south side weekly
The South Side Weekly is a nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. Started as a student paper at the University of Chicago, the South Side Weekly is now an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side, and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists.
Editor-in-Chief Bea Malsky
Managing Editor Hannah Nyhart
Deputy Editors John Gamino, Meaghan Murphy
Politics Editors Osita Nwanevu, Rachel Schastok
Music Editor Jake Bittle
Stage & Screen Olivia Stovicek
Editor
Visual Arts Editors Lauren Gurley, Robert Sorrell
Editor-at-Large Bess Cohen
Contributing Editors Maha Ahmed, Lucia Ahrensdorf, Christian Belanger, Mari Cohen, Emma Collins
Social Media Editor Emily Lipstein
Web Editor Sarah Claypoole
Photo Editor Luke White
Illustration Editor Ellie Mejia
Layout Editors Adam Thorp, Baci Weiler
Senior Writers Jack Nuelle, Stephen Urchick
Staff Writers Olivia Adams, Christian Belanger, Austin Brown, Amelia Dmowska, Mark Hassenfratz, Maira Khwaja, Emily Lipstein, Jamison Pfeifer, Kari Wei, Arman Sayani
Staff Photographers Camden Bauchner, Juliet Eldred, Kiran Misra, Staff Illustrators Jean Cochrane, Lexi Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow, Amber Sollenberger, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu
Editorial Intern Clyde Schwab
Webmaster Shuwen Qian
Business Manager Harry Backlund
The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring, with breaks during April and December. Over the summer we publish monthly.
Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to:
South Side Weekly
1212 E. 59th Street Ida Noyes Hall #030 Chicago, IL 60637
For advertising inquiries, contact: (773)234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly Read our stories online at southsideweekly.com
IN CHICAGO
A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes and wandering eyes of the editors
The
Reader Refuses to
Admit
That Studs Terkel’s Working Is the Greatest Chicago Book Ever (Yet)
Early this winter, the Reader announced an NCAA-style tournament to declare the Greatest Chicago Book Ever (it’s Working). They scoured the city’s literary history to find fifteen books that were not Working and put them in a bracket with Working, in a futile exercise to challenge Studs Terkel’s wellearned, ear-to-the-ground supremacy. With the first round clear, Working won out against Chris Ware’s Building Stories (good so far), while Richard Wright’s Native Son lost to Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. Elsewhere on the bracket, Veronica Roth’s Divergent languished and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle surpassed Jane Addams’s Twenty Years at Hull-House for being slightly more readable and slightly less dense. But, as the judges discussed last Saturday at the Seminary Co-op, it’s a futile question. How can we really judge the best Chicago book ever? Are we looking for the greatest literary work about Chicago? Or the book that most embodies the city? What’s up with this dominant Big Shoulders narrative? Where are the women? Reader editors and Chicago lit-folk politely compared the strengths of each book and circled around those questions, all while stubbornly refusing to declare Working the best. Writer, producer, and all-around Chicago music guy Jake Austen gave the book a well-thought-out and personal defense, second only in passion to Bill Savage’s argument for City on the Make, which was emailed in and read aloud. Austen recalled—as Chicagoans over a certain age are wont to do—a chance encounter with Terkel himself: a high school Austen and his girlfriend (now wife) gate-crashed an upscale Michigan Avenue reception and ended up in the next day’s society pages after spotting Studs eating a Chicago-style hot dog. In the Sem Co-op, the Reader editors reminded spectators to vote on the contest results online. Filtering out, the Weekly staff did not chant “Working,” but we thought about it. Answer key below.
IN THIS ISSUE
Garcia knows firsthand that inequality and its associated challenges are more entrenched than an anti-downtown narrative conveys. garcia for mayor osita nwanevu...4
five jerks trying to make you laugh ryn seidewitz...7
“Oh God—I’m going to tell you this story.”
“Poledna is the first artist to physically alter the gallery, an act that asks viewers to consider both iconoclasm and the nature of material property.” off the grid sammie spector...8
a walk in the park emily lipstein...9
“Watching his feet tremble, I knew he was going to fall off of the wall.”
musician and maestra hafsa razi...10
“The children that I see every day, I call them my musical sons and my musical daughters.”
Project 120 partnered with the Chicago Park District to present plans for new plantings, facilities, and even a landscape by Yoko Ono—yes, that Yoko Ono. from olmsted to ono hannah o’grady...13
The goat sandwich is so full of flavor, it doesn’t quite feel like it came out of the kitchen of the unassuming Andorka.
one man, one sandwich maha ahmed and jake bittle...11
Kindra saw untapped potential in the barge industry, noticing that “really weird people” wanted barges for “really weird things.” the city’s hidden backbone maha ahmed...12
“Exodus” accomplishes its best work at the points where codes switch, rules change—where the going gets unexpectedly rough.
shifting spaces stephen urchick...10
coltrane to close the gap emeline posner...16
“Math, biology, and writing: they’re all the more palatable when music is involved.”
Cover art by Javier Suarez.