Chicago Reader print issue of October 2, 2025 (Vol. 55, No. 1)

Chicago and Seoul

By

THIS WEEK

OPINION

04 On Prisons The pervasiveness of the prison industrial complex

NEWS & POLITICS

06 Make It Make Sense | Cardoza, Brown Five anti-ICE protesters face federal charges, tensions escalate between Seminary Co-op Bookstores workers and management, and Adler Planetarium workers form a union.

07 Feature | Caporale The Department of Homeland Security shops local for some “crowd control” weapons.

ARTS & CULTURE

08 Art of Note Local artists expand their practices at Patron and Grunts Rare Books, Yukimasa Ida paints with urgency at Mariane Ibrahim, and more.

THEATER

10 Rhinestone Digest | Renken Drag and burlesque families provide vital support for artists.

12 Shows of Note Ava: The Secret Conversations gives Elizabeth McGovern a star turn; The Book of Will shows how Shakespeare’s work was saved; Frederick celebrates the seasons at Chicago Children’s Theatre; Rome Sweet Rome gives a timely rap makeover to Julius Caesar

FILM

13 Feature This year’s Celluloid Now festival includes a program of rarely screened Korean experimental films called Celluloid City Seoul.

15 Moviegoer One movie a er another 16 Movies of Note Plainclothes plays with style but doesn’t have the script to match; Shell is the other body horror movie about aging actress beauty treatments; Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson anchors The Smashing Machine with quiet vulnerability.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

17 Feature | Galil Farewell to undersung house and disco maestro Lee Collins

20 Gossip Wolf Lynyn lets his wild beats breathe on the new Ixona, beloved indie label Trouble in Mind hangs it up, and more.

21 Shows of Note Previews of concerts including the Matthew Shipp Trio, Elliott, Blackbraid, and Water From Your Eyes BACK

23 Savage Love The nitty-gritty of sex prep and toys

(Clockwise from top le )

Lee Collins built a subcultural stature few in Chicago’s dance-music scene could match.

For weeks, ICE has been choosing pepper balls fi rst when confronting protesters outside their Broadview detention facility. PAUL GOYETTE/FLICKR VIA CC BY 4.0

Celluloid City Seoul features nine evocative short-form works.

ON THE COVER

Stills from Celluloid City Seoul, screened for the Celluloid Now festival. To learn more, check out “Chicago and Seoul are celluloid cities” by Joshua Minsoo Kim on p.13.

Reader Letters m

CORRECTION

The Reader has updated the online version of the piece “Building a living, Black literary archive,” originally published in our September 25, 2025 issue (volume 54, number 51). The original version incorrectly described Dr. Johari Amini-Hudson and Carolyn Rodgers as cofounders of Third World Press; the text has been updated to clarify that they were instead close collaborators of the founder, Haki R. Madhubuti. v

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The Chicago Reader accepts comments and letters to the editor of less than 400 words for publication consideration. m letters@chicagoreader.com

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ON PRISONS

The prison industrial complex’s wide-reaching tentacles

Profits drive every facet of the multibillion-dollar business of putting and keeping people in prison.

By ANTHONY EHLERS

We, as a country, are in the era of mass incarceration. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any democratic nation on the planet. There are nearly 2 million people locked up in our country’s prisons or jails, not to mention the thousands more on some form of electronic monitoring, probation, or parole.

An estimated 19 million people, both currently and formerly incarcerated, are burdened with the collateral consequences of a felony conviction, such as restrictions on voting, housing, education, employment, and more. An estimated 79 million people have a criminal record of some kind, and millions more have been arrested for misdemeanors. Over 113 million adults have had an immediate family member incarcerated for at least one night. Mass incarceration indeed.

This is just a part of the cost of mass incarceration that taxpayers have to cover. Illinois leads the nation in exonerations from wrongful convictions, with over 540 to date, according to the Innocence Project, and Chicago is among the cities that spend the most on police misconduct lawsuits for the brutality of cops like Jon Burge, Reynaldo Guevara, and Ronald Watts. Since 2019, Chicago taxpayers have spent at least $703 million to resolve police misconduct lawsuits, according to a WTTW analysis. Just last week, the City Council approved $90 million more in settlements for 176 victims of former sergeant Watts, who ran the department for almost a decade. The consciousness of all those wrongful

have prosecutorial and police practices that correlate to soaring prison populations. We still have poverty, which plays an oversize role as both a predictor and product of criminalization and mass incarceration. Even those prisoners who get out know that time behind bars destroys wealth, creates debt, perpetuates cycles of homelessness, and makes finding a job or housing prohibitively di cult.

Why? The answer, while vast and complex, boils down to one thing: money. I think just about everyone has heard the term “prison industrial complex.” Many people hear or say

To try to save money, the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) has handed out billions of dollars in contracts to private firms, ranging from private prison companies to subcontractors for telecommunications, transportation, and food vending, just to name a few.

IDOC has signed a contract with ICSolutions to provide tablets, telephones, email services, and digital mail scanning. ICSolutions is under the parent company TKC Holdings, which is owned by the private equity firm HIG Capital. The firm’s portfolio also includes Keefe Group, the country’s largest supplier of commissary items to prisons; the for-profit health-care company Wellpath; and the prison food company Trinity Services Group. While Wellpath does not provide health care to Illinois prisons, it is well-known. Many prisoners and their families have sued Wellpath for providing grossly inadequate health care. Many prisoners have also accused Trinity Services Group of serving meager portions of low-quality, sometimes inedible food. This is what companies like Keefe do: They provide poor, almost inedible meals in prison chow halls. They know this forces prisoners to then buy food at the commissary at huge markups to survive and stave o hunger. And HIG Capital profits all the way around.

“We will never be able to change the criminal legal system when there is so much money involved.” SHIRA FRIEDMAN-PARKS

convictions and wasted money, coupled with murders at the hands of police—like those of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in Chicago in 2014 and George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020—has brought about protests, uprisings, and a huge push for criminal justice reform and even abolition. But what’s changed? Where are these fundamental reforms to the criminal justice system? We still have unjust, unfit, and overly punitive sentencing policies and drug laws. We still

it, but don’t understand what it really entails. The prison industrial complex is a vast network of thousands of businesses that profit from mass incarceration.

According to a 2018 report from the Corrections Accountability Project, over 3,100 corporations profit from the U.S. prison system. The prison industrial complex is exactly what it says: an industry. Our country has turned the criminal justice system into a multibillion-dollar industry.

Corporations profit from every piece of the prison system across the country. Some provide software systems to track arrest, probation, incarceration, and medical records of current and former prisoners. Health-care companies, like Wellpath, provide services, equipment, and pharmaceuticals to prisons. Others provide furnishings, IT services, or communications and security equipment. Then there are the prison labor programs that provide services, materials, and technology for prison education and vocational programs. And let’s not forget the corrections companies that run tracking and surveillance systems for people let out of prison or on probation. Telecommunications companies supply telephone and video visit services to prisons. Depending on where you are in the country, companies like ICSolutions, Global Tel Link

(GTL), CenturyLink, and Securus charge exorbitant rates compared to what people outside of prison pay. Forced to use whatever company the prison has a contract with, some people in prison can’t a ord to communicate with their families over the phone at all.

In states other than Illinois, which abolished cash bail in 2023, the bail bond industry remains a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry. Bail bond businesses and their insurers profit from providing loans to people who cannot a ord to be released from jail. Across the industry, bail bondsmen charge high fees, up to 15 percent of the total amount. They charge the poorest people in the criminal legal system and threaten them with incarceration if they fail to make payments. Many bail bondsmen around the country have been sued and accused of extorting extra fees out of debtors and their families under the threat of incarceration— pushing the already poor into future debt.

Private prison companies often profit the most from building, owning, and operating private prisons, immigration detention centers, halfway houses, and other forms of detention. According to In the Public Interest, the

two largest—GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corporation) and CoreCivic (formerly the Corrections Corporation of America)—have depended on debt financing from banks in the form of credit, loans, and bonds to conduct their day-to-day business operations and acquire smaller companies.

After public pressure in 2019, these companies’ biggest backers—Wells Fargo, Bank of America, SunTrust, JPMorgan Chase, PNC, BNP Paribas, Fifth Third Bancorp, Barclays, and U.S. Bancorp—said they would cease new lending. But Bank of America and Wells Fargo have walked back on that commitment, and many more banks remain in the industry.

I see silly commercials for banks and can’t help think about how they contribute to and profit from putting and keeping people in prison. There are banks in the U.S. right now that profited from slavery, so I’m not at all surprised to find that they profit from mass incarceration.

Prison labor programs are also a huge part of the industry. Prison labor in the U.S. actually began with convict leasing during slavery and has ballooned into a billion-dollar industry in

itself, which is rooted in the racially skewed nature of mass incarceration. The abundance of prison labor, rather than being challenged by legislators, has been monetized through the scale of cheap labor for companies. They support the expense of mass incarceration and provide a hidden slave labor force.

Hardly any regulations exist surrounding prison labor, leaving the treatment of prisoners up to those who reap the financial benefits from their labor. Prisoners have replaced enslaved people as the cheapest source of labor in the U.S. In some states, prisoners are required to work but do not get paid. In other states, prisoners are paid pennies an hour. Prisoners are vastly underpaid, work however many hours the prison says they must work, and have little to no rights related to their employment.

I have long been an advocate of criminal legal reform, downsizing the prison population, and forcing the state to stop abrogating the responsibility of taking care of those it incarcerates. I support reformers, abolitionists, and those who want to change the way communities are policed.

I also firmly believe that nothing will change for the better as long as so much money is at stake. In the wake of the riots from George Floyd’s murder and others, reform was the watchword. Mayor Brandon Johnson even promised to take money from the police budget and pour it into community violence prevention programs, then reversed his plans to cut their funds. CPD’s budget has continued to get bigger, not smaller.

The prison industrial complex has tentacles that reach far and wide. Prison remains a multibillion-dollar business, and these banks, companies, and funds have an interest in seeing mass incarceration continue to grow. We will never be able to change the criminal legal system when there is so much money involved. We need to find a way to take the money out of the prison industrial complex—only then will true change come.

Anthony Ehlers is a writer incarcerated at Sheridan Correctional Center. Find out more about incarcerated journalists through the Prison Journalism Project. v

m letters@chicagoreader.com

A

IS

COMING SOON

NEWS & POLITICS

“Victim 1”

Paul Ivery hugs his attorney and weeps as U.S. Marshals hover nearby, waiting to lead him away. Federal agents arrested Ivery Saturday night during a protest outside an immigration detention facility in suburban Broadview, and he remained in federal custody Sunday.

Now, Monday afternoon, in a tucked-away courtroom in Chicago’s Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, U.S. magistrate judge Gabriel Fuentes tells Ivery he will remain in custody until at least Wednesday morning, when the judge scheduled a hearing to determine if he should be detained pending trial.

Ivery, a 26-year-old from Oak Park, is one of five people criminally charged for allegedly assaulting, resisting, or interfering with federal agents during Saturday night’s protest. Four of the five, including Ivery, face a felony count for assaulting a federal o cer; one other faces a misdemeanor for forcibly resisting an o cer. An a davit written by a Homeland Security Investigations agent claims Ivery threatened Border Patrol officers “by saying, in substance, ‘I’ll fucking kill you right now’ and ‘do something’” before fleeing. The affidavit further claims Ivery admitted as much after signing a Miranda waiver and agreeing to speak with agents following his arrest. It does not say whether an attorney was present. According to friends and neighbors who

attended his initial hearing Monday, Ivery is neurodivergent.

“We think it’s cruel to inflict this on someone who may not realize what’s happening,” says Yosef Moore, a representative of the disability advocacy group Access Living, who attended Monday’s hearing. “That feels like trickery.”

Cook County commissioner Tara Stamps and Oak Park village president Vicki Scaman also attended the hearing in support of Ivery.

“The care this young man needs . . . is being completely ignored by the federal government,” Scaman says.

Footage of Ivery’s arrest posted online by journalist Ford Fischer shows an agent in military gear chasing him o the roof of a car and tackling him to the ground. Three more federal agents then pile on. Still more encircle the dogpile, with one agent shooting pepper balls at the feet of those watching nearby—including legal observers.

The a davit claims, once Ivery was on the ground, his actions caused the helmet of a Border Patrol agent—identified only as “Victim 1”—to “move askew thereby temporarily exposing him to pepper spray in the vicinity.”

—DAVE BYRNES

Bookstore brouhaha

In May 2024, management and the board of directors at Seminary Co-op Bookstores Inc. voluntarily recognized Seminary Co-op

Booksellers Union (SCBU) IU 660 , a new union formed by workers and a liated with the Industrial Workers of the World. (The union includes employees at Seminary Co-op Bookstore and 57th Street Books .) The swift recognition—coupled with a strong endorsement from management, who wrote in a joint statement at the time that they were excited about the union drive and committed to moving “forward together”—seemed to indicate that contract negotiations might also move quickly. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case.

SCBU has been bargaining over its first contract for more than a year and has been stymied by both changes in management and tactics that border on unfair labor practices. The union formed just as Je Deutsch, longtime executive director of the bookstores, stepped down. Daniel Mayer served as the interim director until this August, when the organization hired Kevin Bendle as a permanent replacement.

hour in order to support themselves.

“The biggest reason that we organized in the first place, of course, was wages,” McCarthy says. “None of us are making a living wage, and we are living in an expensive city, and inflation is insane, and we have not received cost-ofliving adjustments for a long time.”

Management claims there isn’t enough money for raises; the union has filed information requests for more detailed cash flow information. A job posting for the executive director position listed a salary range of $110,000 to $140,000—between 2.8 and 3.5 times the salary of a full-time bookseller.

SBCU is asking supporters to email the board of directors at board@semcoop.com on their behalf. You can learn more about the union’s campaign at instagram.com/ semcoopbooksellersunion.

—KERRY CARDOZA

Solidarity Drive

Chicago’s museum campus, stretching across the Loop’s lakeside, might be adding a new union to the aptly named Solidarity Drive. Adler Planetarium employees are ready to join the chorus of workers at Chicago cultural institutions, like the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum , who have organized under the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31 in the past five years. Adler Planetarium staffers announced on Tuesday, September 30, via Instagram that they, too, were forming a union. “At Adler, we too deserve to be heard,” reads an announcement from Adler Planetarium Workers United . “Not as singular voices asking questions in isolation, but united as one, with the right to the discussions and answers we need.”

According to Finn McCarthy, a bookseller and SBCU shop steward, negotiations have largely stalled over wages. McCarthy, who works full-time, makes $18.90 per hour. Most workers are part-time and make between $17.20 and $17.60 an hour. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a single adult in Chicago must make a minimum of $24.88 an

Chicago History Museum employees’ successful union drive in February was AFSCME Council 31’s previous museum win, and members told the Reader in May unions should now be an “industry standard” at Windy City cultural institutions.

—DEVYN-MARSHALL BROWN (DMB) v

Make It Make Sense is a weekly column about what’s happening and why it matters.

m letters@chicagoreader.com

NEWS & POLITICS

DHS shops local

In mid-September, the federal government paid a Lake Forest–based company $1 million for launchers that shoot pepper balls like the ones now showering protesters.

By MICCO CAPORALE

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is shopping local for some of the various “crowd control” weapons that agents are using to brutalize protesters. The federal government has approved $1.7 million in purchases this year from United Tactical Systems (UTS), the Lake Forest–based company behind PepperBall, which sells the namesake projectiles along with launchers and tactical gear. According to USASpending.gov, the federal government has paid UTS $14.3 million since 2008. Almost all federal purchases have come from the DHS, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection.

Pepper balls are like paintballs filled with a heavy-duty pepper powder—specifically synthetic PAVA (pelargonic acid vanillylamide) powder. Upon impact, the dust can spread up to 150 feet—further, with wind—and even leave a trail of residue. Pellets are loaded into magazines for forced-air guns called “launchers.” UTS advertises launchers as “enabling e ective projectile deployment without being classified as a firearm.” Law enforcement watchdogs describe them as hybrid technologies because they combine the brutality of a kinetic impact projectile, like a rubber bullet, with a chemical irritant. UTS pioneered the technology and remains the primary manufacturer. Purchase records suggest ICE will only be using more moving forward.

A PepperBall spokesperson emphasized in a phone call with the Reader that the spirit of the technology is to save lives by providing law enforcement and private security firms with an option between a taser and a gun. “It’s to de-escalate confrontation from a distance,” the spokesperson said. “Our training is an incredibly good, intense training program, and all agencies we work with have people that go through [it].”

For weeks, ICE has been choosing pepper balls first when confronting protesters outside their Broadview detention facility—part of a

That same day, Broadview mayor Katrina Thompson wrote a letter to Russell Hott, the director of the local DHS field o ce, begging for ICE to cease creating a war zone outside its facility. Not only were their actions undermining individuals’ freedom of speech, in her opinion, but chemicals were spreading enough to greatly incapacitate nearby police o cers, firefighters, medics, and locals. “Beleaguered Broadview residents are begging for relief from your center’s siege of our neighborhood,” she wrote. “It has to stop.”

broader pattern of escalating violence against protesters, legal observers, and press that involves a wide array of munitions. On Friday, September 19, federal agents first started firing pepper balls before 6 AM. By 8:30 AM, they graduated to more serious projectiles, like tear gas and flash-bang grenades. At least one agent unholstered his gun during an altercation. According to Block Club Chicago, one protester took a pepper ball to the lip, and the welt didn’t stop bleeding for more than an hour. Two days earlier, the DHS paid UTS $1.1 million for “less lethal pressurized air launcher[s]” to be fulfilled by October 31.

On Friday, September 26, ICE began its morning outside the facility similar to the prior week, by shooting protesters with pepper balls, then tear gas and flash-bangs—all before lunch. On Instagram, Colin Boyle, Block Club’s director of photography, shared an image of a protester with his shirt removed to reveal at least 32 welts—some deep purple and bulging, like golf balls trying to escape from the skin—all from pepper balls. Agents fired pepper balls directly at two journalists who were sheltering behind a van. One journalist was struck on the nose and began bleeding.

The DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

ICE isn’t only using pepper balls in Chicago; they’ve used them on protestors in Portland. In June, a school in Portland hung a laminated sign on its fence pleading for ICE to stop the “harm being inflicted on our neighbors, ecosystem, students and school” and to “cease the deployment of ‘less than lethal’ weapons,” including tear gas, “‘green’ gas,

pepper balls, and rubber bullets.” Since then, ICE has also used pepper balls in Denver, Spokane, and Los Angeles, among other places.

The PepperBall representative said the company’s training program has guidelines and recommendations for agencies that use their products, but it falls on customers to follow them. “We do not and cannot take responsibility for how an agency uses the product,” she said. When pressed on how PepperBall defines responsible use during training, the spokesperson insisted that information was proprietary. Is there a point at which PepperBall would terminate a contract because a client is using the product out of alignment with the company’s mission? The representative declined to comment and said PepperBalls’s lawyers would contact the Reader to discuss the matter further.

Chemical irritants used for crowd control such as pepper balls, pepper spray, and tear gas are prohibited in warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention, a global agreement drafted by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that 193 countries have signed, including the U.S. Under the convention, law enforcement has some leeway to use them for “domestic riot control purposes”—provided they give “adequate” warning and people have a “reasonable” escape route before deployment. But what’s adequate or reasonable, especially when the people who get to decide are hiding their faces and badges?

The nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights has been a leader in tracking the global use of crowd control weapons, sometimes referred to as “less-lethal” or chemical munitions, and their e ects on physical health and First Amendment freedoms. In a 2023 report called Lethal in Disguise 2 , copublished with international rights watchdog INCLO, researchers noted that various forms of less-lethal munitions have resulted in thousands of “serious injuries”—including “blindness, brain damage and internal bleeding,” as well as burns, permanent hearing loss, lung collapse, post-traumatic stress disorder, cognitive decline, and death. Perhaps one of the most infamous recent incidents came in 2020, when journalist Linda Tirado took a rubber bullet to the eye while covering protests in Minneapolis following the police murder of George Floyd. Not only did she lose her sight, but her brain was injured so badly that last year she entered hospice.

“There is still a lack of documentation, reporting and investigation of [crowd control weapon] injuries,” wrote the authors of Lethal in Disguise 2 . State accountability for excessive use of force via crowd control weapons is extremely rare, they continued, and pepper balls are among the least studied in law enforcement’s arsenal.

The DHS first began working with UTS in 2008 and accounts for 98 percent of UTS’s federal government contracts. Annual requests averaged around $450,000 until 2018, when they began exceeding $1 million. Spending peaked at $2.1 million in 2021—but at the rate ICE is attacking human rights supporters in Broadview, the DHS may set a new record soon. v m mcaporale@chicagoreader.com

ARTS & CULTURE

EXHIBITIONS

RThe pulsing portraits of Yukimasa Ida

In “Flaming Memory,” the artist embraces paint as a volatile, volcanic material.

The works in Yukimasa Ida’s new solo show, “Flaming Memory,” strike with an urgency that feels insurgent. Channeling the reckless vitality of de Kooning and the brute persistence of Frank Auerbach, the Tokyobased artist embraces paint as a volatile and volcanic matter, shaping portraits that quiver with spontaneity and sensation. The surfaces in this show churn, swirl, and pulse as if animated from within. Alive, precarious, uncontainable.

Fiery cadmium reds and acrid yellows abound, radiating an unforgiving late summer heat. Forms flicker in and out of legibility: the nape of a neck, the crease of upturned lips, the faintest shadow of a face, snap into view before dissolving toward painterly collapse. In its own admirable way, this instability resists the clean recognitions demanded by the cold calculus of our algorithmic age.

These are canvases that bear their histories and genealogies openly. Slashes of the knife, oily blends of wet pigment, dense impasto hardened into scar tissue—the tried-and-true verbs of modernist painting’s vast lexicon are conventions that teeter on cliches. But in Ida’s hands, their immense and unrepentant physicality doesn’t read as parody, instead offering a defense of fragile memory and fallible flesh, reasserting the stubborn and imperfect aspects of humanity that digital systems cannot encode. —ALAN POCARO “Flaming Memory” Through 10/25: Tues–Sat 11 AM–6 PM, Mariane Ibrahim, 437 N. Paulina, marianeibrahim. com/exhibitions/105-yukimasa-ida-flaming-memory

RThe poetics of decay

Bethany Collins’s “Dusk” is a provocative exhibition rendered in graphite gray.

Language is the star, the ship, the sea, and the wreck in Bethany Collins’s “Dusk,” now on view at Patron. A provocative exhibition rendered in graphite gray hues, its eerie twilight unfolds across endless sheets of paper like thoughts fumbling toward silence. Only vitrines of powdered and spent eraser offer a shock of brightness here, small hills of sky blue flare like lighthouse beacons amid the exhibition’s otherwise ashen hues.

At the center: her hand-transcribed copy of MobyDick, a devotion bordering on absurdity. For Melville, the ocean was an unfathomable expanse, sublime in its terror and infinity. In recasting the text by hand, Collins reframes this abyss for the present, her fragile pages of fugitive iron gall ink invoking not only the sea’s endlessness but somehow the equally boundless sprawl of the Internet. If the 19th-century sublime was measured in leagues, ours is tallied in gigahertz and terabytes: a techno-sublime where meaning is drowned in the endless scroll.

Above water, the three drawings in Collins’s “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” series recall the lyric effusions of Cy Twombly, though Collins’s marks tend less toward the bravado of accumulation than toward the poetics of decay. Letters dissolve into dust, phrases collapse into noise. Satisfying in its own studied way, “Dusk” is more cerebral than sensual, a meditation on language’s inability to anchor permanence in a

world where sea and screen alike remain inexhaustible, unknowable, and perpetually on the verge of erasing us. —ALAN POCARO ”Dusk” Through 10/25: Tues–Sat 11 AM–6 PM, Patron, 1612 W. Chicago, patrongallery. com/exhibition/598/dusk

R‘Pleasure Cruise’ charts two different courses

Alé Campos and Kitty Rauth show growth in their spirit of collaboration.

“Pleasure Cruise” at Roots & Culture is a conceptually ambitious mixed-media art show attempting to navigate waves of enjoyment only to chart two different courses.

Ále Campos, a performance artist and nightlife fixture also known as Celeste, continues their ongoing work with Kitty Rauth, a multidisciplinary creative and artistic

champagne flute atop a linen cocktail table. Its bubbling contents rise and fall like a geyser hesitating to burst, evoking something between liquid bouncing to the beat of the loudest club music and a psychological sense of edging. It’s a great segue out of the prior works’ club vibes into something more nautical, but the rest of the pieces don’t feel as related to Campos’s work. There’s a reproduction of the liner flag that hung on the Titanic, made at four times its original scale, as well as a video of a nude figure wandering into the sea to break wine bottles across their back. There’s also a glass of water and a white cursive wall text on a white wall only visible from the street; the paragraph is impossible to read in its entirety—something about a chance encounter with a babe—but has the effect of waves rolling and crashing as the letters catch the sun. While the show’s idea doesn’t feel fully realized, Campos and Rauth grow their combined efforts to deliver a fresh curatorial approach to eroticism and leisure. —MICCO CAPORALE “Pleasure Cruise” Through 10/25: Fri 4–7 PM, Sat noon–6 PM, or by appointment, Roots & Culture, 1034 N. Milwaukee, rootsandculturecac. org/show/pleasure-cruise-ale-campos-kitty-rauth

RKeeping time

The works in “Sympathy Ribbon” hold the painful tension between present and past.

Stunningly light, the sculptures of Madeline Gallucci and the paintings of Margaret Crowley bear witness while mourning the impossibility of full recognition. In “Sympathy Ribbon,” up at Grunts Rare Books, the pairing of Gallucci and Crowley’s work holds the perfect, painful tension between remembrance and transition. Gallucci’s paintings manipulate surface and depth to make us acutely aware of the distance between the two. The top layer of her compositions are stark blue marks that imitate painter’s tape, painted in sharp contrast to the hazy contents below. Though the tape frames the paintings and guides our eyes towards semilegible letters or shapes, we quickly seek to look beyond—and therein find resistance.

director of Comfort Station. Together, they approach cruising—that is, queer (and o en anonymous) public sex—and the maudlin past of cruise ships, but their visions don’t totally align.

Campos contributes the show’s first three pieces: a dungeon-like room wrapped in heavy black trash bags that leads to a glory hole where their hazy image beckons on a loop; a grafitti-covered urinal where a video of a mermaid-like figure swims in its yellow waters; and a stack of crisp white towels topped with a Steamworks key beside a movie of a gloved hand that extends from the viewer’s position. Each piece is accompanied by headphones that play ambient tracks by Will Mitchell, which emphasize something of the excitement, nervousness, and expansiveness of each homage to classic cruising sites.

Meanwhile, Rauth builds on recurring fascinations with class, access, and consumption by playing with references to cruise ships. As the water rises is a

Past the tape exterior, textured gradients become the foggy window of a car or a glass door a er a scalding shower. Innumerable coats of vivid color are pierced by instances of removal, like in SPAT (2025), where lightened swipes against a muddy green-grey background could be the fingertips of someone tracing in condensation—a record of some unknown previous presence. We strain to look deeper and identify what’s beyond the veil, but instead get lost in eternal depths. Crowley’s sculptures use form and material to hold longing. Most prominent is 50 years of service (2022), glimmering on the gallery floor. A body-sized replica of a thin metal watch, the piece is modeled a er a commemorative gi given to her grandfather by the International Union of Operating Engineers. Curatorial text reveals the large watch is papier-mached from postmortem documents for her grandfather—a strong use of medium to register the artist’s grief.

Even without context, the watch begs to be witnessed, with its face to the ground and links slumped awkwardly over. It echoes the ache of Gallucci’s paintings, which yearn for someone to look through them and find recognition, but offer only a vague palimpsest of prior hands. Both practices offer us the uneasy gi of attending to what remains when presence slips into memory. —NATALIE JENKINS “Sympathy Ribbon” Through 11/9: Sat–Sun 1–4 PM, Grunts Rare Books, 1500 S. Western #403, gruntsrarebooks.us v

THEATER

COLUMN

Drag family values

Houses provide vital support for artists in drag and burlesque communities.

By CHARLI RENKEN

On the train ride to the Miss Chicago Comedy Queen Pageant last week, a little kid told me he liked the flowers I was holding.

“Thank you. They’re for my mother,” I told him, neglecting to mention they were for my drag mother, Zenon TeaVee, who was competing in the drag pageant. A drag parent can fill many roles, but in short, they’re typically someone who mentors and supports another drag performer (usually new to the scene). For some, the distinction between a drag mother and a mother of origin might be an important one, but to me, my drag family feels just as vital and real as those I grew up with. I lean on both for support when I need it. I’ve gotten hand-medowns from both families (though the outfits are wildly di erent). I sometimes bicker with my drag family just as biological siblings might. I know they’ve got my back no matter what, whether they raised Charli Renken or Vicious Mockery.

Boi Wonder. “When people were homeless because they were kicked out or lost their job or because they weren’t passing [as cisgender] enough, a [house] parent would literally take you in, make sure you had food, etc.,” Twirl says. “Houses were also about celebrating

drag mother needs help moving, you swing by with your hatchback and get to work. Some drag and burlesque houses also produce work together. For instance, the Haus of Wonder produces the California Clipper show A Family A air, which highlights a di erent drag family each show.

“There’s that familial bond. It’s a chosen family,” Zenon TeaVee says. “Drag families are di erent from ‘regular’ families because you have an opportunity to create it and you have a choice, and I think there’s something special about that.”

House members also tend to have a lot in common, not just in performance style. Most of the house parents I spoke with say they notice similarities between them and their kids or their own parents. According to Tila, their kid Tender Blossom has their same laugh—a joyous cackle that friends point out definitely got “passed down.”

“We always joke that each one of [Coco Sho-Nell’s] kids are a di erent aspect of her,” says Lúc Ami, drag king, father of Haus of Ami, and Coco Sho-Nell’s son. “Viper does burlesque, so she’s kind of the sexy part of Coco, and Vivian [Dejour] is the one who can do a bunch of diva mixes and turn it out, and I’m more of Coco’s spooky, Halloween side.”

Noteworthy drag, burlesque, and variety shows in Chicago

Some venues have age restrictions or recommendations. See venue website for complete information.

LÚC AMI’S BLOODBATH BALL BENEFIT SHOW Fri 10/3, 7 PM, Charlie’s Chicago, free STRAPPED first Friday of the month, doors 9 PM, shows 10:30 and 11:30 PM, Empty Bottle, $14 11

THE LIFE OF A BURLESQUE GIRL: A TAYLOR SWIFT CABARET Sat 10/4, 3 PM, Newport Theater, from $28 52

TENDERONI AND HIGH HALL PRESENT: VIDEODROME Sat 10/4, 9 PM (secret location in Humboldt Park sent out the day of the event), bit.ly/4pPHIBK, from $20

NOTES ON MASCULINITY FEATURING KING OF DRAG’S PERKA $EXXX Tue 10/14, 8 PM, California Clipper, $10 at the door

SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP: A CHAIR SHOW PRESENTED BY TILA VON TWIRL Sat 10/ 18, 9:30 PM, Newport Theater, from $17 85

AG AFTER DARK: HOTLOWEEN Sat 10/18, 7 PM, the Actors Gymnasium, from $20

NIGHTSHADE: HALLOWEEN PARTY Sat 10/25, doors 9 PM, show 10:30 PM, Liar’s Club, $17 in advance, $20 at the door

There’s some debate about where the practice of drag and burlesque families or houses (sometimes spelled hauses) comes from, but most agree that houses as they are today have their origins in ballroom culture, competitive celebrations of queer expression started by Black and Brown trans community members who were tired of the racism of integrated drag balls. If you’ve seen Paris Is Burning or Pose, then you know what I’m talking about. Houses would (and still do) walk together in balls to earn trophies and notoriety, but it wasn’t just about winning competitions.

“Ballroom families were about fucking survival,” says burlesque dancer, drag performer, and father to the Haus of Twirl, Tila Von Twirl. They’re also a father to the Haus of Wonder alongside their spouse, drag king Switch the

each other in the scene and creating a platform where you could just be. If you wanted to be a femme, you could be a femme; if you wanted to be a butch queen, you could be a butch queen even if it wasn’t safe outside of the walls of the ballroom.”

That’s part of why many drag and burlesque performers, myself included, take being part of a house very seriously. It’s not just about being part of a chosen family, though that’s important in its own right; it’s also about honoring the tradition of those who came before us, who had less freedom and who still paved the way.

Drag and burlesque families still serve a lot of functions today. For many, it’s like any other family: They teach you things and support you through tough times. When your drag brother needs backup dancers for a number, you show up to choreography rehearsal. When your

Another thing parents sometimes pass down is their last name. It’s common—but certainly not required—when you join a house that you change your name. For instance, Lúc Ami’s son Luv Ami-Stoole has both his parents’ names (his mother is Lucy Stoole). The rest of Lúc Ami’s kids haven’t taken his name, which Lúc says he has no problem with. Either way is correct. Taking someone’s last name can be a lovely way to honor your house parent, but having a name not tied to your house also has its benefits.

“I’m always really adamant that my kids don’t take my last name,” TeaVee says. “My daughter Alice [Venture] originally took my name, and I asked her to change it. She was really upset, but I explained that I just don’t want my signature on someone else.” That felt like too much pressure for my drag mother; she’s always told me she wants us to stand on our own. That’s also part of why TeaVee

CIRQUE DU FULL TILT: A LIVE BURLESQUE SHOW! Thu 10/30, 8 :30 PM, Emporium Wicker Park, from $10 THE INFERNO Fri 10/31, 9:30 PM, Newport Theater, from $28 52

hasn’t taken the name of her own drag mother: RuPaul Drag Race All Stars season ten winner Ginger Minj. One might think taking the name of a famous drag queen would be good for branding, but TeaVee is clear about having her own vision.

Whether you share your house parent’s name or not, it’s a lovely thing to be part of a group of supportive people who love you unconditionally. Not everyone gets that from their family of origin. Chosen families are a strong bond, one I’m incredibly grateful for. v m crenken@chicagoreader.com

REVOLUTION(S)

BY ZAYD AYERS DOHRN MUSIC AND LYRICS BY TOM MORELLO DIRECTED BY STEVE H. BROADNAX III

When soldier and aspiring musician Hampton Weems comes home from Afghanistan, he finds the South Side of Chicago is also occupied territory—and he’s accidentally joined the resistance. This all-new radical musical event from Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave and The Nightwatchman) and Chicago’s own Zayd Ayers Dohrn pulses with punk, hip-hop and metal, and celebrates the courage that inspires us—across generations—to demand a better world.

STARTS OCTOBER 4

Sandra Delgado directed

THEATER

OPENING

ROffscreen goddess

Elizabeth McGovern’s Ava: The Secret Conversations gives voice to a Hollywood legend.

Unlike solo biographical shows, where the audience is the implied interlocutor/confessor for the life events as they unfold as either reminiscence or flashback, Elizabeth McGovern’s Ava: The Secret Conversations brings the interrogator into the process by having Ava Gardner’s would-be biographer, Peter Evans (Aaron Costa Ganis), right alongside McGovern’s Hollywood star. He coaxes her and sometimes fights with her as she tries to balance her own impulse for speaking her mind against the awareness that the men in her life (most importantly Frank Sinatra) still have a hold on her.

It’s a partially successful device. McGovern, who adapted her play from Evans’s 2013 book of the same title (published a er both author and subject were dead), digs into the North Carolina–born Gardner’s mix of southern charm and the caginess that comes from a lifetime of being kept in the sex-symbol cage. In flashbacks, Ganis plays her husbands: Mickey Rooney, whose sexual libertinism is greatly at odds with his Andy Hardy onscreen persona; bandleader Artie Shaw, the Hegel-reading intellectual who wants a hausfrau, not a starlet; and Sinatra, the one person whose celebrity—and ability to cut through the bullshit with a cutting observation—matches Gardner’s own.

Evans himself comes across as a cipher, oily and overeager, even though he sees himself as a novelist more than a celebrity ghostwriter. (He’s urged on by the offstage voice of his agent, who tells him that what the public really wants are juicy details about Sinatra, including the size of his junk.) The structure of McGovern’s play means we learn more about Ava’s men than her career, though she argues forcefully that 1946’s The Killers (based on the Ernest Hemingway story) is her greatest achievement. There’s also a funny but painful recounting of the process of Lena Horne dubbing Gardner’s songs in the 1951 musical Show Boat. “They took my voice,” she tells Evans.

McGovern’s script deserves praise for at least trying to restore agency to a woman whose offscreen voice was too often drowned out by the Hollywood PR machine and gossip columnists. Alex Basco Koch’s projections of archival photos, clips of Gardner films, and headlines (especially the recriminatory ones when Sinatra left his wife for Gardner) at times fill the walls of David Meyer’s set, suggesting that though she moved to the London flat we see here in order to escape the tabloids, she could never escape her image.

Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, the show works beautifully as a showcase for McGovern (I le with a list of roles in my head I’d love to see her do onstage). The costumes by Toni-Leslie James and wigs by Matthew Armentrout capture Gardner’s silver-screen glamour, even as we’re aware that the actress we meet through Evans in 1988 is already on a downward slide. Though we don’t learn a lot about what drove Gardner’s choices, either onscreen or off, we do get a strong sense of a woman who entered the business as a naive teenager and eventually figured out what the game was, even if she was unable to escape its rules entirely. “I think you want to call the plays, and I won’t have it,” Gardner tells Evans at one point. Gardner might not have been able to get out of the game, but at least in McGovern she’s

found a suitable advocate for reexamining her place in Hollywood history. —KERRY REID AVA: THE SECRET CONVERSATIONS Through 10/12: Tue and Thu–Fri 7 PM, Wed and Sat 2 and 7 PM, Sun 2 PM; no show Thu 10/2; Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan, 312-7533210, ext. 102, www.fineartsbuilding.com, $40-$170 (students $30)

R First Folio follies

The Book of Will celebrates Shakespeare, friendship, and the battle for the historical record.

Lauren Gunderson excels at writing plays that grab our attention even though we know exactly how they’ll end, which would seem to work against the sense of dramatic conflict. In this summer’s Billie Jean at Chicago Shakespeare, Gunderson celebrated pioneering tennis legend Billie Jean King, and even though we know that King eventually triumphed over the overwhelming sexism that dominated the sport, it was fun to watch how she did it.

There’s a similar arc in Gunderson’s 2017 The Book of Will , though the play is set about 350 years before King’s time in the spotlight. It does, however, involve the King’s Men—the company of actors formed by William Shakespeare to perform his plays. It’s 1619, Shakespeare has been dead three years, and hacks are bowdlerizing his plays all over town. In a tavern, the surviving King’s Men—John Heminges, Richard Burbage, and Henry Condell—lament this state of affairs and the “pillagers of wit” who are desecrating the Bard. But when Burbage (Brendan Hutt) also dies, Condell (Ben Veatch) and Heminges (Jared Dennis) realize that time is running out to preserve Shakespeare’s work as it was actually meant to be performed. They get to work, determined to deliver what will eventually be known as the First Folio, collecting 20 of Shakespeare’s plays (18 of which had never been published before).

Directed by Beth Wolf, Promethean Theatre Ensemble’s production leans into Gunderson’s crowd-pleasing-for-the-literati tendencies (not unlike the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love). The ensemble reflects Gunderson’s directive in the published version of her own play: “Casting should be diverse. Shakespeare is for everyone.” The familiar trope of plucky underdogs taking on the establishment make it a fun ride for those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of Elizabethan theater.

James Lewis as Shakespeare’s frenemy, Ben Jonson, is a scene-stealing charmer and a potent blend of pomposity and drunkenness. Anne Sheridan Smith as Rebecca Heminges elevates what could be a standard-issue supportive-spouse role with wisdom and wit. Brittani Yawn as Heminges’s daughter, Alice, gets what may be the best line (delivered to Jonson): “A poet of the heart always beats a scholar.” By focusing on the heart and wit of Shakespeare over the nitty-gritty history, Gunderson’s The Book of Will succeeds at making the populist case for his work. And perhaps more importantly, as we see history and art under attack by the current regime (and AI stealing writers’ work), it also celebrates those who refuse to let the villains and hacks win the battle for culture. —KERRY REID THE BOOK OF WILL Through 10/25: Thu–Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; industry night Wed 10/22 8 PM; Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, 773-697-3830, thedentheatre.com or prometheantheatre.org, $30 (students/seniors $25)

RSeasons of love

Frederick celebrates friendship and nature.

Why are stories about the changing seasons so effective in children’s theater? Is it because kids haven’t lost the sense of awe at the magic nature works every year? Whatever the reason, it’s a real phenomenon. Chicago Children’s Theatre’s 2024 production of A Year With Frog and Toad (they’ve produced the show, created by Robert and Willie Reale from Arnold Lobel’s classic book, several times in their 20-year history), was a sheer delight. (Young People’s Theatre of Chicago is doing the musical later this season.)

Now CCT returns with another anthropomorphic look at nature and the nurture of good friends with the musical Frederick (they presented the world premiere in 2014), based on Leo Lionni’s 1967 book about an imaginative field mouse. His hardworking friends gather grain and seeds to get them through the cold winter while he’s socking away beautiful images and memories of sunlight, clouds, flowers, changing leaves, and snowflakes.

Adapted for the stage by Suzanne Maynard Miller with songs by Sarah Durkee and Paul Jacobs (Matthew Muñiz did the arrangements and serves as music director for CCT), Frederick works on multiple levels for young audiences. There are some subtle but thoughtful lessons here about balancing the needs of a family with respect for individuality, and about the joys of appreciating simple beauty and being able to share it with others. “Try to keep hold of the color in your mind,” Frederick urges at one point. “It won’t look like this forever.”

Director and choreographer Tommy Rapley’s cast of mice all play a variety of instruments (cello, guitar, banjo, drums) alongside keyboardist Jeremy Weinstein as a mostly silent chipmunk. In addition to sweet dreamer Frederick (Brandon Acosta), there’s plucky Baby (Leslie Ann Sheppard), nerdy inventor Ernest (Shawn Pfautsch), nervous Nellie (Ellie Duffey), and Sunny (Tina Muñoz Pandya), who, as her name implies, always looks on the bright side. The scenic design by Collette Pollard, featuring an exquisite background cranky with changing scenes (the bright-red poppies look like something out of a Japanese print) and clever costumes by Mieka van der Ploeg, adds warmth and wonder to a show that already has no shortage of either quality. —KERRY REID FREDERICK Through 11/16: Sat–Sun 9:30 AM and 11:30 AM; also Sun 10/26 2 PM (touch tour prior to show), sensory-friendly performances Sat 10/18 and Sat 11/1 9:30 AM; Chicago Children’s Theatre, 100 S. Racine, 312-374-8835, chicagochildrenstheatre. org, $47-25-$52.25, (lap seat tickets for children 18 months and under $12.75), recommended 4+

RYo, Caesar

Rome Sweet Rome gives a timely rap makeover to Shakespeare.

With references to the Gulf of Rome, a milquetoast both-sidesing pundit called “Nezra Kleinius,” and a dictator who loves to hear himself talk (even when what he says is pure idiocy), subtlety isn’t what the Qs are going for here. A late-in-the-show breaking of the fourth wall directly implicates the audience in the bread-and-circuses reality TV fixations that led us to this awful place. Speaking of bread: the mob turns on Caesar (played by Postell Pringle, aka POS) because he outlaws carbs. (MRHA: Make Rome Healthy Again?) This may seem like a superficial thing compared to everything else he’s doing, but remember how much Americans lost their shpadoinkles over not being able to eat out during a pandemic? Apparently, denying us our treats matters more to too many of us than losing our rights (or our lives).

The rhyme schemes here aren’t the most complex you’ll ever hear, and there are some predictable jokes (yes, you’ll hear about a Caesar salad). But the performances are energetic and clever across the board, with Victor Musoni’s Brutus and Jonathan Shaboo’s Cash, alongside Danielle Davis’s comically adept Casca, delivering the goods. (Pringle’s death scene also seems to be shamelessly channeling Paul Reubens’s hilariously overdrawn death as Amilyn in the 1992 film of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)

If ever there was a time to revisit Julius Caesar, it’s now. The Q Brothers Collective (GQ, JQ, JAX, and POS), in collaboration with Chicago Shakespeare Theater artistic director Edward Hall and literary manager Ericka Ratcliff, turn their talents for “ad-rap-tation” previously seen in Funk It Up About Nothin’ and The Bomb-itty of Errors to Shakespeare’s 1599 drama about the Roman tyrant done in by senators.

Janyce Caraballo as Lucy, Brutus’s beleaguered and idealistic intern, delivers what may be the most chilling performance as she begins to realize what it takes to survive in the bloodthirsty world of politics. Rome Sweet Rome, like the work that inspired it, understands the power of rhetoric and image to undercut reason, and is thus both timely and entertaining, while making us question what we find amusing in these dark days. —KERRY REID ROME SWEET ROME Through 10/19: Tue 7:30 PM, Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu–Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; audio description Sun 10/5, open captions Wed 10/8 1 PM and 7:30 PM, ASL interpretation Fri 10/10; Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, chicagoshakes.com, $39-$82 v

RCELLULOID CITY SEOUL

Sun 10/ 12 2:30 PM, 60 min., Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, program five of the Chicago Film Society’s 2025 Celluloid Now festival (Thu 10/9–Sun 10/ 12), $13 general admission, $ 8 students, seniors, and youth, $ 6. 50 Film Center members, $ 5 SAIC students and faculty, and staff of the Art Institute, celluloidnow.org, siskelfilmcenter.org/celluloid-seoul

Chicago and Seoul are celluloid cities

This year’s Celluloid Now festival includes a program of rarely screened Korean experimental films.

By JOSHUA MINSOO KIM

Chae Yu was on a bus in Seoul when she received a call from an unknown number. “Hello, this is Jangwook Lee from Space Cell,” said the man on the other line. Yu was shocked. She had visited Lee’s film lab a couple years back, learning about it from her professor at Dongguk University, Pip Chodorov. But things weren’t exactly in working order back then. “When I went, sometime in the late

2010s, there was so much film equipment, but nothing was functioning,” she tells me over Zoom. She had spent the past few years running her college’s darkroom—the only one in operation in the entire city dedicated to analog filmmaking. Knowing this, Lee had a request for her: to run Space Cell’s own darkroom. She accepted, and through her, Lee, and others’ e orts, Space Cell began to run regular workshops again in the 2020s.

Space Cell is one of the most crucial institutions in the entirety of Korea’s avant-garde film history. Lee, the founder of the highly collaborative artist-run space, tells me that it started in the summer of 2004. “At the time, I was working with film and had a vague idea that it would be nice to have colleagues to work with,” he says. Space Cell’s first workshop was held in ten sessions, structured so that each of its ten participants could complete their own work. The goal was for it to be highly instructive: It was a “hands-on practice covering the entire process, from filming and developing to hand-printing,” Lee explains. That same year, Seoul’s Experimental Film

& Video Festival (also known as EXiS) was founded, o ering new exhibition opportunities for Korean artists living both locally and abroad. While both of these organizations began with modest intentions, they have been foundational to connecting Korean filmmakers with the rest of the international experimental film circuit.

Celluloid Now, the semiregular experimental and independent film festival run by Chicago Film Society, has devoted one of their six inspired programs this year to a selection of contemporary Korean analog film. It’s called Celluloid City Seoul and features nine evocative short-form works that are nonnarrative, abstract, and dazzling to watch in person. Some of these were made at Space Cell, some were exhibited at EXiS, and some predate both organizations. Cameron Worden, one of the festival’s programmers, tells me that they’ve always had a free submission call, and they realized that a number of entries this year were from artists working at Space Cell. “The work coming out of this scene has mostly been inaccessible to audiences in the States,” he tells me. “And they were clearly among the strongest submissions we’d received.” He put a plan into action.

Worden knew that he and the rest of the programmers would have to be crafty this year, as they had a considerably smaller budget than usual due to nationwide austerity measures. He knew that Yu, who went to film school in Milwaukee and now lives in Chicago,

was going to visit Korea. She agreed to help collate and deliver prints to help with shipping costs, but he needed her expertise in deciding what to show. “Chae put together an incredible amount of research regarding who in Korea over the past 20 years has been making 16-millimeter prints of their work,” Worden

says. “She provided a set of recommendations from this research that was so strong, it felt like we would be missing an opportunity by not just putting them all together in a single program.”

At the heart of what Worden tells me is an understanding that independent artists need to work together to survive. “This program highlights one aspect of analog cinema we’re always trying to bring attention to: the necessity of community for this form to remain viable,” he says. Even further, Space Cell struck two new 16 millimeter prints for this event: Sungsuk Suk’s 1998 (2002) and Jang Eunju’s Tide (2007). Worden recognizes that there’s a kinship between these Korean works and those made locally, expressed in part by a sister program in Celluloid Now called Celluloid City Chicago. “Part of what is so thrilling about seeing these films all together is that they’re all engaging with the same material

The author’s FILM picks More Korean experimental film recommendations from Joshua Minsoo Kim

THE MEANING OF 1/24 SECOND Kulim Kim, 1969

FROM MORNING TO EVENING Ik-tae Lee, 1970

UNTITLED 77-A Ok-hee Han, 1977

SORRY, I’M AN ACTRESS Jihong Park, 1992

WET DREAM Yun-tae Kim, 1992

BEAUTIFUL FRUIT Kyong-ju Park, 1998

CIRCULATION Dong-hyun Park, 1998

DEEP OR QUIET Mi-ja Kang, 1998

ECHOED SILENCE Jangwook Lee, 1998

AQUA REQUIEM Chang-jae Lim, 1999

REMEMBRANCE/TIME Min-su Yang, 1999

GINA KIM’S VIDEO DIARY Gina Kim, 2002

DANGEROUS SUPPLEMENT Soon-Mi Yoo, 2005

THE CRACKED SHARE Hangjun Lee, 2006

THE CROSSING Sook-hyun Kim, 2007

SUICIDAL VARIATIONS Gok Kim & Sun Kim, 2007

SELF-PORTRAIT Eun-jung Kim, 2009

STILL MOVING, OR Hun Rhee, 2013

RAT FIRE Inhan Cho, 2018

PYROTECHNICS Onyou Oh, 2022

ESREVER HeeSue Kwon, 2023

BUSEOK Kyujae Park, 2024

A DARK ROOM Heehyun Choi, 2025

PYOHAEROK Il-hwan, 2025

ROTATING SIGNALS Chae Yu, 2025

Let’s Play!

FILM

continued from p. 13

limitations,” he explains. “And these filmmakers are all sharing technical knowledge to push their work to new places.”

This DIY spirit and word-of-mouth knowledge-sharing echoes what Lee tells me about Korean experimental film in general. While it is hard to pinpoint what makes the

it and the aforementioned 1998 and Tide in their brisk, exhilarating edits and attention to light.

country and Space Cell’s own filmmaking practices distinct from others’, Lee says what matters most is that it involves people working as a community. “Participants take part in each other’s processes, exchange ideas, and share equipment,” he says. One of his own films, Chang Gyeong (2024), appears in the program. It’s one of the festival’s most thoughtprovoking films, grappling with, in his words, “the massacre of animals at the zoo and my own childhood memories.”

There are other highlights in the Celluloid City Seoul program too. Minyong Jang’s The Dark Room (2001) is an immersive mood piece with astoundingly alien shots of water, made with a giant camera obscura near the Cliff House in San Francisco. Minjung Kim’s three films are single-roll meditations on materiality and the filmmaking practice. Kyujae Park, one of Korea’s leading experimentalists today, has a striking film titled Study for Three Streams (silent version) (2024). There’s a kinship between

Yu doesn’t have one of her own works in the program, but she will be presenting an expanded cinema performance titled Anna (2024–2025) during Celluloid Now. When I saw the piece in Beijing earlier this year, it was a startling demonstration of what is possible with cinema’s barest materials: a film strip, a projector, and a lens. The legendary Japanese avant-garde filmmaker Takashi Ito was in attendance, too, and mentioned that he was similarly struck by its ingenuity and energy. To see all these works by Korean filmmakers, who all come from different backgrounds and employ unique strategies, is to witness an innovative and underdiscussed history of avant-garde films. These works have rarely been shown in the U.S., and thanks to the collaboration of diehard cinema lovers in both Korea and Chicago, Celluloid City Seoul offers a chance to see how independent filmmaking both exists and

thrives in another locale on the other side of the world. Worden explains the mission succinctly: “Beyond supporting the community around making analog artists’ cinema, we also want to create a space where a community can form around screenings of this work.” v

FILM

Like many in Chicago with a Letterboxd account, I ventured to the Music Box Theatre this weekend to see Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, One Battle After Another (2025), on 70 millimeter. I don’t have much to say about it right now; that’s often the case with these kinds of films, the ones that launch a thousand think pieces from those much more invested in the filmmaker or the film than myself. I am making it a point to revisit Anderson’s oeuvre—since the 2002 release of Punch-Drunk Love , I saw each of his films in theaters when they came out and haven’t yet revisited any. Maybe after I do, and see One Battle After Another again, I’ll have something interesting to say. For now I’ll remark on the interesting camerawork, which involves evocative close-ups and does well following Benicio del Toro’s Sensei as he navigates a relatively cramped apartment that doubles as part of an underground railroad-like operation for migrants. (Why that part stood out to me, I don’t know, but that’s the magic of the moving image.)

I also mention this because the film centers around a group, the French 75, who, among other such revolutionary actions, release said migrants from detention centers. As many Chicagoans were watching the movie this weekend, or just going about their daily lives, U.S. Border Patrol agents were raiding downtown, arresting people among the busy, tourist-laden city center, an obscene “flex” if there ever was one. I’m sure many moviegoers who saw One Battle After Another connected the dots—that what they viewed onscreen was now happening in their own backyard, not even amid the shadows, but in the light of day—though now I’m left wondering, what are we going to do about it? Many of us are

A still from One Battle

cheering a movie with revolutionary politics (really, though, only insofar as the story, inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland , necessitates; Anderson isn’t really a political filmmaker), but what about the revolution that must happen in real life? If it won’t be televised, will I at least hear about it on social media?

It feels silly to continue recounting my moviegoing activities of the past week in light of what’s happening, but I guess that’s how it goes. The world burns, and o to work—and the movies—we still go. On Tuesday, I did an interesting double feature: first, Chris + Heather’s 16 mm Big Screen Blowout #2 at the Music Box, put on by the Chicago Film Society, and then Massimo Dallamano’s 1972 giallo What Have You Done to Solange? at the Alamo Drafthouse a few blocks away. If there’s a connective thread, it’s that of knives. My favorite among the myriad 16millimeter oddities was a vintage newsreel that involved a mom doing some impalement arts— i.e. throwing knives—at her two young children in an especially risque sideshow act.

In What Have You Done to Solange?, a knife is used to kill teenage girls, except it’s inserted vaginally, so as to re-create the experience of a backroom abortion. It’s harrowing, yes, but the film is really quite beautifully shot, and the story is interesting. There’s some clever misdirection, and it’s funny that you don’t learn the significance of the title until almost three-quarters of the way in.

On Sunday, I went to a screening put on by the Employees Only Cineclub at Elastic Arts, which is fast becoming a reliable venue at which to see interesting films. They showed Tony Buba’s 1979 short film Sweet Sal before Joel Patrick aka trapped’s 2014 documentary Gothic King Cobra , about a YouTuber with a modest but devoted following (and apparently just as many committed to bullying him) who passed away a few weeks ago. Both were portraits of unusual characters who existed on the fringes, but who were undoubtedly fixtures in the lives of the people around them, be it in the diners or billiards halls frequented by Sal or the World Wide Web in which KingCobraJFS shared his life for any and all to stream. There are such characters everywhere for those with eyes to see. Until next time, and in solidarity, moviegoers.

—KAT SACHS v

The Moviegoer is the diary of a local film bu , collecting the best of what Chicago’s independent and underground film scene has to o er.

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FILM

NOW PLAYING

Plainclothes

It’s surprising that Plainclothes is a writer–director’s film. Carmen Emmi’s feature debut feels like the kind of movie with a functional but bog-standard script that a director is desperately trying to inject with excitement and originality.

The script offers another sad gay period piece. This time, it’s set in the mid 1990s, centered on young cop Lucas (a very pretty Tom Blyth) who entraps gay men cruising a Syracuse mall before (who could have foreseen?) developing feelings for one of his marks. Alongside the main plot, we see Lucas months later at a large New Year’s Eve party hosted by his mother and attended by his homophobic uncle. Across both timelines, Plainclothes delves into the classic themes of authenticity, performance, desire, and internalized homophobia well enough—it’s just not new or particularly interesting in any way.

What’s very interesting is Emmi’s aggressive formal style. At its most functional, the film’s stylization marks the timelines with different aspect ratios. Less functionally, the entire film alternates between Hi8 video and digital footage with a 16-mm grain filter. At various moments of intensity throughout, Emmi deploys

a kaleidoscopic effect, a dolly zoom, foregrounding light sources that blow out the image, surreal staging, and frantic cutting between all of the above. It’s far too much, but it’s never boring.

The only aspect of the film that’s a complete victory is Russell Tovey as Andrew, the mark Lucas falls for. Tovey’s delicate balance on the line of sweetly comforting and painfully horny makes it easy to understand Lucas’s feelings. It’s the kind of performance that should but won’t get awards attention.

The rest of the movie is too obviously reaching for that attention and likely won’t get any either. Emmi’s willingness to play with form is welcome, though, and hopefully in future projects, he’s able to calibrate it better and write a more interesting script. —KYLE LOGAN 95 min. Music Box Theatre

RShell

It’s impossible to talk about Max Minghella’s Shell without comparing it to last year’s breakout hit The Substance. Both films are about futuristic beauty processes gone awry. Both imagine physical decay, and the effort to prevent it, as body horror. Shell has, to its credit, more lobster monsters—and, not so much to its credit, a somewhat pattering moral.

In The Substance, Demi Moore is an incandescent

screen beauty past her prime; in the case of Shell, the aging actor looking to re-spark her career is Samantha Lake (Elisabeth Moss), who, in contrast, is a midlister who’s afraid she’s heading for lower than mid. Lake is picked up by beauty maven Zoe Shannon (Kate Hudson), who offers her youth, beauty, and the chance to be the most glamorous version of herself.

Moss plays Lake with a masterful mix of schlubiness, insecurity, and grit; she’s an actor with a huge range and an everyperson charisma that’s hard to resist. In some ways, it’s a stronger performance than Moore’s. But Moss’s very appeal also makes the film more conventional: Lake’s the nice one, Shannon is the psycho witch, and the moral is be your ordinary-looking self—a comforting, body-positive message that sidesteps the simmering ambition, desire, and (literally) fleshmelting rage that made The Substance so disturbing and compelling.

That’s not to say that Shell completely avoids queasy ambivalence. Especially at the end, Moss gives us flashes of a feral enjoyment that calls into question her (and our) investment. Shell’s a decent movie. It’s just unfortunate that in release date, plot, and theme, it so closely parallels a better one. —NOAH BERLATSKY R, 100 min. Limited release in theaters, wide release on VOD

RThe Smashing Machine

For an actor whose very nickname—“the Rock”— conjures invincibility, a moniker forged in and forever linked to his professional wrestling career, it’s startling to see Dwayne Johnson anchor Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine with quiet vulnerability. Johnson’s rise from the wrestling ring to Hollywood is almost inseparable from the characters he plays. In the Fast & Furious franchise and in lighter turns like Tooth Fairy (2010), he is always, in some sense, playing himself—a megawatt smile, colossal arms, and the charisma that made him a WWE ratings juggernaut.

So when Johnson was cast as Mark Kerr, the mixed martial arts (MMA) pioneer whose career sputtered under the weight of injuries and personal struggles, some worried that the Rock might overwhelm the story. The film, named a er John Hyams’s documentary by the same name, practically begs the comparison.

But what makes The Smashing Machine really work is Johnson’s restraint (somewhat supported by prosthetics). He vanishes into Kerr’s contradiction: the so -spoken man outside the cage and the violent, almost mechanical fighter within it. For an actor who has

built his career on bigness—physique, spectacle—this performance is defined by nuance and humility.

The Smashing Machine introduces us to Kerr through a brutal prerulebook mixed martial arts fight at Brazil’s World Vale Tudo Championship in 1997. As Kerr, Johnson waxes poetically about the adrenaline he experiences as he wins fight a er fight. Soon a er, we find him in the waiting room of a hospital, bruised, convincing an elderly woman that MMA should be seen as a legitimate sport. She asks, “Do you hate the people you fight?” and he promptly responds, “Absolutely not.”

An early champion of the sport, Kerr emerged as an invincible figure—the kind of competitor opponents feared before the opening bells. Losing wasn’t in his playbook. That is, until a match against Igor Vovchanchyn (Oleksandr Usyk) at the seventh Pride Fighting Championships in Japan. His opponent used a prohibited knee strike, and the knockout was ruled a “no contest.” Yet, the idea of losing—something he can barely “intellectualize” in the film—haunts him.

Much of The Smashing Machine focuses on how loss and pain swallowed Kerr bit by bit. A man capable of ruthless violence remained vulnerable to his insecurity. Safdie hones in on Kerr’s painkiller addiction, driven by his inability to cope with loss or real hurt. This is complicated by his supportive yet fraught relationship with Dawn, played immaculately by Emily Blunt. His innocent, almost childish demeanor is consistently undermined by his own bouts of violence: smashing the door to shreds and, simply put, silent temper tantrums.

The Smashing Machine succeeds because Johnson channels contradictions that feel deeply his own—his public armor and private fractures. As revealed in his New York Times profile, those knots of pride and pain run through his life. Or, as Johnson’s father once put it (a line also dropped in the movie): “A day without pain is a day without sunshine.” —MAXWELL RABB R, 123 min. Wide release in theaters v Get showtimes and see reviews of everything playing this week at

Farewell to a DJ’s DJ

Lee Collins used his almost mythical gi with house and disco to drive parties into a frenzy on both sides of the Atlantic.

By LEOR GALIL

By the time deep-house maestro Ron Trent met Lee Collins in the late 80s, Lee had been DJing for almost a decade, building a subcultural stature that few in Chicago’s dance-music scene could match. He’d started spinning at age 13, and he got a foothold in the scene back when house was largely confined to Chicago’s thriving gay nightlife.

“It was very underground, it was very cliquish, and it wasn’t for everybody,” Ron says. “Lee was not only a heavy record selector— back then, it was like he was mythical. We always had Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles; Lee was right under that tier as a young, heterosexual DJ that could hold his own amongst an older crowd and an audience of people that had more experience and were from a di erent place.”

Lee developed his skills by watching and in some cases learning directly from the architects of house music: Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles, of course, plus Farley “Jackmaster” Funk, Andre Hatchett of foundational house collective the Chosen Few, and others. He got much of his education at parties where those masters DJed, though he was often too young to be in the clubs where the parties happened. “We left the party, we had to go record shopping,” Lee told Montreal DJ Lexis in a 2017 interview.

out hunting for his records. He spun obscure disco tracks that no other DJ in town seemed to play—if they even knew they existed. In the ensuing decades, Lee released conspicuously

disco lovers on both sides of the Atlantic. He often spun in tandem with his longtime collaborator, Sadar Bahar—they met in the late 80s and stuck together for decades. Lee played his final party in August 2024 with Sadar at Podlasie. He died at age 58 on August 21, 2025.

“We lost one of the biggest, humblest giants in the disco and house community,” Sadar says. “From Farley to Frankie, Ronnie—everybody loved Lee, and everybody knew Lee. It’s like nobody you could think of out here who didn’t grow up with Lee and who didn’t love Lee.”

In Sadar, Lee found a fellow lover of disco, funk, and house who liked to dig through stacks of records hunting for unknown songs.

“I really like how Lee would go out on a limb and play something that only he pretty much knew about,” Sadar says. “He had a real good ear for music, and he’d always come up with something where it’d be like, ‘Where’d you get this?’”

By the early 90s, Lee and Sadar were both part of a crew called Soul in the Hole that also included Russell “Russoul” Dixon and Richard “Richie Rich” Waddington. They threw parties under that name and also used it for several other projects. “Later on we started doing the Soul in the Hole TV show, over there on Green Street at Channel 19 [CAN TV],” Sadar says. “We started doing clothing—T-shirts, pants, all di erent stu .”

Soul in the Hole also acted as a record label, often releasing mixes and edits of songs the crew members liked to spin at parties. Most of the music came out on CD-R, sometimes on vinyl, in the late 2000s and into the 2010s, but it didn’t reliably get wide distribution.

“We lost one of the biggest, humblest

giants in the disco and house community. From Farley to Frankie, Ronnie—everybody loved Lee, and everybody knew Lee.”

—Sadar Bahar

In 2012, London label Barely Breaking Even issued Soul in the Hole: A Journey Into Funk/ Soul/Boogie & Disco From One of the World’s Deepest DJs . Sadar’s name is on the cover, but he compiled the album with Lee. This release gave Sadar and Lee newfound international exposure, which brought with it more opportunities to DJ outside Chicago. In the years that followed, Lee was booked to play Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Montreal, Paris, Barcelona, Croatia, Brazil, and elsewhere.

“Because whatever was playing, we didn’t have, and we needed to get it.”

In the early 80s, Lee’s own DJ sets quickly earned a reputation for sending partygoers

few recordings and never built much of a career as a producer, but his live performances consistently bowled over house heads and

“He got a chance to do what a lot of DJs still haven’t had the opportunity to do,” says DJ and producer Anthony Nicholson. “He played some really good

MUSIC

parties and met a lot of important people. He lived out his dream, I would say, because we always knew that the world stage was more conducive to what Lee had to o er.”

In the late 70s, Stacey Collins was sitting outside, fiddling with a radio, when one of her seventh-grade classmates wandered by: LeMoyne Collins, who went by “Lee.” Stacey had picked up a love of music from her grandfather, who’d once managed the storied Regal Theater, but she knew no kids her age who shared her devotion. That changed when she met Lee.

“We started talking about songs and things like that and got really excited,” Stacey says. “Because back then, when you’re a kid, it’s hard to find people who are into some of the same things you’re into. We were really excited—and we were just inseparable after that.” By coincidence, Stacey and Lee had the same last name, and in the right light they could look like siblings. So when Lee began to introduce Stacey to his friends as his little sister, people bought it.

Lee often talked in quick, short bursts, and he didn’t hold back his opinions. “You never knew what he was going to say to anybody,” Stacey recalls. “He had zero filter. Sometimes it could be funny, and sometimes it was horrifying.” Though Lee was a no-bullshit guy, he was easy to hang out with, generous, and considerate. When they were kids, Stacey says, Lee shared music from his collection with anybody who wanted to hear it, along with his musical knowledge. Later in life, he’d o er a ride home from a party or a place to crash to anybody who needed one.

Soon Lee’s older friends started bringing him to clubs and parties where grimy disco and symphonic funk reigned supreme. He’d tell Stacey all about what he saw and heard at the Warehouse, home to the godfather of house music, Frankie Knuckles. Lee also told Stacey that he could do what Frankie did—but better. “He spoke with so much conviction that I believed him,” Stacey says. “And then I finally heard him mix.”

“I remember us hanging out a whole lot back then—over [at] one or the other’s house or someone else’s house that had turntables— and all of us learning how to play together,” she says.

Lee started spinning at south-side house parties, but the main way he grew his following at that point was by circulating cassette mixtapes. Those tapes were how Anthony Nicholson bonded with Lee. “It was very educational, very enlightening,” Anthony says.

“I don’t think the first mixtape I got from Lee Collins had more than two songs I knew what they were.” Lee and Anthony spent a lot of

existed.” Stacey says Lee was the only DJ in town to spin Carl Bean’s 1977 Motown single “I Was Born This Way” before New York label Next Plateau reissued it in 1985.

To get records no one else had, Lee not only haunted local stores but also ordered by mail from faraway retailers. He developed a rapport with Abigail Adams, who ran Movin’ Records, a record label and brick-and-mortar shop in East Orange, New Jersey. Like Lee, Abigail loved seeking out dance records that felt like secrets she’d uncovered. “I was, like, the only one that had these rare gems,” Abigail says. “I had Carl Bean 12-inches—original

“You never knew what he was going to say to anybody,” says Stacey Collins, a childhood friend of Lee Collins. “He had zero fi lter.”

time at each other’s houses, staying up late, drinking Pepsi, watching kung fu movies, and listening to music.

12-inches, way before it was remastered and rereleased. I just loved being on the hunt and finding these things.”

some of the real underground stu that never really got a lot of play.”

Lee’s taste dovetailed with the style Ron Hardy showcased at the Muzic Box. “Ronnie was feverish,” says Stacey, who landed a gig working the door for the club in the mid-80s. “It was thumping, it was hard, it was in-yourface, and it was constant. It was like getting smacked in the head over and over and over. And it was so good, because the music would just move through your body.”

The Hot Mix 5 undoubtedly had a bigger audience on WBMX than Lee did on WHPK, but his show was the one that reflected what was happening at the Muzic Box. “Some of that stu was pretty racy,” says Celeste, who was part of Lee’s WHPK crew. “The language was extremely racy, and he could get away with playing them. He was definitely a raw Ronnie head—he was really into Ronnie.”

The feeling was mutual. “Ron definitely had a lot of respect for Lee,” Stacey says. “He loved Lee’s playing style; he liked Lee’s selection of music.” Sadar, who first saw Lee as a regular at the Muzic Box, noticed that his future collaborator seemed to share very specific musical proclivities with Ron Hardy.

“Some of those records Lee would be playing on the radio station, and then later on people would hear it at the Box,” Sadar says. “They’d be like, ‘Man, was Ronnie listening to Lee?’”

In 1986, Lee launched a Disco Madness residency at the Muzic Box. “Lee already had a following on WHPK,” Stacey says, “so when Lee did spin down at the Muzic Box, it was Friday nights, and he brought in quite a few people.” The residency didn’t last long, and neither did the Muzic Box. In the early 90s, Lee spun at a gay club called Bad Boys, where Anthony says his friend really shined.

“He could play his ass o ,” says DJ Celeste Alexander. “Disco was live instrumentation. If you listen to any background music to 1970s Black exploitation films, you hear the orchestration. That stuff floats; it’ll go from a 110 BPM all the way up to 135, back down to a 110, before you know it. Lee could blend that shit and hold it.” Celeste met Lee in the early 1980s through their mutual mentor, Andre Hatchett.

Lee loved disco and funk made with real instrumentation, and to satisfy his tastes, he had to range beyond the dance tracks that other Chicago DJs favored. “He was mixing authentic club music, not the Hot Mix 5 stu ,” Stacey says. “In addition, he was also playing new music from New York. So while you’re getting Universal Robot Band, Tony Cook & the Party People, and Johnny Hammond, Lee would also be serving up doses of Blaze, Lola, and Billie. He was adamant about breaking new music or introducing people to songs they never knew

In 1983, Lee began hosting a radio show named Disco Madness on WHPK in Hyde Park. It aired late on Saturday nights, and he managed it with a crew he called Sweet Dreams Productions. Before Leonard Murphy Jr. built a career releasing disco edits as Leonard Part Sixx, he helped Lee out with Disco Madness “That’s when Lee started really getting super deep with the disco,” Leonard says. “He wanted to show people that it just wasn’t the classics that you would consider disco. There’s a lot of things you would consider disco: Italo,

Lee’s love of music developed in parallel to another passion: computer programming. “In his bedroom, he’d have his little ugly Mac computer,” Anthony says. “He would be writing programs all the time.” Lee even bought Anthony a couple books about programming, but Anthony never got interested in the same way. Anthony says continued from p. 17

“He played these parties in such a relentless way,” Anthony says. “His DJing was very intentional. If you listen to somebody playing on the radio and somebody making tapes, playing at a club is altogether di erent. Seeing him literally drive that crowd into a frenzy, that was a new experience for me. It was the experience that I had with listening to Ron Hardy.”

MUSIC

Top: Ron Trent and Lee Collins at a local New Year’s event in 2009. Bottom: Trent, Collins, and Kenya Lewis at the Shelter in New York in 1991. PHOTOS COURTESY RON TRENT

Lee launched his career as a software engineer by landing freelance gigs while still a student at Dunbar Vocational High School.

“He really loved programming and software stuff,” Sadar says. “He would be constantly going buying these big ol’ books—you’d look on there, it’d just say ‘Java’ on the front, just crazy shit. We could be downtown record shopping, and he turns around, got another bag full of books. He loved that computer stuff.” Working in software also paid well enough to give Lee the means to buy those hard-to-find records in his DJ sets.

“He was buying records in bulk,” Ron Trent recalls. Ron says Lee would get packages from Movin’ Records every week. In the early 90s, as Lee and Ron grew closer (they also learned they were cousins), Lee brought Ron to the

Movin’ storefront in New Jersey to meet Abigail.

In 1991, the Movin’ Records in-house label issued “Thrill Me,” a 12-inch credited to Rhythm Section, the production partnership between Anthony and Lee.

Anthony says he and Lee had a few other recording sessions, but “Thrill Me” would be their only release, in part because Lee was turning more of his attention toward computer programming. He eventually developed a studio partnership with Sadar, which produced (among other things) their Soul in the Hole releases. “We messed around in the studio,” Sadar says.

“[I’ve] still got many of the tracks and stu that we worked on. I’ll probably at some point put them out.”

Lee’s son, David, studies mathematics at Truman College in Uptown. He wants to earn a PhD and become a math professor. “I don’t think he cared as much about, like, what I did as much as he cared about my dedication to it,” David says. “He always thought that, when you start something, you should finish it.”

While a student at Dunbar, David says, Lee had been captain of the math team, and he resuscitated his interest in mathematics in the final months of his life. “He would watch YouTube videos of mathematics all the time,” David says. “I would come downstairs, and on the TV would be matrices and stu like that. He’d be showing me stu he learned: ‘This is cool. You learn this yet?’”

David is a music person too, and Lee liked to take him shopping at Gramaphone Records and (before it closed) Dave’s Records. “I tend to go toward the more obscure, underground, and rare kind of music that people don’t really know about that much—I naturally gravitate toward it, because I find it fascinating,” David says. “Plus it’s kind of cool, being like, [one of] 100 or 50 people who’ve heard it.”

Sadar has encouraged David’s collecting habits. On one of his trips to Japan, Sadar picked up a box set of Gorillaz seven-inches for David. “He was so happy,” Sadar says. “I’m so happy he’s into music, because he’s gonna end up getting Lee’s collection and my collection.” v

m lgalil@chicagoreader.com

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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3 8PM Jimmy Webb In Maurer Hall

SATURDAY,

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5 7PM Bob Mould: A Conversation and Performance

A conversation with Sound Opinions’ Greg Kot plus solo electric set In Maurer Hall

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9 7PM & 9:30PM

Hiss Golden Messenger with special guest Rett Madison In Szold Hall

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10 8PM L.Shankar Honoring Zakir Hussain In Maurer Hall

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Tallest Man on Earth In Maurer Hall with special guest The Still Tide

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FRI & SAT, OCTOBER 24 & 25 8PM Fruit Bats In Maurer Hall with special guest Minor Moon & V.V. Lightbody (Fri.) and Tobacco City (Sat.)

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Pastor Donald Gay / Lluís Coloma In Szold Hall

CHICAGO PRODUCER AND COMPOSER

Conor Mackey debuted as Lynyn with the 2022 Sooper Records release Lexicon , a wild, constantly shi ing IDM album. He goes back further than that with the Chicago label: Sooper released the two most recent records by perversely playful local postrock band Monobody, 2018’s Raytracing and 2021’s Comma, which feature Mackey on guitar and synths and Sooper co-owner and label star Nnamdï on drums. Lynyn’s new second album, Ixona , takes inspiration from the dub techno and ambient music that Sooper co-owner Glenn Curran recommended to Mackey—a full-circle moment, given that Mackey had encouraged Curran’s budding interest in dance music a few years ago.

“He went deep into learning mode and has learned so much—and has taught me so much, at this point, about electronic music history,” Mackey says. His own history with electronic music goes back decades. He got interested in production while in middle school, during a family trip to San Francisco that included a stop at the Children’s Creativity Museum.

“They had this little computer station set up and a very rudimentary, like, DAW so ware, where you could paint in different loops,” Mackey says. “That was my eye-opening experience in terms of electronic music and making music with computers.” Mackey’s parents bought him a copy of a soware sequencer called Acid, made by Wisconsin firm Sonic Foundry. “I was making stuff, electronically, since that time,” he says. “Mostly, before college, I was just burning stuff on CDs, listening to it in my spare time, and making it just to make it. Once Bandcamp came around, I would pop stuff up on Bandcamp.”

A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene

own productions in advance so that he has more to do onstage than just press play. “What I do is take all of the raw material from the album—like the stems, the actual instruments and recordings—and I essentially create brand-new performable remixes of the tracks,” Mackey says. “It’s a really interesting way for me to reengage with the material.”

Designer Owen Blodgett , who’s made every Lynyn music video and cover art for both albums, provides background visuals for the set. Easygoingtech and Fingy open; tickets are $20.39 in advance, and the show starts at 9 PM.

and Bill are still selling the label’s back catalog—see their statement at instagram.com/ troubleinmindrecords for a Bandcamp discount code.

CZARINA MIRANI, AKA DJ CZBOOGIE , launched 5 Magazine in 2005 to document Chicago’s house music scene and preserve its history. In the 20 years since, the magazine has done unparalleled work telling the stories of the producers, DJs, and partiers who’ve made Chicago house an international phenomenon. (Anytime this wolf writes about Chicago house, the research phase begins with a visit to the 5 website.) On Saturday, October 4, the 5 Magazine crew will celebrate the publication’s 20th anniversary at Smart Bar . Czboogie, Natasha Diggs , and Quicktastic will spin. The Chicago house community suffered some big losses in September, with the deaths of JM Silk vocalist Keith Nunnally and DJ, producer, and singer Ron Carroll, and this wolf is pretty sure the 5 crew will pay tribute on Saturday night. Tickets cost $30 at the door or $25 in advance (for students, $25 before midnight or $20 in advance), and the party starts at 10 PM.

After dropping Lexicon , Mackey coproduced the 2024 Warm Human album Hamartia, also on Sooper. He approached the second Lynyn album with an explicit desire to break from the project’s restless debut. He hasn’t abandoned that record’s frenzied energy and knotty rhythms, but he lets his ideas breathe a little more and makes more use of smooth textures and lush atmospheres.

IF YOU’RE HANKERING FOR a book on the rise of indie rock in the mainstream since the turn of the millennium, this wolf recommends Such Great Heights by Stereogum staff writer Chris DeVille . You can buy a copy from DeVille directly when he comes to town to discuss the book with Reader contributor Jack Riedy at Gman on Monday, October 6. The Q&A begins at 8 PM, and it’s free.

10/1 Nidia Góngora / Bomberxs D’Cora (World Music Festival Chicago)

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“Lexicon was this statement in terms of, like, the place I’ve gotten to a er so many years of trying to work on this one particular language and hone what my thing was going to be,” Mackey says. “I wanted to just change the palette up a little bit.”

On Thursday, October 2, Mackey will perform as Lynyn at the Empty Bottle to celebrate the release of Ixona . He unpacks his

LATE LAST WEEK, BILL AND LISA ROE formally announced the end of their Chicago independent label, Trouble in Mind . Founded in 2009, TiM originally focused on garagerock singles: It debuted with “Ask, Don’t Tell” b/w “The Anchor” by the Roes’ band CoCoComa , with Lisa on guitar and Bill on drums and vocals. The label scored early hits with self-titled LPs by psych-tinged French group the Limiñanas (2010) and Ty Segall sideman Mikal Cronin (2011). TiM built a global reach and an equally wide-ranging catalog, but it stayed connected to Chicago, releasing music by local acts such as Whitney Johnson’s Matchess project, fiery punks Negative Scanner, and peerless postpunks Facs. Trouble in Mind ceased operations on June 1, but Lisa

LAST WEEK, LIVING MOUNTAIN Productions founder and multidisciplinary artist Brian DeRan launched a Kickstarter for his forthcoming documentary, Last Night at Lounge Ax. As the title implies, the doc is built around footage DeRan shot in January 2000, during the final three days of shows at beloved Lincoln Park venue Lounge Ax. DeRan aims to raise at least $45,000 to help cover the costs of production—a fair chunk of the money will go to properly license music by the performers he filmed, including Jim O’Rourke, Shellac, and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. The Kickstarter campaign ends November 3. —LEOR GALIL

Got a tip? Email your Chicago music news to gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

The Matthew Shipp Trio play free jazz of irreducible mystery

3111 N. Western, $25.91. 18+

MATTHEW SHIPP’S TRANSCENDENTAL COURSE hasn’t wavered since the New York–based pianist began recording his fi rst album, a duet with saxophonist Rob Brown called Sonic Explorations , nearly 38 years ago. In his e orts as a leader as well as in his collaborations (with saxophonists David S. Ware and Ivo Perelman, among many others), Shipp intends his music to “intercept electro-magnetic frequencies from the mind of god and . . . convert them to lyrical phrases on the piano,” as he wrote in Black Mystery School Pianists and Other Writings . Published this spring by Autonomedia, the book collects several years of essays and prose poems in which Shipp explores his relationship to jazz history and practice. The title essay describes a lineage of pianists, including Thelonious Monk, Cecil Taylor, Mal

Waldron, and Sun Ra, whose music was personal, transformative, and irreducible—much like Shipp’s own. His trio with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker earn the name of their latest album, 2024’s New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz (ESP-Disk), by playing collectively imagined, classically informed free jazz that is architecturally sound, rhythmically irresistible, emotionally arresting, empathetically attuned, and unmistakably their own. Given Shipp’s seriousness of purpose, it’s ironic that when he went viral this year, it wasn’t for his music—it was for a Facebook post where he criticized the limp dilettantism of Andre 3000’s 7 Piano Sketches . Shipp is no stranger to Chicago, but this is the first time he’s brought his trio here since 2013. —BILL MEYER

THURSDAY2

Water From your Eyes Her New Knife and This House Is Creaking open. 8:30 PM, Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont, sold out (wait list available). 21+

In August, Chicago-born, New York–based art-pop unit Water From Your Eyes released It’s a Beautiful Place , their second album for Matador (and at least their seventh overall, depending on what you count). The new record sets off sparks with its contrasts—beginning with the friction between the puzzling postmodern lyrics of front person Rachel Brown, delivered in a dry, dissociative murmur, and the wild sonic collages constructed by multiinstrumentalist Nate Amos. On “Life Signs” Brown gently talk-sings about generation-spanning changes to a cityscape, and because she compresses that narrative into the song’s four and a half minutes, it feels like a sudden catastrophe. Amos builds out this sensation with the rambunctious instrumental track: His guitars circle like a school of sharks, pull back into a muted chatter, and swing from a cleanly biting tone to sticky, fizzy distortion that splatters across the song like backwashed Mountain Dew. It’s a Beautiful Place is as enticing as it is confusing, and its oddball melodic charge keeps me coming back.

—LEOR GALIL

FRIDAY3

Matthew Shipp Trio See Pick of the Week at le . 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $25.91. 18+

La Sécurité 8:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $18.65. 21+

Quebec had some of Canada’s most stringent and longest-lasting COVID restrictions, and artpunk collective La Sécurité were formed in 2020 by friends from Montreal’s arts and music scene who needed an outlet for connection and escape during those anxious times. The five-piece crafted an upbeat, quirky sound inspired by the likes of ESG, Le Tigre, and Devo—bands who don’t sugarcoat their blues and frustrations but rather find a way to dance through them. On their debut fulllength, 2023’s Stay Safe!, La Sécurité devise winning combinations of minimalist dance rhythms, catchy vocals (with smart, sometimes biting lyrics in French and English), and spacey atmospheres. “Waiting for Kenny,” written when drummer Kenny Smith failed to show up for practice, uses a playful, pingponging synth line to suggest a clock ticking as the band wonder where their pal could be. “Serpent” addresses drama and backstabbing among friends with ironically airy vocals and stinging guitar stabs over a plucky bass groove. The band’s feminist outlook comes through in their takes on relationships, camaraderie, and empowered living; in the dark, jittery “Hot Topic,” a woman who just wants to dance rips into the entitled men who turn the club into a gauntlet of oppressive unsolicited attention. Last fall, La Sécurité dropped their latest single, “Ketchup” (released on vinyl by Bella Union in January).

MUSIC

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/musicreviews

Weeping,” sets the stage for the thick headbanging riffs of the following track, “God of Black Blood.”

SATURDAY4

—JAMIE LUDWIG

The song riffs on the stifling conventions and awkwardness of small talk, with bright synths and snappy beats that are anything but dull.

Blackbraid Lamp of Murmuur and Dödsrit open. 8 PM, Reggies Rock Club, 2105 S. State, sold out. 17+

In three short years, Blackbraid has made an indelible impression with three intense, densely packed albums of atmospheric black metal. The project began as a solo endeavor by Jon Krieger, who was born in Mexico and adopted by a white American family. Raised in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, he lives on Mohawk land and centers a Mohawk sense of connection to the region; he’s adopted the Mohawk stage name Sgah’gahsowáh (“the Witch Hawk”), and his aesthetic embraces pan-Indigenous identity across the Americas. Blackbraid conjures a forest alive with spirits that aren’t necessarily impressed with humanity.

All that said, Krieger is not of Mohawk heritage— in a 2022 interview with Black Metal Zine, he says so unequivocally and mentions ancestors he calls “Southern natives.” Presumably because of this ambiguity, Blackbraid’s name appears from time to time in discourse around cultural appropriation, which may be a deal-breaker for some fans. Listen to Blackbraid, though, and you can hear how the land where Krieger grew up speaks to him in whispers and screams. His sense of nature’s anger and hunger for justice resonates with the themes in, say, the Native horror novels of Stephen Graham Jones or the 2023 Indigenous dark fiction anthology Never Whistle at Night

In August, Krieger released Blackbraid III, a masterfully constructed record that balances fury and beauty. He weaves together atmospheric sounds in four instrumentals that hold the album together like a network of cool, crisscrossing streams. The second such instrumental, the lovely “The Earth Is

The gorgeous mix of electric and acoustic guitars on the third instrumental, “Traversing the Forest of Eternal Dusk,” evokes a meditative walk along a mountain path, and it segues into the fierce gallop of “Tears of the Dawn,” which bears down on you like an avenging deity come to collect its due.

As Krieger suggests in the green, mossy video for “The Dying Breath of a Sacred Stag,” communing with nature sometimes brings war as well as peace. One of Blackbraid’s greatest strengths is using songwriting and imagery to evoke a strong sense of place—the project often reminds me of the folk-infused metal of West Virginia duo Nechochwen (whose Aaron Carey is descended from Shawnee and Lenape people) and Tennessee’s Twilight Fauna (whose music is suffused with Appalachian sounds and lore). “Relinquish my bones to the silence of sorrows / Burning beneath celestial pine,” Krieger howls in the climax of “And He Became the Burning Stars . . . ,” the biggest song on the new album. “A whisper of flesh in a womb of stars / My spirit unbound in the effulgence of the light of the moon.” And trust me, I believe it.

This is Blackbraid’s first headlining U.S. tour, and the bill is stacked: The openers are Lamp of Murmuur (from Los Angeles by way of Olympia, Washington) and Swedish-Dutch four-piece Dödsrit. —MONICA KENDRICK

Elliott Clementine open. 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 235 N. Ashland, $46, $36 in advance. 17+

History doesn’t seem to know what to make of emo band Elliott, whose biography suggests a group consistently out of place. Elliott formed in 1995 in Louisville—not exactly a hotbed for emo—and signed to Revelation, a label

with roots in hardcore. Luckily, after Revelation moved from Connecticut to California in the early 90s, it developed a taste for the kind of ambitious posthardcore Elliott made. Emo’s second wave was surging nationally, overflowing the bounds of the mostly regional first wave, but Elliott didn’t share its frenzied, punky, pop-oriented sensibility. The proggy riffs and epic, carefully focused structures of the band’s 1998 full-length debut, U.S. Songs , marked out Elliott as rare inheritors of Sunny Day Real Estate’s stratospheric musical ambition.

Elliott’s second album, 2000’s False Cathedrals, set their high-water mark—it established them as a

band that could’ve dominated alt-rock radio. On that LP, Chris Higdon’s clean, sweet vocals glide across canyon-size arrangements full of Romancandle guitar riffs, rugged pickup-truck drumming, and five-star-hotel piano twinkling. False Cathedrals positioned them as an even rarer anomaly among emo bands, floating between the end of the second wave and the start of the third, much like Jimmy Eat World or the Appleseed Cast. Elliott came from the noisy 90s, but their restrained and meticulous sound foreshadowed the squeaky-clean, guileless presentation of Dashboard Confessional and the rest of the third wave, which became a polished, poppy commercial juggernaut. Elliott didn’t achieve the early-2000s crossover success of Jimmy Eat World, and they broke up in 2003, a er their third album, Song in the Air—meaning they couldn’t build on their emergent cult status like the Appleseed Cast, who’ve been consistently active since 1996. Elliott got back together in 2022 to play Alabama’s Furnace Fest, and this reunion tour is their first since the string of dates they booked around that show. Maybe it will help clarify the band’s position in history. Revelation has reissued the band’s three studio albums this year, so younger emo completists will at least be able to get a better sense of what made Elliott unique.

—LEOR GALIL v

SAVAGE LOVE

SEX AND RELATIONSHIPS

Quickies

The nitty-gritty of sex prep and toys

By DAN SAVAGE

Q: My husband and I are about to open our marriage. He wants to have sex with men. This will probably only happen four times a year at most. Should he get on PrEP? Should he take doxy a er each encounter? I asked him to wear a condom, and he agreed, although I know that wouldn’t be his preference. What’s the best way for him to protect himself and me as we move into this next chapter?

a: For maximum protection, your husband should get on PrEP (a daily pill that prevents HIV infection) and have doxy PEP on hand (two pills taken after a sexual encounter that decreases the risk of contracting syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia) and insist on using condoms. If your husband is only having sex with men four times a year—and he’s scheduling those sex dates in advance— he could opt for PrEP on demand: taking two pills (Truvada or Descovy) 24 hours before he has sex with a man, another pill the day after, and one last pill two days after. But if your husband has poor impulse control—if he’s likely to jump on a dick if the opportunity presents itself—then he should be on daily PrEP.

Q: AFAB here. I’ve worn out two plug-in Hitachi Magic Wands in the last three years. (RIP. LOL.) Is there a waterproof plug-in vibrator out there that costs less?

a: “Cheaper options exist,” said my go-to sex toy expert Erika Moen, “but your AFAB reader will burn through

those cheaper options even faster because when it comes to sex toys, you really do get what you pay for: Cheaper toys are of cheaper quality and they wear out much faster. Stick with Magic Wands, which are built to last (mine is 15 years old!) and come with a warranty!” (Erika Moen runs the acclaimed sex education website Oh Joy Sex Toy.)

Q: How tight does a silicone cock ring need to be in order to help with ED?

a: To help with ED—to help a guy stay hard—a cock ring needs to be snug enough to restrict the flow of blood out of the penis but not so tight as to completely prevent the flow of blood out of (and into) the penis. Silicone rings are safe to experiment with because, unlike steel rings, you can easily remove one that turns out to be too tight. (Removing a steel cock ring that turned out to be too tight might require a trip to the ER.) So, get a selection of silicone cock rings in different sizes and find the one that feels comfortable and gets the job done.

Q: Is there such a thing as too much lube?

a: I used to think there was no such thing as too much maple syrup—I love syrupsoaked waffles until I read about the Great Molasses Flood of 1919: a storage tank in Boston filled with molasses burst, sending more than two million gallons of molasses pouring through the streets of the city. The

wave of molasses was moving faster than people could run (35 miles per hour!) and 21 people drowned and another 150 were injured. So, while sex educators will sometimes say, “There’s no such thing as too much lube,” to correct for the common problem of people using too little, the Great Molasses Flood suggests that there could be such a thing as too much lube. (My editor tells me that maple syrup and molasses aren’t the same thing, which I knew but was pretending not to know for the sake of argument.)

Q: How does one even begin having anal sex again a er recovering from an anal fissure?

a: One focuses on anal pleasure, not anal penetration. One lays a vibrator across one’s asshole and one has a few dozen solo orgasms. Then one progresses to small plugs, which are used to pleasure the person being penetrated. One slowly works one’s way back to dick, while listening to one’s body the whole time. At first one treats the dick like another plug—one gets it in, one gets off, one gets it out. It’s about pleasuring the penetrated, not pleasing the penetrator. If it hurts, one stops. If the pain is persistent, one sees a sex-positive gay doctor who specializes in treating anal health issues.

Read more, ask your burning questions, download podcasts, read full column archives, and more at the URL savage.love. m mailbox@savage.love

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JOBS

Associate Consultant, Structural Engineer (Chicago, IL), WSP USA Buildings Inc.: Wth minml sprvsn, asst wth collctng, complng, & anlyzng data frm the physcal wrk site, srvys, bluprnts, GIS data, subsrfce utlty info, maps, geotechncal data, & othr matrces for prjct devlpmnt, dsgn, & constrctn. Stnd corp benfts. Salary $90,875.00. EOE. Reqs: Mas (or frgn equiv) in Struct. Engrng, Cvl Engrng, or rltd. To apply, email jobs@ wsp.com, Ref: 8046.

Are you passionate about making a positive impact in the life of my Mother?

I am seeking a dedicated & compassionate caregiver to take care & provide exceptional care for my mother. As a caregiver, you will play a crucial role in supporting my mother who is Elderly. Schedule is 5 days a week & 5 hours per day. Salary is $30/hr. Apply by contacting me via email at George (gwssheets@ gmail.com) for more details.

Enova Financial Holdings, LLC seeks a Software Development Engineer in Test Tech Lead I in Chicago, IL to define & refine test strategies. Salary $153,724.41$153,724.41. Please apply https://www. jobpostingtoday. com/ Ref # 49694.

Health Information Manager. Elevance Health, Inc. Chicago, IL. Translate data trends into strategic recs for program dev & action plans. BS: Data Analytics, Stats, CS, Comp Engg, or rel. 5 yrs exp. Other exp reqd. Pay: $162,677 - $163,677/ yr. Apply: https://careers. elevancehealth.com/ Job Ref: JR165602

La Storia LLC seeks Farm to Table Restaurant Manager (Chicago, IL) to organize, run & supervise daily shifts & create partnerships w/ local farmers/farms. Must have bach. deg. in agriculture, agricultural engineering, food science, culinary arts (concen. in agriculture & farm to table practices), rltd. or equiv. Must be able to move & lift up to 10 lbs., frequently move &/or lift up to 25 lbs., & occasionally move &/or lift up to 50 lbs. Must have 3 yrs. of exper. working in a leadership position, including 1 yr. of exper. working in organic farming, vegetable growing, or greenhouse growing. Travel to the partner farm in Rolling

Prairie, Indiana at least once/wk. Salary offered is $86,403 - 90,000. Benefits include medical insurance, PTO, & 401k plan. To apply send CV to opportunities@latsko. com (code F-T1154).

Lead IT Finance Business Analyst (Chicago, IL/ Telecommute Opportunity) Implement & enhance SAP technology solutions that directly support Kellanova’s Finance, HR, & Corporate Functions Strategy. Min Master’s in Business Administration, Project Management or related field & 3 yrs exp as Lead IT Finance Business Analyst, SAP Consultant or related required. May live anywhere in US & telecommute from home. Salary: $131,000 to $145,000. Benefits: https:// www.kellanovacareers. com/en/working-here/ benefits.html. Apply to Kellogg Business Services Company LLC at work@ kellanova.com w/ “Lead IT Finance Business Analyst” in subject.

Nest Builders, Inc dba dbHMS, Chicago, IL seeks Bldg Performance Analyst to support the High Performance and Design Studios in delivering green building technologies and strategies for projects w/ focus on analysis of energy, day lighting and/ or air flow modeling. Salary no less than 74,838. Requires Bachelors Degree in Architecture Engineering or related. Mail resume to Katherine Newman, 306 W Erie St, Ste 600, Chicago, IL 60654. #LI-DNI

Software Development Engineers, Deer Park, IL, Salary $110,000$135,000/year, Standard company benefits: Using Modak Nabu, capture, analyze, transform, and orchestrate data from a variety of sources, as well as created software products and an underlying system using Modak Fireshots. Develop APIs for integrating with external systems and consuming data from various sources -using Modak Fireshots. Some job duties can be performed from home. Send res to: Modak Analytics Limited at HR@ modak.com or meenu. walia@modak.com.

Exelon Business Services Company LLC seeks Senior Architect in Oakbrook Terrace, IL to leverage automation platforms such as Azure DevOps, GitHub, OUTA, Selenium, & Ruby to dsgn effective IT solutions for test data mgmt.; define robust strategies to ensure high-qual. test data avail. & acc.; provide technical dir. on standard solutions for the enterprise; propose solutions to enhance overall customer

& employee exp.; dr. adoption of test data automation frameworks; pioneer new approaches for automation and perf. testing; participate in tech. pilots to eval. emerging tools & methodologies; weigh technical advantages & assess the mrkt avail. of products & servs.; & contribute to dvlpmnt of IT standards for tech. solutions. Reqs U.S. or foreign equiv. bach.’s deg. in Comp. Sci., Electronics Engr., or rel. field, + 5 yrs exp. wrking w/ cloud techs., middleware & integration techs, & web techs. Telecomm. 2 days/ wk is perm. Salary range from $148,803 to $156,000. Reply by email w/ resume to jobposting@ exeloncorp.com.

PUBLIC NOTICE

Go Store It Chicago Northside StorageLakeview, 2946 N Western Ave, Chicago, IL 60618 hereby gives NOTICE OF PUBLIC SALE of the storage space(s) listed below, containing household and other goods will be sold for cash on Oct 20,2025 2:00pm with the contents being sold to the highest bidder. Owner reserves the right to bid. The sale is being held to satisfy a landlord’s lien, in accordance with Illinois Compiled Statutes Chapter 770 ILCS 95/, and will be held online at www. storagetreasures.com C53 Holly Barnard E24 Arsenia Hart I08 Alicia Rodriguez L05 Renato Medina Q22 Kabari Hendrick Q32 Renato Medina T011 James Rossini T165 Yesi Barzaga Z04 Kyle Daniels Z20 Jessie Rosas Chicago Northside Storage

SERVICES

CHESTNUT ORGANIZING AND CLEANING SERVICES: especially for people who need an organizing service because of depression, elderly, physical or mental challenges or other causes for your home’s clutter, disorganization, dysfunction, etc. We can organize for the downsizing of your current possessions to more easily move into a smaller home. With your help, we can help to organize your move. We can organize and clean for the deceasedinlieuofhaving the bereaved needing to do the preparation to sell or rent the deceased’s home. We are absolutely not judgmental; we’ve seen and done “worse” than your job assignment. With your help, can weplease help you? Chestnut Cleaning Service: 312-332-5575. www.ChestnutCleaning. com www. ChestnutCleaning.com

DESTROYER

DAN’S BOOGIE TOUR

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BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB

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SWERVEDRIVER

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BURY THE KEY TOUR +STARCLEANER REUNION ×

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