>>>The Black and Brown Punk Show Collective builds sound solidarity for queer, trans, and intersex punks of color
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 Osita Nwanevu
Executive Editor Bess Cohen
Managing Editors Jake Bittle, Olivia Stovicek
Politics Editors Christian Belanger, Rachel Schastok
Education Editor Mari Cohen
Music Editor Maha Ahmed
Stage & Screen Lucia Ahrensdorf
Editor Visual Arts Editors Lauren Gurley, Robert Sorrell
Editors-at-Large John Gamino, Bea Malsky, Meaghan Murphy, Hannah Nyhart
Contributing Editors Julia Aizuss, Austin Brown, Sarah Claypoole, Emeline Posner, Hafsa Razi
Social Media Editor Emily Lipstein
Web Editor Andrew Koski
Visuals Editor Ellie Mejia
Layout Editors Adam Thorp, Baci Weiler
Senior Writers: Patrick Leow, Jack Nuelle, Stephen Urchick
Staff Writers: Olivia Adams, Max Bloom, Amelia Dmowska, Mark Hassenfratz, Maira Khwaja, Jeanne Lieberman, Zoe Makoul, Olivia Myszkowski, Jamison Pfeifer, Kari Wei
Staff Photographers: Camden Bauchner, Juliet Eldred, Kiran Misra, Siddhesh Mukerji, Luke White
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:
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Ida Noyes Hall #030 Chicago, IL 60637
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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
Look Both Ways
Chicagoans experienced a delay in their commutes Monday morning as city clean-up crews removed the canine victim of a hit-and-run from the center lane of southbound Lake Shore Drive. The accident happened at 6:40am near North Avenue, although the Department of Streets and Sanitation only received calls about the casualty at 9am. As previously reported by the Weekly, the city has a large coyote population, and every Chicagoan is possibly neighbors with a coyote. Researchers from Ohio State University have been following one animal, Coyote 441, for the past five years, attesting to the coyote’s ability to survive in the big city. The animals have adapted to urban life and have even learned how to look both ways when crossing the street… or, at least, most have. Natural selection strikes again.
No Justice for Boyd
In 2012, off-duty CPD officer Dante Servin approached Rekia Boyd and her two friends, unarmed, for being too rowdy. Servin fired rounds, killing Boyd and injuring another. But last week, all charges against Servin—involuntary manslaughter, reckless discharge of a firearm, and reckless conduct—were dismissed before the defense had the chance to begin its case. Judge Dennis Porter justified his decision to grant Servin’s lawyers’ mid-trial request to drop charges with the “absence of evidence of reckless conduct,” and Servin stands by his decision to act in what he called self-defense. Boyd’s family and loved ones, as well as unaffiliated attorneys and law professors, continue to allege that justice is far from having been served.
The Taxes Were Too Damn…High
Last year, according to the Chicago Reader, taxpayers were charged over $44 million for misdemeanor cannabis possession cases in Cook County. State attorney Anita Alvarez has recently changed her stance on crimes regarding the possession of small amounts of marijuana and hard drugs. Individuals involved in violent crime in addition to possession will be pressed with charges; repeat offenders will be given the choice to undergo counseling instead of going to court. The timing of this change of heart is interesting: it comes just as Alvarez’s critics are beginning to talk about running against her in 2016.
Bye Bye Byrdie?
In July 2013, an article in Catalyst Chicago raised concerns about a $20.5 million no-bid contract approved by CPS with SUPES Academy for principal-training services. The contract raised eyebrows because it was the largest no-bid contract made in three years, and CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett had worked at SUPES prior to her tenure at CPS. Two years later, the rest of the world is catching up. Byrd-Bennett took a leave of absence on Friday amid federal investigations into the contract, though she has not been accused of any official wrongdoing. Jesse Ruiz is the new interim CEO, making him the fifth to hold the position since 2010. With parents still wondering why so much of CPS’s money was spent on this contract and Governor Rauner taking the opportunity to air his grievances about CPS, it’s unlikely that CPS will emerge from this investigation totally unscathed.
IN THIS ISSUE
“EvErYOnE KnOWS WHaT I’m TaLKIng abOUT, rIgHT?”
“Frunchroom” is what “front room” sounds like through a thick Chicago accent, Smith explained.
julia aizuss…4
bLUESY, bUT bITTErSWEET
[The new guys] can’t be as good as they were, because those guys were the originators.
michal kranz…6
TEacHabLE mOmEnTS
“I then realized I had no idea who this child was.”
mark hassenfratz…8
fIvE nEW aLDErmEn frOm THE SOUTH SIDE
Curtis’s supporters wore buttons emblazoned with “Lane Closed April 7.” adam thorp, adia robinson…10
qTIpOc TO THE frOnT
“We’re trying to redefine punk as being about survivalism and DIY culture, which are imperative if you’re a marginalized person in this country.” bea malsky…12
“Stuff that you’d want to eat late at night or when you’re super hungry.” will dart…15
rEvOLUTIOnarY TImE
Seizing Freedom is an intervention into the most prevalent contemporary historical narrative regarding the Civil War.
sarah claypoole…16 a cOnTEmpOrarY HarmOnY
Although the members of the Beverly Morgan Park Community Choir were all dressed in black, the atmosphere was anything but solemn.
amelia dmowska…17
Cover design by Jean Cochrane and Ellie Mejia, with photos courtesy of the Black and Brown Punk Show Collective and GlitterGuts/Eric Strom.
pacKED UnpacKS
"Everyone knows what I'm talking about, right?"
New reading series
The Frunchroom comes to the far South Side
BY JULIA AIZUSS
Scott Smith was late putting his daughter to bed Wednesday night, but the Morgan Park resident and editorial director of video news startup TouchVision TV had an excuse for his neglect of paternal duties. The debut of the reading series he’s spent the past few months organizing was the following night. What began as an idea he idly “tossed around” a year ago with friend, writer and artist Dmitry Samarov, was about to become The Frunchroom, a quarterly reading series in Beverly and Morgan Park.
“Frunchroom” is what “front room” sounds like through a thick Chicago accent, says Smith. With it comes, he said, “the whole idea of a place where you tell stories and hear people share their remembrances, or talk about things that are important to them, or laugh, or tell jokes.”
The name hit a sweet spot—an evocation so specific that South Siders would recognize it immediately, while other Chicagoans, Smith hoped, would be intrigued.
This quest for balance between local and universal may be what most differentiates The Frunchroom from the rest of the South Side’s live lit scene. Story Club Chicago draws a crowd to Bridgeport monthly, while Do Not Submit holds open mics in Hyde Park, Woodlawn, Englewood, and Pilsen. Representation on the far South Side has been missing, so keeping the series in Beverly was always part of the plan.
“I wanted to do something that felt really local to the neighborhood,” he said. He organized The Frunchroom with the Beverly Area Arts Alliance, a group started last year to foster arts in the Beverly and Morgan Park community. Smith has lived in Beverly for five years, but the art scene’s never been so bustling—he and the Alliance directors are fond of calling it an “art uprising.”
Yet Smith’s goals for The Frunchroom also include diversity, not just in the types of stories told and who’s telling them, but
also in the neighborhoods the audience hails from. The Frunchroom is a reading series by and about the South Side, but also seeks to attract an audience from other parts of Chicago. Smith wants, he said, “to show people all the different parts of the South Side, what it really is beyond what
they may have heard in headlines or on television news. I think the idea that the South Side is of one particular type or one particular spirit is just silly.”
“I think we have an opportunity to have this be a bit of a destination reading series,” Smith added. Residents of the
