chefs prepare bacon help you channel your inner botanist and Chicago’s past and a welcome icy chill on in new ways, some ops, but most fantastic. bring tropicalia into your home and life by Chicago’s hottest afternoons. (David Seeing thousands of people gathering to teaching you how to plant, grow and care Hammond) pay homage to the meat of the gods for your plant of choice, whether a 1068 W. Taylor, 708.652.8680 facebook.com/ rea rms one’s sense of humanity. (David dainty-leaved cus, a healing aloe vera or MariosItalianLemonade Hammond) simply moss. Bonus: Pictures of wide blue Baconfestchicago.com beaches, pine trees and waterfalls that BEST SPRING FASHION EVENT cover the walls—an intimate collage of the BEST HARBINGER OF SPRING Greek owners’ family moments back home SAIC Fashion Show IN CHICAGO to keep up close and to warm up these Chicago winters. (Vasia Rigou) When one of the most experimental fashion Green City Market 1057 N. California, 773.235.0991 departments in the world throws a runway show, you better keep an eye out. In their Is spring the only season deserving of a BEST SPRINGTIME REMINDER highly anticipated annual Spring fashion harbinger? Seems that way, and one of the WE’RE ALL DOOMED event, School of the Art Institute of Chicago time-honored rites of spring is going to the (SAIC) fashion design students present Green City Market when it opens in May. When I was a kid in the sixties, every April edgy, avant-garde and over-the-top looks, Granted, a lot of locally sourced produce people would gather on the shoreline all as well as down-to-earth, wearable (potatoes, cabbage) may have been along Lake Michigan. We could see the creations that showcase a masterful harvested in autumn, wintering in a root smelt shermen, guys who would proudly balance between concept development, cellar, but the market is a sure sign that march home with pails brimming with the skill-building and artistic boundary- summer is icumen in. (David Hammond) silvery sh, keeping warm in the light of pushing. e next generation of fashion greencitymarket.com dozens of scrap res in fty- ve-gallon designers starts here but during the drums. Just about all the smelt have hours-long extravaganza of catwalk shows, BEST PLACE IN THE AREA TO vanished from the lake, victims of performances, music and installations, you CELEBRATE ST. PATRICK’S environmental factors, just as we all are won’t feel like you’re in a school setting at DAY fated to be. Memento mori. all—not even for a minute. (Vasia Rigou) (David Hammond) Sites.saic.edu Forest Park ough Chicago has strong Irish heritage, Forest Park may have the highest concentration of Irish bars of any nearby locale, with about half-a-dozen on the half-mile of Madison Street between Harlem and Des Plaines. With giveaway names like Du y’s, Shanahan’s and Doc8

GRAND OPENING & Green Line PerformingCOMMUNITY CELEBRATION Arts Center is the mostFREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC recent addition to the Arts Block along historicSaturday, November 10 Garfield Boulevard2:00-6:00pm in Washington Park.Green Line Performing Arts Center As part of the University of Chicago’s329 E Garfield Blvd Arts + Public Life initiative,Chicago, IL 60637 it serves as a creative catalyst for the greater South Side—LIVE PERFORMANCES | ARTS BLOCK TOURS hosting resident companies,LOCAL ART VENDORS | DJ SETSFOOD | FAMILY ACTIVITIES showcasing work that examines themes of race, class, and gender, and offering education and employment pathways for area residents.

DAREDEVILNewcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO LCiiftey BY STUART DYBEK Best Dark Horse for Mayor Here’s what we’ve come to see: a boy DR.AMARA ENYIA in greasy jeans, t-shirt plastered The minute Rahm decided to do the smart to his scrawny ribs by a wind that doesn’t thing and not re-run for the fifth floor, all blow on those sweltering below. the hats that were already in for his spot He’s scaling a railroad bridge saw a new light of hope. News anchors above the open sewer that in the ‘hood and political pundits named frontrunners we call the Chicago Insanitary Canal, who all of a sudden had to be taken seriously. And the one least mentioned, swinging between girders, the kid even in her second bid for mayor? The one who couldn’t throw straight or hit floating under the radar? Public policy a ball if his life depended on it, advocate and social justice front-liner the wuss too chicken to punch back, Amara Enyia. She may not end up winning, transformed before our eyes but this time, once it’s over, she’ll have into an acrobat without a net, made her name. (Scoop Jackson) exhilarated by the proximity of death. Best Example of Chicago One misstep from dashing out Media Stumbling into the his brains, and suddenly assured “Who, Me?” Era as that ultimate athlete, a cat, he balances along a ledge and shimmies THE TRIBUNE’S WARM TONGUE a high-voltage pole, ignoring signs BATH ESTEEMING BRETT that picture skulls and promise KAVANAUGH both DANGER and PELIGROSO. The Tribune editorial board, same as it ever was: “We didn’t care for Kavanaugh’s He’s learned the edge is theater angry, defensive and at times rude and mounts the stage, not a star behavior in front of the Senate Judiciary but some weird artist of the strange, Committee. Nor did we care for nasty a fool who keeps our necks craned attacks on him by some senators. The as he ascends a tottering drainpipe, confirmation process needs an overhaul. and outlined against cinematic sky But we find no trace of an intemperate proceeds to leap the abyss between Kavanaugh in the 300 decisions he has written over twelve years on the U.S. roofs, and now, three stories high, Court of Appeals…Yes, we understand he dangles by a wiry arm from Rita that installing Kavanaugh on the court Colon’s bedroom sill, tapping at the window could be taken as a message to women while she gets dressed for school. that if you speak up about a sexual assault, But hey, we know a dare’s not about you won’t be believed or make a brave, but crazy, which is as close difference. Yet there is powerful evidence as some guys come to being cool. to the contrary: Think of the scores of powerful men whose history of sexual10 abuse and harassment has caught up with them in the #MeToo era. Those disgraced men will tell you that women are heard and believed today.” As the saying goes, “Yeah? No.” (Ray Pride)

Best Uplift the Drive troll through with a toddler and watch the guards’ eyes widen, gauging when and if35TH STREET BRIDGE ON SOUTHSHORE DRIVE Sto step in versus when parents have theirJust take a drive south on South Shoredrive after 10pm and you’ll see it, budding artists’ grabby impulses under control.experience it and know. It will hit you all atonce: the lights, the design, the construct, MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ARTall of it. There are as many beautifulplaces on the South Side of Chi as there your pantry and between your joists and Best Building to Be inare in Harlem and Paris. This bridge burrow into your dreams. Those fat While It Rainsseparates itself from all of them. (Scoop hungry bastards. Taking over theJackson) neighborhood. Or maybe that’s how they MANSUETO LIBRARY see us. And know that’s how they’ll Every University of Chicago tour guide willBest Bridge in Chicago to Give remember us when we’re gone. (Ray tell you that the teen dystopian moviethe Finger to a Building Pride) “Divergent” was filmed in Mansueto. Aside from that, it’s one of the quietest librariesWABASH BRIDGE Best Museum to Take Kids That's on campus, making it an ideal location toOn any given day, throughout the seasons, Not The Chicago Children's shelter in while it rains. Since the library isthe Wabash bridge over the river at Museum a giant, clear dome, you can see and hearWacker is where Chicagoans take a selfie rain falling above and around you. (Alexisof themselves flipping off Trump SHEDD AQUARIUM Franciszkowicz)International Hotel and Tower. (It seems With expectations of knowledge imparted 1100 E. 57th, 773.702.0901,almost obligatory.) Even those of us who and exhibits experienced, museums can mansuetolibrary.edudon’t take selfies will feel our middle be too much to handle with kids. Butfingers twitch walking by this garish name compared to the truly cavernous and Best Museum to Take Kids If Youemblazoned in twenty-foot letters on the overwhelming Field Museum or Museum Want to Stress Out the Guardsside of the building, marring the of Science and Industry, the Shedd isotherwise beautiful view of the mighty doable in a short trip. Exhibits readily MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ARTChicago River. (David Hammond) scale based on your kids’ attention spans: Just north of the Loop, the MCA manages toddlers can run through admiring the a hip younger sibling vibe, compared toBest Rat huge tanks and colorful fish; grade the more serious stylings of the Art schoolers can read basic overviews of sea Institute. There are serious works of art,BLEK LE RAT GRAFFITI OUTSIDE creatures; and curious high schoolers can but come on, man, chill, this stuff isVERTICAL GALLERY engage wandering employees and contemporary. Colorful pieces and playfulChicago was named the rat capital of the volunteers in lengthy discussions on exhibits—last year’s Murakami and theUnited States this year by RentHop, an marine life. The dolphin show, though— current, excellently vivid “I Was Raised onapartment search service. It’s likely you that’s for everyone. (Zach Freeman) the Internet”—make it easy to forget thatmay have encountered one, with more 1200 S. Lake Shore, 312.939.2438, this is still a hands-off, eyes-onlythan 50,000 rat complaints last year alone. sheddaquarium.org experience. Stroll through with a toddlerBut if not, check by the door of Vertical and watch the guards’ eyes widen,Gallery where the OG stencil graffiti artist, Best Initiative Shown By Dogged gauging when and if to step in versusBlek Le Rat, left his signature rat after his Chicago Journalists when parents have their budding artists’gallery showing there last year. (Alexis grabby impulses under control.Franciszkowicz) JAMIE KALVEN AND BRANDON (Zach Freeman)1016 N. Western, 773.697.3846, SMITH 220 E. Chicago, 312.280.2660, mca.orgverticalgallery.com Without the journalism of Jamie Kalven and Brandon Smith, the Laquan McDonald Best Reason to Go to BrookfieldBest Rats story would have ended differently. Other than the Zoo Kalven broke the story of the killing, andTHE COMMON NORWAY RAT Smith sued to obtain the McDonald video. GALLOPING GHOST ARCADEThose bastards. Your closest neighbors. As newsrooms contract and budgets Though city dwellers may knowThose sleek, fat embarrassments. Jolly shrink, determination builds in the Brookfield only for its zoo, the suburb isHoss and Monstrous Millie dance and enterprise and resourcefulness of home to Galloping Ghost Arcade, a gemsqueal the night long. Rats. Everywhere. journalists working in the classic mold. that old-school gamers will enjoy.We all live in rat’s alley, to paraphrase T.S. (Ray Pride) Boasting over 650 games, Galloping GhostEliot, and if the dead men lost their was established eight years ago with thebones? They would be gnawed clean by intention of restoring damaged games.daybreak. Recycling carts racket, one by Classics like Space Invaders and Froggerone, like giant blue jumping beans. stand among rare titles like Hammer AwayGreasetrap dumpsters splish-splash as and Godzilla. (Alexis Franciszkowicz)moonlight diving pools. Call them by their 9415 Ogden, Brookfield, 708.485.4700,name! HEY RAT. Rat will stop and stare, gallopingghostarcade.comsolid on the ground, ready to leap into theair, ready to shimmy that long body into

nd as has happened before and likely will happen again, one of Streets and Sanitation’s renegadeAcrews responded to a 311 complaint and wiped thework away with their too-familiar sludge-brown paint.BEAR CHAMP + LAKEVIEW CHAMBER OF COMMERCE + 311Best Reason to Believe beverage at the rooftop terrace while the Trafficking,” “Body Horror” and theTelevision is Chicago’s Next weather is still warm. Also oheck out their forthcoming “Sweet Little Cunt: TheMedium Takeover frequent LGBTQ artists gallery openings, Graphic Work of Julie Doucet.” (Ray Pride) cooking classes, their signature annual chicagoreader.com With the fashion game on lock, content for Santa Speedo Run right before Christmas flatscreens and iPhones are the next or their Oscars-watching party that’s been Best Resolution to an takeover destination. With Shonda a staple for over a decade. To ensure the Eradication of a Commissioned Rhimes taking her talents to Netflix, health and well-being of the LGBTQ Mural With a Single 311 Call Oprah’s network stabilized, “Empire” and community, the Center on Halsted offers“Shameless” using Chicago as their playlot, mental health counseling, group therapy, Commissioned by the Lakeview Chamber Lena Waithe and Common getting “The clinical services for HIV/AIDS and STD of Commerce with taxpayer money, JC Chi” off the ground, Steve James bringing testing and an anti-violence project to Rivera's mural, ‘Morning Flow,” featuring“America To Me” to the forefront of help survivors deal with issues of his familiar yellow “bear champ” America’s consciousness, Lil Rell getting discrimination, bullying and sexual character he’s painted around the city for his own sitcom on NBC, there was only assault. (Vasia Rigou) the past ten years, adorned the Paulina one power move left to be made: Michelle 3656 N. Halsted, 773.472.6469, Brown Line stop for only two weeks. And and Barack creating a production centeronhalsted.org as has happened before and likely will company (Higher Ground Productions) happen again, one of Streets and and signing a big, big deal to create shows Best News For Sanitation’s renegade crews responded to for Netflix. (Scoop Jackson) The Chicago Reader a 311 complaint and wiped the work away with their too-familiar sludge-brown paint.Best Hold-All Title for a Rahm The pale-pastel forty-seven-year-old The Lakeview Chamber wrote onEmanuel Book forty-page paper may rise above the Facebook, “the mural had quickly become waves after all. After the Sun-Times a beloved part of the neighborhood and A few days after Rahm Emanuel’s reached an agreement in June to pass the we were devastated to see it removed. unexpected withdrawal from mayor-for- venerable alt-weekly standing to an Lakeview has a strong commitment to life lineage, a title for a big-ideas-for- ownership group led by Chicago Crusader public art and we are working with the America-in-my-retreat political tome publisher Dorothy Leavell, questions City of Chicago to resolve this issue.” At floated to the surface via publisher Alfred about its future direction hung in the air. last report, hopes were high that the A. Knopf, and you have to wonder whether Nothing happened as quickly as the piece would be repainted. According to his superagent brother Ari Emanuel February firing of Mark Konkol, editor of the Trib, “The city is instructing graffiti- thought it was genius or shit: “The Nation the Reader while the paper was still under removal crews to seek approval from a City: Why Mayors Run the World.” Could Sun-Times ownership, sparked by its supervisor when responding to a request there be a roomier, more gaseous, more racially inflammatory cover illustration of that involves public art.” (Ray Pride) unpromising title? And isn’t there space to JB Pritzker sitting atop a black lawn jockey add “And The Known Universe, In statue. The first of two auspicious moves Best Temporary Wall Mural Perpetuity” before its 2020 publication? by the Reader’s new ownership came in (Ray Pride) September, with the hiring of veteran DAMEN TAVERN Windy City Times publisher Tracy Baim, Where Bar DeVille sat in Ukrainian VillageBest Place to Be Yourself followed in October by the naming of for nine years, its successor, the Damen author, cultural critic and investigative Tavern, opened in October 2017 by the CENTER ON HALSTED comics journalist Anne Elizabeth Moore as owners of Lincoln Park Irish bars Halligan Located in Chicago’s Boystown editor. “My interests in investigative and Hook and Ladder. Damen Tavern has neighborhood, Center on Halsted is the reporting and comics will play a featured a series of painted-on-black- largest LGBTQ community center in the significant role, but I guarantee we won’t brick murals, including promotions for Midwest. It’s a place of gatherings and abandon the cultural coverage the paper’s booze like Reyka vodka. Late summer parties, workshops, events and art built on,” Moore told journalism blogger brought a Chicago-devoted apparition, exhibitions. Chill in the lobby reading your Robert Feder in October. Moore’s books which resembles a word cloud, but on favorite free press, find quiet time at the include “Threadbare: Clothes, Sex, and inspection, shares the entirety of 285 center’s library or have a refreshing

From dance toliterature: youwant to be here.Join us The Logan Center for the Arts at the Universityfor our of Chicago is a multidisciplinary home for artistic2018-2019 practice. Connect with the Logan Center forvisual, concerts, exhibitions, performances, familyperforming, programs, and more from world-class, emerging,and literary local, student, and international artists.arts season!Most eventsare FREE.logancenter.uchicago.edu Logan Center773.702.ARTS for the Arts 915 E 60th StloganUChicago Photo: Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre dancers in Between Us, courtesy of the company.

GUILTY... of aggravated Best Lifestyle Blog to Keep you Inspired On and Offline battery with a firearm, fifteenth shot; guilty of aggravated battery with a JESSIE BARBER OF MINI PENNY firearm, sixteenth shot. BLOG AND MICRO PENNY COSMETIC TATTOO STUDIONewcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO words of Carl Sandburg’s brief but Best Conclusion To A Dark Online since 2011, blogger, cosmetic emblematic 1914 poem, “Chicago,” Chicago Timeline Among Dark tattoo artist and illustrator Jessie Barber including “They tell me you are wicked American Timelines describes herself as “seriously pink.” But and I believe them, for I have seen your her pale pastel pink hair is not the half of painted women under the gas lamps October 20, 2014—Officer Jason Van Dyke it. Meticulously styled and with an eye for luring the farm boys,” bold alongside a shoots Laquan McDonald sixteen times. thrift store and secondhand finds, Barber, modern saloon. These words are singled a social media celebrity, shares styling out for all-caps treatment in the mural: November 24, 2015—Video released to wisdom in her fashion and lifestyle blog, STORMY HUSKY BRAWLING CITY OF BIG public, contradicting the story told by Van Mini Penny. It features everything from SHOULDERS MY CITY PROUD ALIVE Dyke and the Chicago Police Department. beauty tips and product reviews to STRONG VIVID BAREHEADED SHOVELING fascinating nail art, daily outfits, urban or PLANNING BUILDING BREAKING September 4, 2018—Rahm Emanuel travel adventures and heartwarming REBUILDING DESTINY HEART PEOPLE announces he will not seek a third term pictures of Opal, her “three-year-old LAUGHING PROUD. (Ray Pride) as mayor of Chicago. Muppet-esque poodle mix rescue.” Barber Damen Tavern, 701 N. Damen, ‘ also microblades eyebrows and freckles in 312.796.3191, damentavern.com October 5, 2018: Van Dyke guilty of her Chicago studio—the hottest eyebrow second-degree murder, guilty of treatment around, where she draws tiny Best Photographer On-the-Rise aggravated battery with a firearm, first lines that look like actual strands of hair to Capture Drag Chicago shot; guilty of aggravated battery with a onto the skin using a blade-like tool. Think firearm, second shot; guilty of aggravated of it as a micro-tattoo sans the pain. ERIK M. KOMMER battery with a firearm, third shot; guilty of Providing a more permanent fix for thin or Providing a fascinating glimpse into aggravated battery with a firearm, fourth poorly defined brows, it promises to Chicago’s thriving drag scene, multi- shot; guilty of aggravated battery with a change your eyebrows (and life) for good. disciplinary photographer and artist Erik firearm, fifth shot; guilty of aggravated (Vasia Rigou) M. Kommer turns his camera to emerging battery with a firearm, sixth shot; guilty of Minipennyblog.com and established performers to capture aggravated battery with a firearm, nightlife denizens at their most seventh shot; guilty of aggravated battery Best Magician Who is Not Your extravagant. Think impressive wigs and with a firearm, eighth shot; guilty of Ordinary Magician over-the-top headdresses, full-blown aggravated battery with a firearm, ninth eyelashes and glitter lips, outlandish shot; guilty of aggravated battery with a JEANETTE ANDREWS feather outfits and leopard platform firearm, tenth shot; guilty of aggravated With a background in science, philosophy heels. Sometimes the drag queens pose battery with a firearm, eleventh shot; and psychology that goes hand-in-hand backstage or mid-performance drenched guilty of aggravated battery with a with her vision to bring the art of illusion by some underground nightclub’s firearm, twelfth shot; guilty of aggravated back to the prestige it held in the 1800s, laser-beam stage lighting. Other times, battery with a firearm, thirteenth shot; contemporary magician and artist they are against a misty alleyway brick guilty of aggravated battery with a Jeanette Andrews, one of the few female wall or in the busy city streets. Gender, firearm, fourteenth shot; guilty of magicians working full time, is not here to identity, fashion and style all play in aggravated battery with a firearm, pull some street magic or children’s Kommer’s work, but through it all, he fifteenth shot; guilty of aggravated party-type tricks. Instead, she’s ready to manages to look beyond bright costumes battery with a firearm, sixteenth shot. mess with your perception for good. and false eyelashes and bare them down (Ray Pride) Manipulating seemingly supernatural to their very self. (Vasia Rigou) forces, the master illusionist will interfere facebook.com/ with your senses, making you doubt what erikmkommerphotography/ you actually see, taste or smell. She will challenge you to a real-time, decision- making mind game. Her meticulously researched, highly interactive and sensory-participatory performances will leave you speechless and enchanted. Andrews is no ordinary magician. (Vasia Rigou) Jeanetteandrews.com14



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patterns recorded on color postcards from efforts… and you sit there sucking down BEST POST-LOLLAPALOOZAthe period of Jensen’s reign. It is your ice water thinking, I put on shoes for CLUB SETspectacular. (David Hammond) this?! You walk home with your best friend,National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & each carrying an end of your bent-up bike, Jimmy Butler and Dwyane WadeCulture, 3015 West Division, 773.486.8345, trying to remember the chronology of the at The Bassmentnmprac.org Hüsker Dü discography and it’s all the lame fun you need right there. Aging loners Go to YouTube, type in the names and theBEST NEW WAY TO waxing nerdy in the night light.” place, press play, repeat. The fact thatEAT ICE CREAM (Ray Pride) Butler and Wade showed up at one of the Bassment’s summer live cover-bandDessert Taco BEST “MOVIN’ ON UP” POP-UP sessions is one thing, but for both to come BEST OF CHICAGO NOVEMBER 2018 Newcity on stage, audience cell phones recording If you are tired of ice cream in a plain cone, Notre and have a Thelma and Louise karaoke try Parlor Pizza Bar’s dessert tacos. The moment? Kinda legendary. (Scoop Jackson) waffle cone is built to resemble a hard-shell So where does a high-end streetwear Thebassmentchicago.com taco, so you get the shell, ice cream filling fixture go when it has to shut down its and toppings all in one spoonful. You have brick-and-mortar locale for a few weeks BEST SUMMER the choice of building your own or selecting while expanding its West Loop retail space? WEEKNIGHT OUT one of the featured tacos, including the A WTF? location just to let their super-cool colorful birthday cake ice cream “Unicorn kids client base—and the rest of the MCA Tuesdays on the Terrace Dreams” and the salty “Carmelo Anthony.” city—subtly know that when it comes to(Alexis Franciszkowicz) that high-snobiety life, they are on another The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) is108 N. Green, 312.600.6090, pizzaparlor.com level? If you are Notre, then the Waldorf- free for Illinois residents every Tuesday, Astoria is where you post-up and create a when they’re open late and host one of theBEST SANCTUARY FOR HOOPS retail pop-up that gives a whole new most exciting jazz series of the entire “evolution of street fashion” meaning to summer. Each Tuesday from June toChurch of the Epiphany/Nike “guess who’s coming to dinner?” September is Jazz Tuesday, featuring an (Scoop Jackson) extensive lineup of world-renowned local Basketball in the city has, for the most part, 11 E. Walton, notre-shop.com musicians—the perfect night out, complete been a religious experience. For decades, with a blanket and a glass of something hoop legends and Chicago b-ball BEST LIFE IN WARTIME fine in hand. (Vasia Rigou) luminaries have preached the gospel to the MOMENT 220 E. Chicago, 312.280.2660, world: Basketball in Chi is spiritual—more mcachicago.org than just a game. This summer, Nike took Far From The Chicago Air and that analogy seriously. Using the Church of Water Show BEST “THE SUMMER OF YE” the Epiphany (which had recently been MEDIA TOUR STOP converted as a performing arts and event We have always been at war with the space), the brand turned their former lakefront (or at least since 1959). The WCGI Morning Show Interview Chi-League into a training module for elite mid-August sky is silent until it is not. Even with Kanye West and non-elite high-school players to indoors, the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds connect with the game on a higher level. racket and roar. On street corners, the It would be wrong to say that this was Kyle,(Scoop Jackson) screaming comes across the sky: the sound Kendra and Leon throwing shade at Jimmy 201 S. Ashland, 312.243.4242 of siege, the anticipation of barrage, an Kimmel on how to interview Kanye, but impetus to adrenaline. Look toward those keeping it 1000, that’s exactly what it was. ItBEST EVOCATION OF TURN- catching the sound: celebratory? Thrilled? took Ye coming home and getting in frontOF-THE-TWENTIETH Or figures scurrying, shielding children’s of people who weren’t afraid of him orCENTURY WICKER PARK ears? The upturned faces on these streets, overly impressed to both give him a chanceSUMMER FROM JESSICA the great mix of Chicago’s melting pot, take to speak and call him on his bullshit at theHOPPER’S “NIGHT MOVES” an extra breath, maybe thinking of their same time. Something he desperately forebears from troubled lands. Or from needed someone to do. (Scoop Jackson)“You know how some nights you leave the where they themselves may recently have wgci.iheart.com house wanting to milk summer for all it’s arrived, where sounds of imminent warfare worth, but all you get is a good glimpse at would not be the cheekiest blast of summer. the rotten soul of the universe as it exists in (Ray Pride) and outside of yuppie jizz discos? So out of desperation, you and your friends go to the bar you hate trying to make good on your 17

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Immerse yourself in VR or general manager Cannon Porter has a spot put on a set of—hand-painted no less— that could take the No. 1 spot from the Built over a landfill in the 1930s, this boxing gloves and go at it. Part art current titleholder… whoever that may be. man-made peninsula serves as a beautiful exhibition, part cultural experience, part (Scoop Jackson) location to watch the sunset on Lake funhouse, Refinery 29’s 29 Rooms came to 302 N. Green, 773.645.1400, Michigan. Located in Hyde Park, the Point Chicago for the first time this summer—the abarestaurantchicago.com has a public park to play sports, patches of theme: “Turn it into Art.” The pop-up was grass to sunbathe on and rocks to sit on hosted in an industrial warehouse in the BEST “SUMMER IS FINALLY and admire the Chicago skyline. If the West Loop, just big enough to fit all HERE AND SO WORTH IT” weather is right, this section of the lake is twenty-nine themes in three days. With SPOT filled with swimmers, kayakers and topics ranging from culture and society to windsurfers. The park has a field house politics, gender and identity, each City Winery Chicago at the managed by the Chicago Park District, installation is created by visual artists, Riverwalk available for weddings and meetings. The musicians and celebrities to make sure space closer to the lake gets particularly there’s something for everyone. And all that, There’s nothing like the first few days of crowded on the Fourth of July as people set amidst a generous amount of bright colors, Chicago summer, when the city collectively up grills and blankets to watch the neon, flowers and rainbows, that provide peels away its layers, and rooftops and fireworks. (Manisha AR) Instagram-worthy moments. (Vasia Rigou) patios open everywhere. Take it all in at 5491 S. Shore refinery29.com City Winery, which may not have the best wine, but definitely does have fantastic BEST RECOGNITION OF BEST GENRE FEST FOR FILM views and seats along the no-longer-icy CHICAGO AS A GLOBAL river. It’s a perfect spot to celebrate the end CULTURAL FORCE Cinepocalypse of a long winter. (Rebecca Holland) 11 W. Riverwalk South, 312.229.5523, ComplexCon The sophomore outing of Cinepocalypse, citywinery.com the Midwest’s largest event for genre films After three conventions in Long Beach, and fans notched nine world premieres as BEST SUMMER DATE NIGHT California, the masterminds behind maybe well as a twenty-percent growth in RESTAURANT the most diverse hypebeast festival in attendance over its 2017 debut. America decided the cultural hub of the Cinepocalypse’s week in June at the Music Homestead on the Roof energy they hope to capture during their Box presented special guest Lana two-day conference existed elsewhere. So Wachowski and a Lifetime Achievement The farm-to-table, hyperlocal upscale food in July 2019, ComplexCon is coming to Award for cinematographer-director Ernest at Homestead on the Roof is reason to visit Chicago. While many will think this is just R. Dickerson. June makes an auspicious in any season, but in the summer, you can another “Con” coming in and invading our slate for future festivals that draw on the sit amid fairy lights in the garden where the hotel, night-and-day life space, they are inspiration of Montréal’s Fantasia restaurant sources many of their wrong. This is a validator of Chicago and its International Film Festival (July), Fantastic ingredients. It’s immediately romantic. presence in urban American culture. This Fest in Austin (September) and the (Rebecca Holland) is a global “thank you” for us being us. granddaddy of genre get-togethers, the 1924 W. Chicago, 773.332.2354, (Scoop Jackson) Sitges International Festival of Fantastic homesteadontheroof.com July 2019, complexcon.com Film in Spain (October). (Ray Pride) musicboxtheatre.com/events/ BEST “IT’S ALMOST BEST NOSTALGIA cinepocalypse-2018 SWIMSUIT SEASON” SPOT ICE CREAM SHOP Peeled Juice Bar Pretty Cool Ice Cream After eating and drinking your way Yellow Lemon, Peanut Butter Potato Chip, through the cold for months, prep for Litchi Lemon Tea, Banana Horchata and Chicago summer with a trip to Peeled Juice Fire Cracker are a few of the elaborate Bar in Evanston, which serves juices they and many others say have healing powers.18

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&CuNlitguhrtelife nomination.) Profilers are gonna profile: Chicago magazine’s fire-hot red-to- orange October cover celebrates “The Rise of Carrie Coon: Meet the Greatest Chicago Actress of her Generation.” A profile by The New Yorker’s Michael Schulman is more discreetly headlined: “Carrie Coon’s Existential Journey to TV Stardom.” “My family was always wondering why I ended up playing people who were mentally ill, insane, downtrodden and a little crazy,” she told the New Yorker. “I think what they don’t understand is that most female parts are written basically as hysterical women. Drama comes from crazy if women are Best Least Likely Music Venue Best Monthly Stand-up involved. And that’s only now starting to Showcase shift. We haven’t evolved a hero story THE WINE GODDESS A bright, sparkly wine shop by day, The A DOPE ASS COMEDY SHOW AT that’s female. We’re always trying to fit Wine Goddess sometimes transforms into NORTH BAR women’s stories into this male structure, a Saturday night venue, featuring artists which is this rising action, this powerful like Jason Narducy, Nora O’Connor and Hosted and produced by Dave Helem, a conflict, and this falling action. And I think Jon Langford. Shows tend to sell out. I’ve former Chicago Public Schools teacher— a female hero story is not that. It’s played there a few times, and while it and current writer for Lil Rel Howery’s something else. Women are trying to seems it would be weird and new sitcom “Rel”—this monthly showcase recover their voices, which is a much uncomfortable to rock in a wine shop, no, at North Bar is the third Friday of every quieter, deeply existential, and frustrating it’s like playing in a warm living room to month and consistently offers up a lineup journey.” (Ray Pride) multiple Chicago headliners deep. Don’t all your friends, and the abundance of be surprised if special guests drop in wine and liquor bottles lining the walls unannounced. During one show, Rebecca Best Free Weekly Stand-up provides a strong sense of wellbeing. O’Neal, Felonious Munk and Hannibal Showcase (Freda Love Smith) Buress all gave unexpected sets. Buy CAMP: A COMEDY SHOW AT 702 Main, Evanston, 847.475.9463, tickets in advance, this show sells out. VILLAGE TAP winegoddess.com (Zach Freeman) 1637 W. North, 773.697.3563, Though it’s been running for only a little Best Amateur Gallery livenorthbar.com over two years, this free weekly showcase at Village Tap in Roscoe Village has drawn BABY BLUE GALLERY attention for consistently solid lineups Caleb Beck announced Baby Blue Best Actor With Healthy and friendly atmosphere. Producer-hosts Gallery’s move to a new location along Self-Perception Tessa Orzech and Samantha Berkman with details of its first exhibition last planned it that way from the beginning, December. A year ago, Beck, a painter who CARRIE COON intentionally creating a vibe of moved from Boston to immerse himself in Since her triumph in the 2010 Steppenwolf friendliness and having a good time. It the DIY art community thriving in Chicago, remounting of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia may be summer camp-themed but it’s fun was showing work out of his apartment in Woolf,” Wisconsin repertory-theater- year-round. (Zach Freeman) Pilsen, with visitors entering through his scene-bred, Chicago-embraced actress 2055 W. Roscoe, 773.883.0817, kitchen and walking around his living Carrie Coon can’t stop arriving. (The villagetap.com Broadway transfer netted her a 2013 Tony room and bedrooms. Depending on the show, Beck would paint the walls, addNewcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO vinyl text or change the lighting to suit the works on display. He was so committed to his project of creating an accessible I’ve played there a few times, and apartment-gallery space that he didn’t while it seems it would be weird and bother to spend money furnishing it. uncomfortable to rock in a wine shop, Instead, every time there was a show, he no, it’s like playing in a warm living would throw his mattress into the closet and prep the space to receive visitors. Curated, promoted and financially supported by Beck, Baby Blue is literally a one-man show. (Manisha AR) room to all your friends. 2201 S. Halsted, 540.230.7822, babybluegallery.com THE WINE GODDESS20

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INY HANDS TINY WEINER TINY HEART FREE THE KIDS. LAKEVIEW’S WIENER’S CIRCLE JULY LETTERBOARDNewcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO Best Hard-Boiled Writing Advice Best National (and International) Best Place to Save $780 on Your Fashion Takeover of Any City Annual Entertainment Budget DAVID MAMET’S “CHICAGO” “Man bites dog is too interesting to be THE HUG BETWEEN YE AND VIRGIL SIMON’S TAVERN news,” a Chicago Tribune editor barks at AT ABLOH’S RUNWAY LOUIS I know: glogg, the historic murals. I know. one of his callow, ruffian, inebriate VUITTON INAUGURATION But the most distinctive feature of charges in David Mamet’s 1920s-set Fashion—especially urban-street fashion Simon’s Tavern is their live music roster. double-cross thriller, “Chicago,” a title the as they seem hellbent on calling it—in Go on a Wednesday night and you’ll see playwright-screenwriter-director-scold America has become equal in importance incredible bands whose members have huffs mightily to hoist upon his seventy- and meaningfulness to sports. And in the gigs the coming weekend with Mucca year-old shoulders. Some passages across newly ascended cultural lane of merch, Pazza, Poi Dog Pondering, Brian Wilson the 352 pages sound out like a screenplay apparel and design, Chicago talent has and NRBQ. You’ll see a shabby speaker gone awry and shoved hand-and-fist into reigned and run (as in, “run shit!”): Yeezy, jammed into the corner and wonder why a handy whisky barrel, and other bits have Off-White. Don C and Juwop’s Nike collabs, the room sounds great. And you’ll see a the good garrulous sense to simply sing in Sir & Madame and Fat Tiger Workshop’s lot of musicians in the audience. What you extended high Mametese: “If one can international presence, G-Fazos. The hug won’t see is a door person taking money, afford it, but one has nothing to say, one between Ye and Virgil at Abloh’s runway because shows at Simon’s are free. (Freda should not write. That is not writer’s block Louis Vuitton inauguration in Paris was Love Smith) but common courtesy.” The same editor the most Chi moment to happen in all of 5210 N. Clark, 773.878.0894 observes, “I don’t understand writer’s 2018. It quietly let the rest of the world in block. I’m sure it’s very high-toned and on what we’ve known about us all along. Best Red Hots #Resistance             thrilling, like these other psychological (Scoop Jackson) complaints. I, myself, could never afford it. THE WIENER’S CIRCLE As I had a Sainted Mother at home who, Best Bill Daley Takedown Surly is as surly does until real estate without my wages, would have been hard (So Far) development someday crashes down on put to drink herself to death. Further: I Lakeview’s Wiener’s Circle. Char-dog think, if one can afford it, but one has BEN JORAVSKY Central’s ever-prickly letterboard kicked nothing to say, one should not write. This Ben Joravsky’s indispensable Chicago off 2018 with the message “PEOPLE FROM is not writer’s block but common Reader political dispatches took up the ALL COUNTRIES WELCOME AT THIS courtesy.” And what of the ministrations case of yet another Daley dynasty mayoral SH-T-HOLE.” July shined “PUTIN OBVI GOT of the city editor, you may demand? “A wannabe in September, when only about THE PEE PEE TAPE,” while June advertised newspaper is a joke. Existing at the twenty strivers to the fifth floor had yet “PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS OFFERED HERE” pleasure of the advertisers, to mulct the shouted their names into the wind. and  “TINY HANDS TINY WEINER TINY public, gratifying their stupidity, and Joravsky cites this prototypical act of HEART FREE THE KIDS.” (The Wiener’s render some small advance on investment dynastic “can-kicking” while picking apart Circle twitter account elaborated: “If we’re to the owners, offering putative the appalling strands of Bill Daley’s gonna cage kids, let’s start w don jr, employment to their etiolated, wastrel political and corporate finagling of recent Ivanka & Eric.”) Plus: a May tweet read sons.” But the best passages, of course, decades: “Bill Daley is the father of “People always say our ambience makes us are spat without hesitation or William Daley, Jr., an executive for Morgan offensive too #roseanne,” along with the compunction, and would indeed sing Stanley, the investment firm that put legend, “ROSEANNE NEED NOT APPLY onscreen: “‘The question is, then,’ Mike together the consortium that bought the HERE.” (Ray Pride) said, ‘what is evil?’ ‘Well, that is decided,’ parking meters…. The deal in which Rich 2622 N. Clark, 773.477.7444, Doyle said, ‘by the fellow holding the gun.’” Daley basically sold an asset worth about twitter.com/thewienercircle (Ray Pride) $10 billion to a Morgan Stanley consortium for about $1.15 billion.” (Ray Pride)22

Best Break In Localized Community stewards championing his that I was the girl next door who just BEST OF CHICAGO NOVEMBER 2018 NewcityReporting broader social impact learned about the picked up a guitar and went onstage and SECC-NEG, were awarded a grant, and are said what everyone was thinking. And itBLOCK CLUB CHICAGO on the road to preserving his expressive felt empowering to me and it feltJoe  Ricketts’ abrupt November 2017 wood artworks. An organization serving empowering to the people that heard it,decision to shutter DNAInfo websites in South Side communities, the SECC’s grant especially the women. So, the accidentalNew York and Chicago (as well as program has helped the Oakland feminist spokesperson.” (Ray Pride)Chicagoist, Gothamist, LAist, DCist and community launch an importantSFist) left Chicago without a hyperlocal conversation about Mizenburg’s Best Community Art Center onnews source. Archives were briefly contribution across an intergenerational the Planetbanished from the web, but were acquired and multicultural neighborhood.by three public radio stations in February (Yetta Starr) THE HYDE PARK ART CENTER2018. Not only did a core of reporters from South East Chicago Commission: If you love multi-dimensional artDNAInfo come out swinging with the Block 1511 E. 53rd; Oakland Museum and experiences and internationalClub Chicago startup in 2018, the site later Garden: 4116 S. Lake Park collaboration with local expression ofacquired the assets of DNAInfo Chicago. major impact, the Hyde Park Art Center isDescribing themselves as “independent, Best Rock-It Out of 1993      a remarkable institution to check out anynonpartisan and nonprofit neighborhood time of the year. Known for its funkynews,” the subscription-driven Block Club LIZ PHAIR exhibitions in the 1960s and launchingChicago is back to snooping up the street Liz Phair was quietly triumphant in 2018, Hairy Who and the Chicago Imagists,and sniffing down the block, illuminating touring, talking, taking the measure of HPAC has remained diligent in promotingreal estate machinations and shenanigans twenty-five years since “Exile In Guyville,” alternative voices since its 1939 inception.as well as the small sights and smells that when she took on the man-stacked music But why is this such a special place? It’skeep a big city like Chicago at street level. scene of Chicago and elsewhere. “Exile” packed with human-centric coolness: theBCC also offers a free daily newsletter was reissued in May, as well as the music extraordinary people who work there, thewith breaking news. (Ray Pride) from her early “Girly-Sound” cassettes. visiting artists who hone their skills andBlockclubchicago.org The New York Times took notice in Jessica teach, the visitors exploring exhibits or Bennett’s profile of Phair: “Ms. Phair was neighborhood peeps enjoying theBest Start to Honoring the defiant and sexual and unapologetic and multi-purpose library and gallery or theLegacy of Urban Sculptor Milton vulnerable at once—a kind of girl-next- attached cafe. At its core, this place isMizenburg, Jr. door casually swinging a sledgehammer about community connection and at rock ’n’ roll as we knew it, singing about humanizing the disparate aspects ofTHE SOUTHEAST CHICAGO sex, love and power in a direct, creative expression. For example, aCOMMISSION (SECC) unmediated way that few women before workshop focusing on women’s healthNEIGHBORHOOD ENHANCEMENT her had. Part of her punch came from the and wellness incorporated improvGRANT (NEG) tension between her clean-cut comedy. The programing at HPAC featuresJust over two years ago, sculptor, teacher Midwestern look and her explicit evolving exhibits, workshops, studioand beloved resident of the Oakland exploration of desire and death. ‘Guyville’ classes, artists in residence events, youthcommunity, Milton Mizenburg Jr. passed catapulted her—twenty-five, unemployed and senior activities and a plethora ofaway. For the uninitiated, Oakland is a and smoking a lot of pot in the Wicker partnerships with preeminent events andvibrant urban community southeast of Park neighborhood—to the cover of institutions across the city. You can evenBronzeville and north of Hyde Park with a Rolling Stone, under the proclamation, ‘A reimagine a Coke machine having arich cultural heritage in the creative arts. Rock & Roll Star is Born.’” The fifty-one- conversation with a young visitor fromIn a small but mighty way, Mizenburg’s year-old Phair sees it this way: “I’m sort of Kansas! (Yetta Starr)vision and artistic expression on vacant a feminist spokesmodel for, I guess, 5020 S. Cornell, 773.324.5520,lots, including the site affectionately putting your voice out there, believing you hydeparkart.orgknown as the Oakland Museum and have something to say and maybeGarden, helped an ever-evolving sex-positivity or something. I have beencommunity for nearly twenty-five years. placed there because there was a sense 23

Newcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO Best Gregorian Chant Best Place to Explore Your Inner Best Place to Mix Jazz “Off the Wall” and Table Tennis MONASTERY OF THE HOLY CROSS The Benedictine brothers of Holy Cross HOUSE OF VANS 210 LIVE are our local standard-bearers of the It’s been two years since the newly 210 Live in north suburban Highwood was monophonic choral tradition that can be opened House of Vans became one of carved out of a bowling alley and retains a traced back to the sixth century. But these Chicago’s favorite destinations for free funky yet family-friendly vibe. Nestled monks also throw down some serious summer concerts—their signature Vans among Italian eateries lining Green Bay polyphony, which is about a thousand House Party series. But the industrial Road, 210, established in 1949, presents years newer. To bring the order entirely warehouse space that doubles as an what could be the North Shore’s widest up-to-date, they’ve made it easy to indoor skate park also features emerging repertory of live entertainment, with jazz, experience their singing via a YouTube artist’s exhibitions—installation, blues, retro pop, world music and comedy channel and a Facebook page, and by photographic works and the like—and five nights a week, along with a full making their 2017 album of gorgeously hosts artist-led workshops and indie-film kitchen and bar. Beneath the spacious sonorous plainchant, “Mass for premieres. Building a community beyond dining-listening-dancing space is a Ascension,” available to download. For skate culture and bringing in food, beer, postmodern surprise: The basement the purist, the best bet is to check the art and music, House of Vans is, in reality, contains a perfect facsimile of a circa monastery’s website for upcoming events a cultural hub for fans of the brand mid-1970s suburban rec room, complete (it seems a bit secular to call them everywhere. For those who are not there with a functional ping-pong table. “performances”). (Robert Rodi) yet, here’s your opportunity to embrace (Hugh Iglarsh) 3111 S. Aberdeen, 773.927.7424, their off-the-wall philosophy you didn’t 210 Green Bay Road, Highwood, chicagomonk.org know you needed. (Vasia Rigou) 847.433.0304, 210restaurant.com 113 N. Elizabeth, 312.733.5270, vans.com Best Chicago Rap Lyric About Best Place to Celebrate Social Media Best Dunk on The Late, Schubert Unlamented Tronc “LOGOUT,” SABA PIANOFORTE CHICAGO “If you press logout, you get forgotten JASON GAY IN THE WALL STREET Originally an outlet for the Fazioli line of What’s a post but a reminder just how JOURNAL pianos, PianoForte Chicago has become a boring our lives a-a-a-are “Corporate name tweaks can go much, key player and presenter in Chicago’s Look at how much fun I’m havin’ much worse. The Tribune Publishing classical and jazz scenes. Launched by Ain’t no beauty in the absence of company rebranded itself as Tronc, which Swiss-born banker-impresario Thomas broadcastin’ to your followers.” sounds like the noise a robot makes when Zoells in 2004, PianoForte offers new and (Ray Pride) it hits its head on a door frame. In what used instruments online and at its Gold universe is ‘Tronc’ a better name than Coast showroom. PianoForte also houses Best Countertenor ‘Tribune’? I guess Dunkin’ employees recording facilities and offers a range of should be happy they don’t now work for musical programming at its South Loop THOMAS ALÁAN Dunk. Or worse, Dunc. (Don’t get me complex, including live broadcasts on He looks like he’s in a boy band and his started on how Tronc is one of those WFMT and WDCB. In addition to producing home page boasts, “I sing like a girl and outfits that spells its corporate name dozens of recitals a year, the boutique that’s awesome.” But pop-star entirely in lower case. This should be sponsors an annual “Schubertiade” affectations are just a gloss on a seriously banned, unless your CEO is the ghost of festival in late January, honoring the accomplished artist whose repertoire e.e. cummings.)” (Ray Pride) composer’s life and work and featuring a encompasses everything from the wide sampling of his lieder, chamber baroque to the Romantic. He’s a member, I guess Dunkin’ music and, of course, keyboard as well as executive director, of Bach + employees compositions. The operation’s nonprofit Beethoven Experience, an ensemble should be happy arm, the PianoForte Foundation, runs a whose latest project, “Chicago Stories,” they don’t now piano donation program providing he describes as “music about Chicagoans, work for Dunk. restored instruments, largely to Chicago written by Chicagoans, and performed by Or worse, Dunc. Public Schools. It’s an island of personal Chicagoans in Chicago,” which adds music-making in a sea of recorded sound. contemporary music to his arsenal. To (Hugh Iglarsh) everything Aláan sings, he brings an 900 N. Michigan and 1335 S. Michigan, uncanny richness and power that’s 312.291.0000, pianofortechicago.com amazing for a singer who’s using head voice—falsetto, in the popular parlance, although there’s nothing false here. (Robert Rodi) thomasalaan.com, bbexperience.org24

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here are competitors, there are pretenders, there are rumors of tamale turf wars. THE TAMALE MANNewcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO Best Harmonica Hangout Best Country Music Radio Best Beatboxer-Vegan Chef Station HARMONICA NIGHT, AMY’S WINE YURI LANE HOUSE WEBG 95.5 FM In a culture increasingly demanding those Chicago has long been a place where Chicago isn’t known as a country-music who receive the kiss of fame be multi- giants like Little Walter, James Cotton and town, but WUSN-FM has long been a hyphenates, Yuri Lane has expertly carved Junior Wells perfected the amplified blues broadcasting juggernaut, so the audience out his niche. One of Chicago’s most harmonica sound. As an homage to the for torch and twang is clearly there. Since high-profile beatboxers, he slipped in an great blues, jazz and even classical 2015, WUSN has had a hotter, hipper extra hyphen right at the start by harmonica players, Amy’s Wine House has alternative in WEBG, a.k.a. “Big 95.5,” incorporating a harmonica into his a harmonica hoedown on the third among whose assets are a millennials- ‘boxing, a feat which earned him some Wednesday of the month. A tradition now friendly playlist and a charismatic seventeen-million video views in 2007 and in its fifth year, the Hohner, Seydel and morning-drive host in Bobby Bones. In made him one of the first generation of Lee Oscar families gather their children, June, the station scored a coup by signing YouTube celebrities. His YouTube page the diatonics and their larger, more rare former WUSN morning host Lisa Dent. Big remains heavily inventoried, although he offspring, the chromatics, for a monthly 95.5 is also social-media savvy, with a hasn’t posted anything in the past few Mississippi saxophone reunion. The mood comprehensive web presence that years. He’s focusing on teaching, is generous, as any aspiring harmonica includes a slate of dedicated podcasts. corporate gigs and catering—in which player will learn how to suck and blow and (Robert Rodi) capacity he pairs his music with his own grasp the thrill of the trill along with vegan cuisine. His specialty: a sushi drinking fine wine at prices even a Best Film Retrospective package called “Beats and Rolls.” bluesman can afford. (David Witter) (Robert Rodi) 7235 W. Roosevelt, Forest Park, BERGMAN 100 AT SISKEL yurilane.com 708.657.4530, facebook.com/ The solution to sustainability of feature- amyswinehouse7235/ film exhibition is sliding from disruption Best Soul Music and Comfort to innovation: “event-izing” is one of the Food Podcast Best Man to Walk into catchphrases for making the theatrical Hungry at a Saloon experience memorable and lasting. THE LAUREN IGNITED PODCAST Excavations from the first century of Ignited is a transplanted Houstonian who THE TAMALE MAN feature-film production make for a lightly podcasts the way God intended: she You know his name. He may know yours. booming business: classic films on bigger, addresses her passions and doesn’t worry You know the t-shirts he wears: they properly illuminated screens, the about thematic seamlessness. That advertise taverns and saloons and dive reflected light of the things the hundred happens anyway, since co-host Gregory bars across a patch of the Near North Side years of cinema so far have left as artifact Perrine joined the show. It helps that and Near West Side without their own are electrifying younger audiences as well they’re both charming, that they conduct food service. There are competitors, there as gray and fading ones. Year-round winsomely casual interviews with are pretenders, there are rumors of Chicago has the Siskel Film Center of the music-makers from both Chicago and tamale turf wars. There’s even some School of the Art Institute, Facets Houston who open up about performing tragic long-under-the-lamp pizza sold Multimedia, the Music Box, Doc Films, and consuming. Ignited and Perrine are from trucks. Think of the simple five-for- Chicago Film Society and a raft of other breezily, irresistibly free-associative; a six dollars handmade puerco, pollo or exhibitors paying mind to what would be recent podcast was titled, “Lauren and queso delights in masa and cornhusks otherwise lost to a fog of pixels and Greg talk SXSW, Chicago Festivals & that his nocturnal rounds lavish onto streaming availability. The Siskel’s Kolaches.” (Robert Rodi) imbibers. But don’t say his name aloud Bergman 100 showed most of the player.fm/series/the-lauren-ignited- now, only say it to him when he greets you retrospective of work by the Swedish podcast with a smile and that tamale-filled cooler, master in digital format, but its scope— as well as those special green and red twenty-six features of his approximately salsas. “Jefe!” “Claudio!” sixty works, across three months—offered (Ray Pride) both sweet refresher to those who appreciated the Swede’s range, as well as vital introduction for those who had never seen his work on a big screen. (Ray Pride) Siskelfilmcenter.org; docfilms.uchicago. edu/dev/calendar/fall2018/tuesdays. shtml26

BEST OF CHICAGO NOVEMBER 2018 Newcity 27

Newcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO EST NEW BEST NEXT “IT” BAR as a fifteen-year-old. She develops her own NEIGHBORHOOD iron suit, which draws the attention of Tony DOWNTOWN Kumiko Stark. The first issue will be in stores November 7. (Alexis Franciszkowicz) “Downtown” South Just wait. Trust. Of all of the new-age, Marvel.com Loop (22nd and forward-thinking bars in the city, Kumiko Michigan Avenue) is set to invent a whole new standard. The BEST CULTURE-FILLED Oriole team’s latest venture to own the ROAD TRIP The final pieces of mythical title of kings of the Chicago food construction on many of the storefronts and liquor scene, Kumiko was Mies van der Rohe’s McCormick obscuring the 22nd and Michigan block conceptualized in part by Julia Momose House will be complete by the time the ink dries (GreenRiver, the Aviary, currently Oriole). on this issue. From Bar 22 to Motor City This east Fulton Market cocktail paradise After nearly twenty-five years, the biggest, Brewing to Jerk Villa to event space 22 is about to—as corny as this sounds—raise most-anticipated event of the Elmhurst Art Thirty 9 to the relocation of Succezz, the the bar. (Scoop Jackson) Museum is here: Mies van der Rohe’s South Loop “downtown” should be close to 630 W. Lake, barkumiko.com McCormick House is open to the public. up-and-poppin’. Using the Wintrust Arena The restoration of its original façade and the huge Marriott lobby as flagships, BEST INTIMATION OF reveals the building’s full exterior for the the South Loop is about to seriously get its MORTALITY THAT QUICKLY first time. Multidisciplinary artist Iñigo money—and presence in the city—on. BECOMES INCESSANT MUSIC Manglano-Ovalle’s architectural (Scoop Jackson) installation “Untitled Film (Red),” features Cicadas colored film placed over every floor-to- BEST ART FAIR SHUTTLE BUS ceiling window. The eye takes a while to SERVICE The cicadas, they’re living, they’re dying, adjust to the red glare—a new, surreal when will they finish all this dying? The reality—but when it does, one is able to EXPO Chicago annual buzzing of the Hemiptera clan, appreciate the masterful blend between old rising, falling, quieting, rising, competed in and new. (Vasia Rigou) EXPO Chicago week is the art scene’s late summer into autumn with the Through January 13, 2019, 150 S. Cottage busiest time for collectors, dealers, incessant, months-long construction Hill, Elmhurst, 630.834.0202, enthusiasts and visitors alike. They agree sounds sprawled across the city as sewers elmhurstartmuseum.org on one thing: we’re all stretched too thin and street corners were dug out, rebuilt and no matter how much we’d love to be a and just as often dug out again. Drilling BEST PLACE TO FEEL THE part of the gallery openings, art parties and and jackhammering tapered as each day PUNK ROCK CRAZE day-after brunches, we cannot possibly be grew long, and cicada song rose from yards in more than one place at the same time. and trees that indeterminate few hundred Riot Fest How can we make the most of the offerings feet away. Glenn Branca dubbed his of more than a hundred international Symphony No. 6 “Devil Choirs at the Gates Riot Fest is the beer-fueled wonderland that galleries from across the world and the of Heaven,” and maximal minimalism of rocks Douglas Park to the ground every extensive programming, performances and workman’s percussion and long-sleeping September with rock, punk, alternative events around Chicago? Enter the fair’s insect alternated infernal choruses by rock and hip-hop sounds. Indeed, it’s complimentary shuttle service: an oasis of chattering chance at the gates of rebirth whatever you want it to be: A jam-packed comfortable seating and bottled water, free and doom. Pavement restored, eggs laid, three-day festival ode to your pop-punk wifi and chargers for the phone that’s on only the mockery of October’s Indian high-school self, a long-awaited reunion of the verge of burning down from all the art summer, pulsing with heat, was left before a favorite band that hasn’t played together pictures you took. The shuttle operates the surely grievous but snow-hushed winter in years, a road trip to create memories or with a friendly staff, to and from the fair’s to come. (Ray Pride) to take that perfect Instagram shot. grounds at Navy Pier, between the Museum Celebrating their fifteenth birthday in 2019, of Contemporary Art (MCA) and the West BEST COMIC BOOK TO the homegrown festival manages to pull off Loop art district. After hours of walking PREORDER BY A CHICAGOAN a show for all every time. Complete with from booth to booth carrying heavyweight ABOUT A CHICAGOAN tons of local beer and food trucks, a Ferris catalogues, it’s an ideal opportunity to sit wheel and a traveling circus sideshow, it’s back and relax before the next destination. Iron Heart by Eve Ewing an end-of-the-summer celebration to kiss (Vasia Rigou) festival season goodbye that will leave you expochicago.com If poet and scholar Eve Ewing isn’t dirty, sweaty and exhausted. (Vasia Rigou) accomplished enough, she’s embarked on riotfest.org another endeavor: writing the Marvel comic “Iron Heart.” The series follows Riri, a gifted black Chicagoan who attends MIT28

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Irving Park, 773.665.4500, True Chicago Creative Conference BEST PLACE TO BUY longroomchicago.com SOMETHING SCARY With all of the talent floating around the BEST FALL HIDEOUT city, it’s only natural for someone to put Bucket O’ Blood Books and together a “consortium” that provides Records Clark Playlot Park and the Ghosts “space” for creative think tanks and of Riverview think-a-likes. True Chicago Creative If remakes of “Halloween” and “Suspiria” Conference continues to provide didn’t satisfy your need for horror this fall, The area along the Chicago River between opportunities to get together, share visit the intersection of California and Belmont and Addison (now Clark Playlot experiences and know that at the end of the Elston to dip into Bucket O’ Blood. You’ll Park) was for years an urban no-man’s-land day, others who fight your creative struggle find horror books written by authors other where bums slept, kids rode dirt bikes and have your back. (Scoop Jackson) than Stephen King as well as a great builders dumped construction materials. November 17 at Low Res Studio, selection of horror movies. The store also But before that it was Riverview: the city’s 1821 W. Hubbard, #203, truechicago.co offers fantasy and sci-fi novels in addition largest amusement park, where to a whole host of records. rollercoasters roared, parachutes tumbled, BEST PLACE IN CHICAGO TO (Alexis Franciszkowicz) bumper cars crashed and carnie freaks and DANCE AND EAT YOUR WAY 3182 N. Elston, 312.890.3860, clowns roamed the Midway, from 1904 to THROUGH DAY OF THE DEAD bucketoblood.com 1967. The summer’s greenery hides much, but when the leaves fall just south of Clark The National Museum BEST HOPE FOR CHICAGO Park, worn foundations that once housed of Mexican Art BEARS’ FUTURE carnival structures reveal themselves, as well as a cement chute, once part of a Next to Mexican Independence Day, there is Khalil Mack narrow canal that fed the tunnel of love. As perhaps no greater Mexican celebration the air cools and evenings darken, you may than Day of the Dead (October The Bears have needed a feel-good story even hear long lost echoes of children 31-November 2). The National Museum of since… Hell, since before the Bulls. And in screaming and barkers calling in the Mexican Art in Pilsen is a monument to one unbelievable, not-even-Adam-Schefter- pre-winter air. (David Witter) Hispanic artistic contributions, and the saw-coming, fire-sale trade conducted 3400 N. Rockwell, 773.248.3966 people there make a big deal of Día de los right before the season jumped off, the Muertos. Annual festivities are capped on Bears stole one of the best defensive players BEST CURIOSITY-TRIGGERING November with a “Love Never Dies” ball, in the league. And got him in his prime. WAY TO GET YOU TO ENGAGE offering food, drink and dancing with Mack has the potential to bring the Bears WITH THE CHICAGO ART abandon. (David Hammond) back to universal defensive dominance. To AND DESIGN SCENE 1852 W. 19th, 312.738.1503, be the team no team wants to see on nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org Sunday. Unless it’s the Packers. #JustGoSeeIt, Art Design Chicago (Scoop Jackson) “Italian wedding cake meets seahorse water shuffle,” reads a cryptic light blue poster with huge yellow lettering. “It’s definitely a curvy, metally, origamiish something or other,” reads another—this one is intense orange with purple-ish, equally big fonts.30

ROCKEFELLER CHAPEL AT The Chapel’s signature mix of arts + spirit in the magnificent setting of its resonant spaceFAURÉ REQUIEM HANDEL’S MESSIAH PIPES FOR THE SEASONTHURSDAY NOVEMBER 15 | 7:30 PM SUNDAY DECEMBER 2 | 3 PM SUNDAY DECEMBER 16 | 5 PM Thomas Weisflog and Bryan McGuiggin performIn the week of the 100th anniversary of the ending Continuing the beloved tradition of a matinée an hour of gorgeous seasonal music by candlelight,of the First World War, the Chapel Choir and Motet performance of Handel’s Messiah, with the with delicious hot cider served. Free.Choir sing Fauré’s haunting Requiem as part of a new Rockefeller Chapel Choir, Motet Choir, andThursday evening concert series, with the restored members of Chicago Men’s A Cappella, conducted BOOK NOW!original orchestration of organ, strings, timpani, by James Kallembach, featuring soloists Kaitlinand horns, conducted by James Kallembach, Foley, Lindsey Adams, Matthew Dean, and THE TALLIS SCHOLARSwith soloists Alexandra Olsavsky and Vince Wallace. Vince Wallace, with members of the Haymarket A RENAISSANCE CHRISTMASFree. Orchestra, concertmaster Jeri-Lou Zike. Tickets at tickets.uchicago.edu from October 2, $25–55. SUNDAY DECEMBER 9 | 3 PM Tickets at tickets.uchicago.edu, $38 general.Full details at rockefeller.uchicago.edu   | Rockefeller Memorial Chapel | 5850 S. Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago IL 60637 | 773.702.2667

VERDISung in Italian with projected English translationsA family rivalry has deadly consequencesin this beloved Verdi masterpieceNOV DECLyric production revival of Verdi’s Il trovatore generously made possible by SAVINGS FOR GROUPS OFHenry M. and Gilda R. Buchbinder and the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation. LYRICOPERA.ORG GROUPSALES .. LYRICOPERA.ORG Why you should subscribe to Newcity’s print edition today1 Never miss an issue: Your co eeshop often runs out before you get there, or your lifestyle has changed and you don’t really hang out at co eeshops anymore.2 You live outside our distribution area but you really want to keep up with the cultural life of Chicago, from art to dance to design to dining and drinking to film to lit to music to theater and comedy and opera and…3 You want to support our mission and understand the imperative for publications to diversify their revenue sources.Just five dollars a month at Newcity.com/subscribe

Food & DrinkBest Place to Drink to the Best Local Food System available or on the menu), Majani is as BEST OF CHICAGO NOVEMBER 2018 NewcityChanging Seasons on the West Side diverse in their offerings as Mi Tocaya is in theirs. Now if they can just do like Harold’sJ. PARKER FARM ON OGDEN and open ninety-five more.Patio season is sacred in Chicago. Heavy When Whole Foods Market opened in (Scoop Jackson)are the sighs when the days grow shorter Englewood in 2016, people had opinions, 7167 S. Exchange, 773.359.4019,and the sidewalks are no longer shared both good and bad. Stereotypes be majani.bizwith wrought-iron furniture. However, you damned. But in December of that samecan grasp that al fresco feeling all year year, a $3.5 million decision was made to Best Place to Enjoy theround at J. Parker, the Hotel Lincoln’s extend a food retail experiment into Georgian National Dishrooftop bar. The glass-walled lounge something greater. Thus the concept ofopens to let in the warm summer air and cultivating a farm on the West Side was EASTERN BREADSTONE BAKERYkeeps you cozily cocooned in winter. The birthed. The Farm On Ogden (part of a Through the tiny, nondescript door ofsky-high, unobstructed views of Lincoln joint venture between Windy City Harvest, Eastern Breadstone Bakery, you’ll find aPark allow you to toast each season’s Lawndale Christian Health Center and giant stone oven and a flour-coverednatural beauty, no matter the Chicago Botanic Garden farming program) baker churning out khachapuri, atemperature. A perfect solution to the opened in June and serves as a traditional Georgian dish of cheese-filledend-of-patio-season blues. homegrown food and educational and bread. The pizza dough-like bread is filled(Lauren Knight) employment space heretofore unseen in with soft cheese and topped with beef, an1816 N. Clark, 312.254.4747, the ‘hood. Now if they can only get egg or any number of other deliciousjparkerchicago.com {312}254-4747 brothas to eat eggplant… things. It’s kind of like deep-dish meets (Scoop Jackson) Naples-style pizza. While you’re there,Best Place to Have a 3555 W. Ogden, chicagobotanic.org grab some frozen khinkali, GeorgianBand Meeting dumplings stuffed with meat and herbs, Best Last-Rights-Read, and thank yourself when you boil themLOST LAKE Bucket List, Final-Bite-in-Life, later. (Rebecca Holland)If you have important business to discuss Single-Dish, Comfort Food 2818 W. Devon, 773.338.9969or actual decisions to make, you ought toattend to all that before your first LOBSTER ROLL AT ACADIA Best Place to Have a Beer andTic-Tac-Taxi cocktail at Lost Lake. After Here’s the thing: One of the hands-down Save Democracythat, plans will grow loose and expansive, best drinks you can get in Chicago isand conversation will start to go like, “Oh called the Rich Gamble. It’s only made at TEMPERANCE BEER COMPANYmy god, this is the most perfect cocktail Acadia. It’s the Au Cheval burger of This fall I’ve been going to postcard-I’ve ever had in my life. What the fuck is in cocktails. The Lobster Roll is better. writing parties at Temperance Beerthis?” The answer? Rum, rum and more (Scoop Jackson) Company for The Sister District Project, arum. You will want a second one, but 1639 S. Wabash, 312.360.9500, nonprofit that mobilizes volunteers toplease accept that the productive part of acadiachicago.com target specific swing districts and flipyour meeting has ended. You will want a them blue. I can’t imagine a morethird, but try to avoid that; if you give in, Best Reason to Leave democratic space: wide, comfortablethe friendly server will bring three straws Rogers Park or Hyde Park tables, an open room that’s not too dark,so you can share with your bandmates. for Vegan Food not too loud, with plenty of air to breathe.(Freda Love Smith) It all reminds you that you live in a free3154 W. Diversey, 773.293.6048, MAJANI country, at least for the moment. And thelostlaketiki.com It’s not uncommon to find restaurants beer is excellent. (Freda Love Smith) that specialize in building vegan menus 2000 Dempster, Evanston, 847.864.1000, for people of color. In South Shore, for temperancebeer.com instance, Majani caters to those who live a vegan lifestyle. Neither are those that specialize in building menus that cater to people of color who have made veganism a lifestyle. From their BBQ cauliflower to the real strawberry cupcakes (not always 33

Best Return of the Native, Best Place You Haven’t Best Self-Description That Booze Dept. Considered Visiting, Shows That 1970s Chicago Will But Really Should Be Here So Long As Lettuce JEPPSON’S MALÖRT Entertain You Enterprises Is Pilsen’s CH Distillery is bringing the SWEET PEPPER unforgettably brackish wormwood- VENEZUELAN FOOD BAR CRAB CELLAR infused liquor, Jeppson’s Malört, back to Chicago after nearly fifty years of Florida- Sweet Pepper Venezuelan Food Bar in The Rich Melman-founded Lettuce based distillation. Tremaine Atkinson, Lincoln Square has a banner instead of a Entertain You Enterprises began in 1971 founder of CH, told the Tribune his first permanent sign, competition from Monti’s with R.J. Grunts in Lincoln Park. The reaction twenty years ago to the piercing around the corner, and the misfortune of company describes its last surviving 1970s bitterness was “Why did you do that to inheriting its space from what may have zeitgeist strike as “an upbeat eatery me?” He also told the Tribune, “I love been the absolute worst pizza place in geared toward young singles interested in everything about it. I hate everything Chicago’s history. All of that only rock music, casual clothes and healthy about it. It’s such a great iconic Chicago underscores how holy-crap good the food.” (Who remembers Great Gritzbe’s thing. It fits at the psychic level, the arepas are at this tiny spot in that odd Flying Food Show, Jonathan Livingston business level and the cultural level.” west-of-Western stretch of Lincoln Square. Seafood and Lawrence of Oregano?) Jeppsons’ twitter feed offered You can mix and match a host of toppings, “Melman hired bright, attractive reassurance upon its October sale: “No, including barbacoa beef, plantains, queso waitresses and bartenders and filled the we will not be touching the recipe. It will Caribe and pinto beans, and never find a location with hanging plants and modern be made just as Carl Jeppson would have dud. (John Carruthers) artwork.” LEYE has cycled through made it some ninety years ago.” 2604 W. Lawrence, 872.208.5665, food-concepts-of-the-moment for almost (Ray Pride) sweet-pepper-venezuelan-food-bar. half a century and serves at over 130 CH Distillery Cocktail Bar, 564 W. business.site locations in nine states, including—take a Randolph, 312.707.8780, chdistillery.com breath—ASAP Poke, Big Bowl, Booth One, Best Brewery Kitchen Bub City, Café Ba-Ba-Reeba, Everest, Mon Best Seasonal Donut Shop Ami Gabi, Nacional 27, Oyster Bah, RPM HALF ACRE Italian, Shaw’s Crab House, Sushi-San, FIRECAKES DONUTS The new-ish Bowmanville mothership of Tallboy Taco and Wow Bao. Their new As the seasons change, so does the menu beloved local brewery Half Acre features a all-you-can-eat crab and burger box Crab at Firecakes Donuts. With flavors like Chile rotating seasonal menu of large and small Cellar, in the Oyster Bah space, holds Lime Mango and Candied Pepper Bacon plates that pair perfectly with their array seven tables with twenty-five seats and a and Maple, you’re always getting of available beers. Salt cod brandade is a ten-seat bar. Their offering? Executive something special that may not be solid groove alongside a super-fresh pint, partner of Oyster Bah and Shaw’s Crab available in a few months. Check out the and the porchetta sandwich is the perfect House Bill Nevruz pinpointed to the Trib’s new location in the Loop, a walk-up base for an evening session. The cheese Phil Vettel just before opening to the storefront that allows you to order plate is always on point. It’s as far public how LEYE and its partners pinch through the window. removed as is imaginable from the the pulse of the moment: “I’ve been doing (Alexis Franciszkowicz) Sysco-burger-and-a-pint paradigm. Craft this for thirty years, and I’ve never been 205 W. Wacker, 312.329.6500, beer’s come a long way, and Half Acre part of something where I’ve had firecakesdonuts.com drives that point home. (John Carruthers) one-hundred percent satisfaction from 2050 W. Balmoral, 773.754.8488, every single table. It’s like a souped-up Best Post-Drinking halfacrebeer.com man cave, and you’re having a party.” Meal at 2am under $10 (Ray Pride) Best Adult Slushie for Any 1962 N. Halsted, 773.248.3000, LA PUEBLA IN LOGAN SQUARE Weather Conditions oysterbah.com The number of food joints open late intoNewcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO the night are far and few in Chicago. La BEST INTENTIONS Best Local Squeaking Puebla, on the corner of North Milwaukee It’s a cocktail. It’s a slushie. It’s Onto Another Best-Bars-In-The- and North Sawyer Avenues, is one of the Wondermint Malted. The latest entry in World List special few that has rescued partygoers the local frozen cocktail scene is served from awful hangovers on countless nights. by Best Intentions, and it’s the ideal LOST LAKE TIKI Open until 3am, the red brick wall and balance between Death’s Door Logan Square’s tropical tiki temple, Lost fake plastic plants welcome patrons for a Wondermint liqueur, Broker’s gin and Lake Tiki, hit slot fifty on The World’s Fifty satisfying low-budget meal. You can get Luxardo hazelnut liqueur, which blend in a Best Bars, a British-sited annual ranking three tacos, maybe a burrito or a good old slushie machine behind the bar to ensure of bars that meet the approval of over 500 taco dinner for well under ten dollars. The the creamiest, fluffiest texture possible. eagle-eyed bartenders, cocktail only downside, as is the case with many Refreshing and tart, the shake, served old- specialists, journalists and other drink restaurants in Logan Square, is that school style in a foam cup with a leaf of experts from around the world. The group they’re cash-only. (Manisha AR) fresh mint on top, is a menu highlight no explains, “Voters are simply asked to 2658 N. Milwaukee, 773.227.5499, matter the weather. (Vasia Rigou) name the seven bars in which they have restaurantpuebla.com 3281 W. Armitage, 312.818.1254, enjoyed the best experience over the bestintentionschicago.com previous eighteen months, with the34

WHY did you do that to me? Best Place to Have Lunch on Someone Else’s DimeI love everything about it.I hate everything about it. FOUND KITCHEN AND SOCIAL HOUSEJEPPSON’S MALÖRT It’s not that the prices are high (they’re not); it’s that you’ll want to eat everything.proviso that at least three of their choices is too much for me but it’s my mom’s Found Kitchen and Social House has anmust be for bars located outside the favorite. On most days I take a long nap updated, faintly hippie aesthetic sincevoter’s country of residence.” (The same after I drink a hot chocolate at Mindy’s but summer, and a new chef—Bradfordgroup also cites Asia’s fifty best bars, the if I get there in the middle of the day and Phillips—who makes veggies fun. Myworld’s fifty best restaurants, Latin have to go back to working after, I get budget for lunch is ten bucks, which won’tAmerica’s fifty best restaurants and Asia’s espresso shots added to mine. get me all I want: local kombucha on tap,fifty best restaurants.) The ghost of Don’s (Manisha AR) three-grain salad with smoky aioli, carrotsBeachcomber Café is wafting in a fine 1747 N. Damen, 773.489.1747, with cashew butter and harissa anddraft of all 275 varieties of rum fumes. hotchocolatechicago.com avocado toast with the happy, juicy(Ray Pride) surprise of fresh grapefruit bits. But if my3154 W. Diversey, 773.293.6048, Best Boulevardization employer is picking up the tab? Yes,lostlaketiki.com, worlds50bestbars.com of Boul Mich please, bring it all. (Freda Love Smith) 1631 Chicago, Evanston, 847.868.8945,Best Hot Chocolate in Winter— THE WORLD’S LARGEST foundkitchen.com BEST OF CHICAGO NOVEMBER 2018 Newcityand Summer STARBUCKS Best Gangster BreweryMINDY’S HOT CHOCOLATE   Crate & Barrel branded its bona fides as a Destination DistilleryHappiness comes in many shapes, flavors midwestern brick-and-mortarand sizes; mine comes in a mug, served powerhouse for twenty-seven years at the THE WELL AT THE DISTILLERYwith a marshmallow on the side at Mindy’s multi-story showcase at Michigan and The distillery was born out of limestoneHot Chocolate. When I’ve had a rough Erie. What kinds of products need to caverns, a quarter of a mile from theweek from not sleeping enough, not billboard their primacy in the twenty-first Thornton Quarry. It was raised on watereating full meals at the right time, working century? That which is consumed. fed from an underground spring,overtime on multiple assignments and if Starbucks will roll out its latest of many discovered by Native Americans hundredsit’s winter time, which means I have not branding concepts in early 2019 at the of years ago, which flows directly into thehad enough human contact, Mindy’s is my location, dubbing the four-to-five-story basement. The child it gave birth to wasgo-to. Sometimes I find a friend, dreadnought, its largest ever, beer, starting in 1857 as the Bielfeldtsometimes I make the trip on my own but the  “Starbucks Reserve Roastery.” Brewery and running until 1931. Duringsomehow, every time I’ve been there, I get Permits suggest that the cost of the Prohibition, it was run by Joseph Soltis,the table in the corner, by the window. In 43,000-square-foot space will exceed $10 Public Enemy #9, who worked directly forthe summer, this spot is a different story million. Starbucks corporate promises a Al Capone. Later, it was known asbecause they open up the windows so “fully sensorial coffee environment.” Thornton Brewing, McAvoy Brewing andnoise and wind from outside blows into Starbucks executive chairman Howard later, White Bear Brewing, Inc. All thisthe restaurant. However, in both seasons Schultz likes the smell of his own brand, history can be tasted at The Well at thethe hot chocolate is consistent. The telling the Trib in April 2017, “It’s not a Distillery in the form of pecan whiskeytexture is just right (not watered down or coffee store, the essence of it is the and spiced rum, made from the samenauseatingly thick) and the whole theater and romance and something so spring water, crafted on site and aged inexperience of drinking it out of the heavy experiential.” (Ray Pride) oak barrels just above the limestoneceramic mug feels like I am wrapped into caves. You can sip it in the samea warm hug. When it’s winter, I prefer the weathered brick room where peopleoverwhelming goodness of the dark have enjoyed beer for over 150 years.chocolate and caramel—the Medium— (David Witter)and in the summer I go for the Chocolate 400 E. Margaret Road, Thornton,Mint—mint with a mix of white and milk 708.877.6222chocolate that feels refreshing and light.The cayenne in the Mexican Hot Chocolate During Prohibition, it was run by Joseph Soltis, Public Enemy #9, who worked directly for Al Capone. 35



BEST OF CHICAGO NOVEMBER 2018 Newcity 37

charities. Nowadays, the train is decked out provides the perfect opportunity for a cute in lights, holiday wallpaper and complete date, a family trip—there’s a fun play area with a flatcar on which Santa and his for children—or even a solo adventure. The reindeer ride. The success of the train led park offers parking in case you skip the the CTA to make a holiday bus, which has CTA and drive. (Manisha AR) its own tracker so you can follow its route. 300 N. Central Park, 773.638.1766, EST CHICAGO (Alexis Franciszkowicz) garfieldconservatory.org BULLS HOMECOMING BEST DIVE BAR BEST EVOCATION OF TURN- Jabari Parker WINTERIZATION OF-THE-TWENTIETH CENTURY WICKER PARK The Bulls have been Rainbo Club WINTER FROM JESSICA in need of a HOPPER’S “NIGHT MOVES” feel-good story since If you polish a dive, is it still a dive? Does those days when proper maintenance keep a dive bar safe “It’s the middle-to-ass end of the worst part Thibs came to town and from rot or does the saloon become a of the winter. The part where you kind of D-Rose won the MVP. Since that time, the simulacrum of its sainted self? A temple of just give up. Everyone is smoking again, Bulls have become to the NBA what the easy nostalgia? After glimpses of the joint coasting in and out of a grim yet Browns have been to the NFL. After were shot for scenes in episodes of Lena unremarkable malaise, sleeping too much drafting great in 2017 (Markkanen!) and Waithe’s “The Chi” and Joe Swanberg’s or hardly at all, eating easy heat ’n’ serve 2018 (fingers crossed!) and maxing-out on “Easy,” Ukrainian Village’s 1930s-era Rainbo meals and food from boxes, trying to get it the return-of-investment for the Jimmy Club made near-invisible upgrades as together enough to make it to the mailbox Butler trade, Jabari Parker, the prodigal son winter approached. The Ladies’ room was and return those Netflixes. We drag from Simeon, returned to the crib to (we overhauled after decades; the trademark ourselves out of the house to whatever hope) live the life Derrick Rose wasn’t able red-and-black squares of the floor were high-fiving party place is on offer and to fulfill. (Scoop Jackson) replaced with identical tile, creating the comraderize, talk about how we miss our optical illusion that its antique style is bikes, and discuss if the Jim Carroll Band BEST ABUNDANT somehow brand-shiny new. Then the has more than one good song, like it INSTAGRAM SUBJECT windows to the modern outer world were matters.” (Ray Pride) replaced with carefully crafted replicas of the degraded 1950s-era originals. Replacement period Old Style signs and a The Skyline Below from painstakingly hand-painted “Rainbo Club” The Sky Above signature logo will soon grace the crisp, thick new glass. Same as it ever was in its BEST EFFORT BY ELVIS TO DO The real Chicago Instagram comfort food thirty-three years under the same owner, A CROSSOVER TUNE THAT isn’t comfort food, but the grateful snap, REFERENCES CHICAGO IN repeated by hundreds, across a dipping airplane wing or not, of the ligature of Lake only a little shinier, a little fresher, a little WINTER lakefront where water ends land begins. In more dream than memory. The blade neon minutes, the descent to runway will lower still burns bright, a familiar beacon with “In the Ghetto” and smooth, but it’s that glimpse of all the the word “Club” sputtering cheekily. dazzle that shimmers across the gridded (Ray Pride) Truth be told, Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto” prairie, and onto sky-high buildings 1150 N. Damen, 773.489.5999 is the only crossover effort by the King that references Chicago in winter. “As the snow punching upward, at sunset, midday, dawn, flies / On a cold and gray Chicago mornin’ / in summer, in frozen hours. None are cliché. A poor little baby child is born / In the All purr: “Home.” The best of these are at BEST FREE ATTRACTION ghetto (in the ghetto).” It was embarrassing winter’s crack, suspended for instants over WHEN WINTER FEELS at the time, as it seemed a transparentNewcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO pearlescent predawn Lake Michigan. ENDLESS effort to curry a connection with black Morning awaits. Chicago wakes. listeners who were not, as a rule, Elvis fans. (Ray Pride) Garfield Park Conservatory In retrospect, the song now seems just as BEST TRAIN TO TAKE much a Southern man’s effort to say that, DURING DECEMBER Winters can be difficult, that’s all I’m going sure, our society was built on slavery, but to say. But a long-ish ride on the Green Line things up North ain’t so sweet neither. to the Garfield Park Conservatory on the (David Hammond) far West Side of the city can be a refreshing, much-needed antidote to the bad mood CTA Holiday Train cold weather can put you in. This free Each November and December, the CTA attraction not only houses plants and decorates a train for the holidays. The weather conditions from around the world, tradition began in 1992 when an out-of- from deserts to tropical rain forests, but service train bearing the message “Season’s also makes a versatile attraction as it Greetings from the CTA” delivered food to38

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DRIVE BY IN HUMBOLDT PARK BY KEVIN COVALNewcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO it's may & crisp. this is a drive by an apple. the sixteen-inch date softball players wear long sleeves beneath their insurance agency something quick sponsored jerseys. there's a light to see each other rain. a grey canopy & make out standing of sky. you are near the field hungry. luckily Humboldt house before you has fried food stands have to leave with warm meat in the windows. before you throw away Lucy is the Puerto Rican the tough bits of kebabah. woman selling empadillas not empanadas she says. the park's so big her smile a secret for a moment she tells everyone. you can trick yourself she puts a shishkabab of chicken you're not in the city. & tostones in yr hand like a popsicle. hot sauce & salt. this same park we walk near the pond where bodies were pulled & nobody knows from this same pond us where Puerto Ricans fight to hold here their homes on the Paseo. & here my hands are birds all the ducks are booed up at yr hip. a flurry the birds too a hot chase each other sauce. call each other with song. Humboldt's beautiful even the snail shells & changing like all abandoned on a rock the neighborhoods at the edge of the water are left for how long in a pair. we will live here how long will we call this home42

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LOVE JONES:Newcity NOVEMBER 2018 BEST OF CHICAGO fancy, little that’s schmancy but a lot of THAT ROMANCE elemental goodness from the former Top Chef. Her trademark pairings are in BY TARA BETTS evidence, amplified by her husband Gary Valentine’s beer selections, and both Girl Every moment sounded like smoky back rooms and the Goat favorites and Izard’s home and corners in Wicker Park still got Black before staples are in the mix. Divided by type of dark. Jazz was like a tongue on your neck, finger gathering, the featured tasty faves include tracing collarbone. Incense, bidis, and chew sticks duck breast with brown butter kimchi, looked earthier between full lips as substantial roasted shishito peppers with sesame as unbroken ciphers or bulging notebooks full miso and Parmesan and sticky-sweet of curled pages springing with rhyme (and other potato cake with blueberry-tomatillo acrobatics found in our mouths) while seeking jam. Crafty sidebars offer insight into some elusive word to replace violet, the broken less-than-common ingredients that bring skins of blueberries, the sweat never concealed the extra zing. (Ray Pride) by cigarette smoke, unexpected names when silver terrarium shrinks into microphone head. Best Place to Shop Small and Also Have Fun Amplification blooms into Larenz Tate playing Darius the poet in his hometown, and the story RENEGADE CRAFT FAIR soon lands on Nina, played by Nia Long (Nia’s Founded in Chicago in 2003 before daddy is a poet in real life). They woo, fuck, fight, growing into the biggest craft-fair separate, and she returns to the small stage showcase in the world, Renegade returns circled by spotlight. She is a photographer home three times every year. Check out fresh from New York City in a perfect white its kickoff in spring (usually in May around shirt. She wears smoked cherry pout. Her poem Pilsen), its goodbye kiss to summer (on rings in the heights of the everglades, and Darius? Division Street in Wicker Park, mid- He is silent, like the rest of the audience until Nina September) and its return in time for heads to the exit. She tosses her journal in the trash Christmas shopping (at the Bridgeport Art before palming the door, and he follows, pleads Center). Bringing together a wide range of wait and she looks back like women always do. artists, designers, makers and entrepreneurs from across the country, Before the kiss, he insists love is (more) serious than the renowned event also does pop-ups— a muh... Nina is silent when their lips are clasped Pitchfork Festival is an annual staple. again in a romance we waited for, now on television Apart from an opportunity to shop small on random nights. We sit through interruptions hawk- and support local businesses, the craft fair ing soap, chips, and jewelry to think that love could is a genuine good time: think beer, wine render familiar and still be slick, lit umber nights. and cocktail samples, with dj booths stretching across the fair. Bottom line: No46 matter how many times you’ve visited, you’ll still find it fun (or necessary) to go back. (Vasia Rigou) Renegadecraftfair.com Best Drums Emporium VIC’S DRUM SHOP Everyone’s got an opinion on where to go for guitars, pianos, saxes and trumpets. When it comes to drums, the consensus is clear: Vic’s is the preference of the percussively inclined, and a glimpse at the store’s interior is enough to tell you why. If you’re not a sticks-and-skin jockey yourself, you might be taken aback by the range of shapes, sizes, widths and weights available. Vic stocks them all, from congas to kettledrums, and boasts a staff who will delve into the minutiae of any question you might have, whether technical, historical or purely aesthetic. (Robert Rodi) 345 North Loomis, 312.770.1200

Lucky Plush’s The Better Half at Steppenwolf 1700 TheatreA reflection on the joys, woes, claustrophobia and liberation of domesticity.November 2-17. rts & CulturePhoto:CherylMann

Block Building October 12 – December 8 Organized in partnership with My Block, My Hood, My City, with contributions by the Design Apprenticeship Program of the University of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life and the South Side Home Movie Project Signs for Community A discussion about the history and current revitalization of Chicago’s block clubs Wednesday, November 7, 7:30 – 8:30 PM Paul Robeson Theatre South Shore Cultural Center 7059 S South Shore Drive Chicago, IL 60649 This event is part of the Chicago Humanities Festival’s 2018 Fall Festival, Graphic! Weinberg/Newton Gallery 300 W Superior Street, Suite 203 Chicago, IL 60654 312 529 5090 weinbergnewtongallery.com Hours Weinberg/Newton Gallery Mon – Sat 10 AM – 5 PM is free and open to the public. L to R: Karen Johnson Boyd at RAM in 2006 with gifts she presented to the museum, by Edward Eberle, Racine Art Museum From Private Collection to Public Treasure at RAM Learn more about Racine Art Museum exhibitions and events at ramart.orgNewcity NOVEMBER Through December 30 Honoring Karen Johnson Boyd: Collecting In-Depth at Home and at RAM June 24 – February 3 July 1 – January 20 Honoring Karen Johnson Boyd: A Multi-Dimensional Approach Honoring Karen Johnson Boyd: Contemporary Clay Racine Art Museum Racine, Wisconsin 262.638.8300 ramart.org48

Art critic for Newsweek and I are sharing a bench in the Farmer Family Gallery at Ohio State University at Lima. We’ve met to discuss his new show, \"The Age of Innocence,\" and Plagens is pointedly gesturing to one of the multicolored “badges” that dominate the centers of his newest works. The exhibition, which comes on the heels of a well-received show at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, features six large-scale canvases and four smaller collages. Frankly, it’s a weird show. “Bossy” and “not immediately likable” are phrases I use to describe them, and surprising- ly, Plagens is okay with that. “I’ll buy that,” he says. “I like bossy. I want them to be good-looking, but good-looking on my terms.” Peter Plagens, \"Study 7\", 2013, acrylic on panel, 10 x 8 inches The pictures are an idiosyncratic fusion of paint- erly drips, hard-edged geometry, and opaque color fields. The combination of disparate forms shouldn’t work, but strangely, it does. Visitors to September’s EXPO might recall Plagens’ curious juxtapositions foregrounding Hoffman’s booth. And while they’re more cerebral than emotive, the compositional simplicity aggressively asserts their presence. “They say to the viewer,\" Plagens says, “You will accept this in conjunction with this, and they’re not going to make concessions. The badge isn’t going to be bowdlerized by composition, it’s all going to go central and that’s the bossiness. “Some viewers don’t want to be bossed around. I get that. Not everyone is going to like that. But it's painting, it’s not installation, you’re not trapped in a dark theater. You can turn and walk away.”Every Damn Throughout our conversation, Plagens alludes NOVEMBER 2018 NewcityMoment Counts to a standing interest in existentialism, the incomprehensibility of the universe and the wayA Conversation With Painter and Critic Peter Plagens these ideas are embodied in his painting’s obtuse formal structure. But it’s clear he isn’tBy Alan Pocaro out to mythologize painting or shroud his process in some kind of Frenhoferian secrecy.“Why don’t I just put the fucking thing in At seventy-seven years old, Peter Plagens the center and dispense with all this old golden doesn’t beat around the bush. “I don’t want to be fake humble, I don’t want to say painting is like plumbing, but on the othersection, balancing, bullshit? There was It’s a sunny Friday morning, and the former art hand, I don’t want it mystique-ed either. probably a juncture where I thought that.” “I’m a plugger,” Plagens responds. “I am not a leaper to great things. These paintings came out of the ones that came before, and the ones before that, and all the way back to Adam. “They start with what my daughter used to call 49

my 'scribble-scrabble' and then that gets “I leave them in; I’m guilty.” filled in.” One gets the sense that this union of Andrea Bowers, \"Code Pink-Woman’s Building Flyer 1974\", This “scribble-scrabble” is an accumulation of opposites, so crucial to the experience of his 2006 /Photo: courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps loose gestures. They’re the most expressive, works, are also a microcosm of Plagens' Gallery, New York. unmediated aspect of the works and there’s a career; an artist who is probably best known as a critic, a self-confessed “lower-mid- ART TOP 5 translucent, Gorky-like quality to the visible dle-class kid” from Dayton, Ohio who 1 West By Midwest. layers of paint. In the finished works, they’re MCA. A deeply historical nonetheless moved to California, was pals look at how the West Coast and mostly painted over, but some of their the Midwest have frenetically brushed, earthen hues continue to with Bruce Nauman, and still writes for the cross-pollinated artistically. flicker along the works’ periphery. They seem Wall Street Journal. 2 Samira Yamin. to be a memory, a boundary and an entry point. If the project of our lives is to integrate the Patron Gallery. Intricate arabesques camouflage the “The color, everything on the outside and in the many conflicting aspects of self into a coherent headlines and horrors of whole, and art is an extension of that process, decades of American warfare in blob is subjective and made-up and mixed.” the Middle East. it’s as though Plagens has resolved the tension 3 Nelly Agassi and Iris Nancy Hoffman Gallery at EXPO Chicago 2018 between the Apollonian and the Dionysian by Bernblum. Aspect/Ratio just sticking them both in a room together and Projects. Two powerful women “The badge in the center,\" Plagens continues, contemplate care and loss asking the viewer to deal with it. It is an through painting and drawing. “is unmixed, straight-from-the-bottle colors. There’s cadmium red light, cerulean blue, and approach that only someone comfortable in 4 Let me consider it from their own skin can pull off. here. The Renaissance so on. That clash of colors, it’s the tension Society. Poetry and painting intermingle in a heady group between the namable, the objective and “There are no more major moves I could make show. hard-edge against the subjective, the loose that would affect my career. 5 Todros Geller: Strange Worlds. Spertus Institute. and the romantic. The first comprehensive exhibition of the Chicago artist “That’s my existentialism coming through. “I got to play out the hand I’ve dealt myself and and Jewish activist and Nothing is ever settled, it’s always in flux.” I can’t change. I’m in this sort of groove. 50 community leader. I ask Plagens about the telltale drips along the “Painting ain’t the queen of the arts anymore, but I don’t feel martyred by that. I don’t ever bottom edges of his canvases. “Signifiers of want to get into the position where I sit back painterly-ness, I call them.\" and say 'ahhhh painting,' yearning for some As an iconic manifestation of American long-lost golden age of art.” abstraction, I wonder: are they quotation, or a natural consequence of his approach? \"I used Has age liberated him then? to struggle with it.” He says after some consideration, \"But how many painters have “If I take the ages at which my mother and father passed away and sort of split the drips? difference I’ve got about seven-and-a-half “You can’t be innocent about it. I’m aware of the years left. tropes. I know they’re there, I can’t unsee that, “I titled a show in 2012 'I Don’t Give a Damn/ I can’t unlearn that. Every Moment Counts' which refers to this “I’m especially responsible because I paint in paradox where I’ve gotten to a point that, onNewcity NOVEMBER 2018 bastardized acrylic paints and they dry quickly one level, I no longer give a shit, but I’m also aware that time is running out. and I can easily cover them up. I could take them out if I wanted to. “You’ve got to find out who you are,” Plagens “But they’re not left in to suggest that, you says. know, I’m so passionate, like rock musicians who smash their guitars,\" he says with a laugh. “Of course, you might find out you’re just a common mediocre type and then you’ve got “One is loathe to quote Ronald Reagan, but he to deal with that!” once said that the thing you need in order to be an actor is sincerity, and once you can fake Like I said, Plagens doesn’t beat around the bush. sincerity, you got it licked.