December 4, 2013

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLYDECEMBER 4, 2013 ¬ STUDENT LED, NEIGHBORHOOD READ ¬ SINCE 2003 ¬ SOUTHSIDEWEEKLY.COM ¬ FREE

Off the Table

Federal cuts

take a bite out of food stamps

MORE INSIDE&PARK PATROLS, CITY BUDGET, REDMOON PAGEANT, AFTER REAL TRUTH, FLECKS COFFEE

2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 4, 2013

IN CHICAGOA 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 South Side Weekly is a newsprint magazine produced by students at the Univer-sity of Chicago, for and about the South Side. The Weekly is distributed across the South Side each Wednesday of the academic year.

In fall 2013, the Weekly reformed itself as an independent, student-directed organization. Previously, the paper was known as the Chicago Weekly.

Editor-in-Chief Harrison SmithManaging Editor Bea Malsky

Senior Editors John Gamino, Spencer McavoyPolitics Editor Osita NwanevuStage & Screen Hannah NyhartEditorMusic and Zach Goldhammer Video EditorVisual Arts Editor Katryce LassleAssociate Online Sharon Luryeand Contributing Editor Contributing Editors Ari Feldman, Josh Kovensky, Meaghan MurphyPhoto Editor Lydia GorhamLayout Editor Olivia Dorow HovlandOnline Editor Gabi Bernard

Senior Writer Stephen UrchickStaff Writers Dove Barbanel, Jake Bittle, Bess Cohen, Emma Collins, Lauren Gurley, Emily Holland, Jason Huang, Jack Nuelle, Rob SnyderStaff Photographer Camden BauchnerStaff Illustrators Hanna Petroski, Isabel Ochoa Gold

Business Manager Harry Backlund

5706 S. University Ave.Reynolds Club 018Chicago, IL 60637

SouthSideWeekly.com [email protected]@[email protected]@southsideweekly.com

For advertising inquiries, contact:(773)[email protected]

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY

DECEMBER 4, 2013 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

Push ‘Em UpIn a pair of oddly symmetric heists, an unnamed couple has stolen sev-enty-two bras from a South Barrington Victoria’s Secret. The thieves lifted thirty-six bras on November 9, and returned this past week-end to take another $1,771 worth. We assume this is because, having skipped an expert fitting, they discovered they’d made off with the wrong size. Other theories include the desire—fueled by holiday spir-it—to outfit seventy-two Angels. The recent bust is just the latest in a long line: all told, the store has suffered $6,390 in stolen merchandise this fall at the hands of various thieves. Sure, they’re criminals, but at the end of the day, they’re just trying to support themselves.

Ex-Offenders Offend Union PrezIn March, Mayor Emanuel announced plan to quadruple the CTA’s ex-offenders employment program, promising to give job opportu-nities to more than 200 former convicts. By the end of December, however, there will be exactly zero CTA jobs for ex-offenders, as the CTA has reneged on its extension of the program. CTA spokesman Steve Mayberry and Robert Kelly, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308, seem to be engaged in a game of finger-pointing over who’s to blame for the program’s demise. For now, picketers seem to have chosen Kelly as their target strawman, lining up in front of ATU offices to protest the loss of the already slim job opportunities for former convicts. In Kelly’s words, though, “they’re barking up the wrong tree.”

It’s Not Nice on IceStarting this year, Chicagoans will have to pay to ice skate at the Chi-cago Park District’s outdoor ice rinks, four of which are on the South Side. The supposedly “nominal” increase forces adults to pay $3 to skate where they once had to pay $0. This further proves the cold-hearted-ness of the folks who’re designing this year’s budget, where the skating price hike was induced. Thankfully, the city retained some trace of its humanity: the children and students were spared, and can still skate for free. Adults can also still skate for free at the McCormick Tribune Ice Rink in Millennium Park. For now, that is.

Marriage in the CityAs with any battle for social equity, the fight for gay marriage in Illi-nois did not end with the state legislation’s favorable 61-54 vote in No-vember. Christine Irvine, a student at Loyola University, has started a petition to ask the school’s administration to allow gay marriages on campus. She is planning her own wedding, and wants her school to be the backdrop for the big day. Loyola, a Jesuit university, has a policy against same-sex marriage ceremonies happening on campus, though this stance is of questionable legality due to the new law. Irvine hopes to push the school to live up to its own goals of embracing equality for all, and probably to avoid further wedding-related headaches. ¬

IN THIS ISSUEafTEr rEaL TrUTH

“Everybody who comes into my life, I make them a robot and put them into a story line.”lauren gurley........4

parK paTrOL

“The September shooting at Cornell Square Park brought violence in parks to the forefront of the city’s crime prevention efforts.”katherine sacco....6

bUDgET paSSES

“We highlight the major changes and most interest-ing numbers from the 130-page budget document.”jake bittle..............7

fOOD STampS cUTS

“Just give me my forty acres and a mule, and leave me alone.”christian belanger.....8

TrUman capOTE

“Welcome to Depression-era rural America, where adolescent brutality looms larger than name-calling.”stephen urchick..10

Cover photo by Luke White.

rEDmOOn

“You crack the code in the first ten minutes. You crack the show.”stephen urchick..11

mca cHIcagO SHOW

“Morris said she was, in fact, aware of Chicago’s many neighborhoods, but wasn’t at all interested in filming them.”paige pendarvis....12

fLEcK’S cOffEE

“One of our missions is to enrich the community, not to take out withdrawals and make no deposits.” dove barbanel.....14

CORRECTIONS

An October 30 cover story on the Curtis Black Quartet incorrectly identified the childhood conducting experience of drummer Doug Mitchell. Mitchell was invited to study under CSO percussionist Gordon Peters; he was not, as a previous correction stated, invited to study under the conductor of the Chicago Youth Symphony.

Last week’s cover story on the Hyde Park graffiti wall misstated the history of the “McMobil” site that the graffiti wall abuts. A McDonald’s and Mobil gas station occupied the site’s lots together until McDonald’s moved to 52nd Street in 2004.

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 4, 2013

F o r Chicago artist Joshua Robinson, After Real Truth—his clothing, toy, and comic book company—is a more

than a job. It’s a futuristic spiritual world and a way of life. A Chatham native, Robinson, who also goes by the alias “J. Bot,” started After Real Truth as a hobby in 2005 after graduat-ing from Westwood College with a degree in computer animation. It has since exploded into what Robinson describes as a community-wide “movement” toward spiritual enlightenment.

With his wife’s help, the loquacious twenty-seven-year-old makes his designs

on the computer, often placing historical fig-ures and art into a digital, futuristic format, then painting these designs on baseball hats, hoodies, T-shirts, and gym shoes or sculpting them out of clay. Inspired by a diverse medley of African and religious art and iconography, Robinson uses everything from Egyptian pyr-amids and the Buddha to Da Vinci’s “Vitruvi-an Man” and the Star of David in his designs. As a part of this “ life project,” Robinson has also created a cartoon world where his friends, family, and other “ followers” are given robot identities and placed into a narrative about

finding spiritual truth. Until recently, After Real Truth was

based out of a store in Auburn Gresham. Today Robinson works out of The House of Culture, the Midwest regional headquarters for the Universal Zulu Nation in Chatham. Taking a break between projects, Robinson talked to the Weekly about the origin of After Real Truth, the absence of education about African heritage in South Side schools, and the trials of running a clothing line in Chicago.

How did After Real Truth start?

It started off as a life project. I came into it when I was about nineteen and my daugh-ter was just born. That’s when I started to look into who I was. I was thinking about a lot of things, like what it was I actual-ly want to do in life and whether or not I wanted to have a nine-to-five job or actual-ly pursue a career in my own arts.

Where did the name After Real Truth come from? What does it mean?

An interview with Joshua Robinson of After Real Truth

In His ImageBY LAUREN GURLEY

siddhesh mukerji

DECEMBER 4, 2013 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

PORTRAITS

DECEMBER 4, 2013 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

The whole thing to me is that in life you have a truth, which is whatever your pas-sion is. My passion is art. I feel like my truth in life is art. Somebody else might feel like their truth in life is writing. Ev-erybody in life is ultimately after their own real truth. And when you actually break After Real Truth down, it’s A-R-T, art.

What role does African and religious his-tory play in your work?

I do all different cultures, but I take a lot from the history of my own people, because that’s where I feel like our power is and where our spirituality lies, in our history. I try to incorporate a lot of stuff especially when it comes to Ethiopia, you know, be-cause there’s a lot of culture that’s missed out on because we just can’t see our own art.

I went to school with a lot of Hispanic kids and I was always wondering why the Hispanic kids were drawing Aztec stuff. They know where their heritage lies. And it’s unfortunate that I don’t see a lot of Af-rican-American kids doing their own art-work from Africa, because there’s a lot of stuff.

But you aren’t restricted to African his-tory, right?

Oh no. I do all sorts of stuff. All different cultures. And everybody who comes into my life, I make them a robot and put them into a story line, and the storyline is pretty much showing how people around me in-fluence me to do better, you know? There’s actually a comic book I have been working on with robots.

Where does your interest in comics and robots come from?

Aw man, I’ve been interested in comic books since I was a little kid and I’ve always loved robots. And as I get really deep into it, I start to see more of a representation in the robots as to where we are now with the technology and how I feel like a lot of peo-ple actually are being controlled, like peo-ple don’t even really understand that their own lives are more like robots. Technolo-gy controls their life. “The Matrix” really

helped me too. That’s pretty crazy.

Where do you find the people who be-come characters in your comic book?

I meet these people from just walking around on the street and talking to them. They talk to me on the bus and they get to know me because I give out my number to a lot of people. I give out my card. At the House of Culture, a lot of people walk in. I am always influenced because there are a lot of spiritual and powerful people walk-ing around. And a lot of these people don’t even know that they’re powerful.

Who is “J. Bot”?

J. Bot is one of the alter egos that I have for myself. J. Bot is the representation of my higher consciousness, my soul, and his twin brother is called El. And he’s a repre-sentation of God. We are all actually like God in a physical form, you know. Like the Bible says, we are all created in his image.

So are you religious?

I’m more of a spiritual person, but I look at a little bit of everything. I make my own judgements.

What are the challenges of being a busi-ness owner on the South Side?

I try not to really look at the hard times, but aw man, they are hard. People always want something free from me for their friends. They’re like “Hey, can I get a free shirt?” and it’s like, “Support me. Support me.”

What is your long-term vision for After Real Truth?

I hope that someday soon I can get a char-ity walk going. I hope to have a big old event where people just come and give some time even if they don’t got no money. Time is more important than money. And hopefully, I’ll be able to start my own ap-prenticeship program for kids all over the place. These kids out here need to learn this stuff. There are a lot of people struggling for jobs. I feel like there are kids out there who would like to be taught if they had the opportunity. ¬

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 4, 2013 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 4, 2013

Reclaiming the ParksNew CPD initiatives attempt to combine policing with a claim to communityBY KATHERINE SACCO

As the clock counts down to the end of the first quarter, a three-point shot by a player in red bounces off

the rim and the blue team gains possession. But they do not have enough time to car-ry the ball back down the court, and the buzzer sounds just as their Hail Mary from half-court falls short. The players hustle back to their respective benches, with the blue team up by four.

On this mild Friday night in Novem-ber, Jackson Park’s gymnasium is filled with the clamor of basketball games, part of a weekly Chicago Parks Department league. In the bleachers, kids waiting to play in the next game cheer on and taunt their friends. Isaiah Johnson is waiting to play point guard for his team. He comes here every week, even though he does not live nearby. He does not mince words in explaining what he likes about the program. “It’s free tournaments,” he says.

Just the night before, there was a shooting at a gas station a few blocks away. But when asked whether he ever worries about violence in the park, Isaiah shakes his head. He feels safe here, in the Jackson Park field house., surrounded by his teammates and friends.

On other evenings, parks across the city can be-come sites of crime and vio-lence. In an effort to reduce such crime and boost enroll-ment in Parks Department pro-gramming, the Chicago Police Department rolled out a new po-licing initiative this past November dubbed “Play Safe, Stay Safe.”

Under the “Play Safe, Stay Safe” strategy, twenty parks have received extra nighttime police patrols. Pairs of officers patrol in four-hour shifts during the gap between the departure of park staff and closing time. Officers are paid overtime, with funds from the Chicago Parks Dis-trict budget.

The police department bills the initia-tive as an expansion of both existing po-

lice patrols in parks and their Operation Impact strategy. Since February, Opera-tion Impact has put foot patrols of officers working overtime on the streets of twen-ty high-crime areas. According to CPD, murders have decreased by forty-four percent and shootings have decreased by forty-five per-cent in the t a rge t

areas since the strategy was implemented.

But the September shooting of thir-teen people at Cornell Square Park in Back of the Yards has brought violence in the South Side’s parks to the forefront of the city’s crime prevention efforts.

Though the police department has not announced which parks are receiving extra patrols, the list almost certainly includes parks on the South Side. “We haven’t dis-closed the parks, because we don’t want to

advertise where the

additional of-ficers will be,” CPD spokes-

man Adam Collins wrote in an email, just before the program began. “The parks were selected based on crime trends, and also based on needs as identified by the Parks District.”

Jackson Park’s sprawling 542.89 lake-front acres are currently patrolled sev-

en days a week by off-duty police officers working as Park District security, as well as on-duty CPD officers for whom the park is part of their patrol area. The officers sign-in and make rounds by car. “We have pretty good coverage,” said park supervisor Bobbie Beckam. “During the week some-body might call off and I might miss one or two nights, but they’re always here on the

weekends.”There have been no incidents

of crime or violence during Beck-am’s one-month tenure as park

supervisor. “So far, so good,” he hedged.

Another CPD initiative, Operation: Wake Up!, aims to encourage neighbors to re-claim their parks from gang violence through the orga-nization of evening com-munity events, like cook-outs. Wake Up! events have been held successfully at Cornell Square Park and at Merrill Playground Park in South Deering, where three teenagers were shot in early

October. Beckam thinks both the

parks department’s Friday and Saturday night teen basketball

league, Windy City Hoops, and the additional police presence in

Jackson Park, are helpful and com-plementary deterrents to crime. “I

believe if you give youth an outlet, it’ll keep them from the mischief of the streets,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing and it’s working.”

Inside the Jackson Park gymnasium, a small crowd makes a claim to commu-nity, with their attention fixed on the bas-ketball court. The boys who are playing are in wildly different stages of growth; one teen towers a foot about all the rest, a clear shooting advantage. The court, though dilapidated and lined by cheap blue maps, echoes with animated calls from the benches and bleachers. “Look alive!” “Get back!” “Keep your hands up!” “For real!” ¬

isabel ochoa gold

DECEMBER 4, 2013 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7DECEMBER 4, 2013 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

POLITICS

Chicago City Budget: Key Numbers

$790 million: Projected 2014 budget defi-cit when Rahm took office

45,000: Number of CPS children who will now have access to eyewear and eye exams. The funds for this initiative are expected to come from the increased tax on cigarettes. The increase in revenue generated by “speed enforcement devices” in school zones will be allocated to CPS for summer and af-ter-school programs, among others

$48 million: Amount allocated for con-struction of extended downtown Riverwalk from State to Lake Streets. The proposed ex-pansion of the current Riverwalk would include floating gardens, fishing piers, restaurants, and kayak rental stations for kayaking on the Chicago River. Mayor Emanuel announced plans for this expansion of the Riverwalk in October 2012

$76 million: Projected 2014 increase in revenue from “fines, forfeitures, and pen-alties,” due to parking fine hike

$24 million: Amount saved by phasing out healthcare benefits for some retirees

300: Number of businesses that will be aided by Chicago’s microlending initia-tive by 2016

$1,053,747,571: Amount of funding allocated to the Chicago Police Depart-ment’s Bureau of Patrol. The police de-partment, with a total budget allocation of $1.3 billion, makes up almost a seventh of Chicago’s total spending

$754,381: Amount of the Department of Law’s funding that comes from sewer funds

4: new airlines servicing O’Hare in 2013, to Berlin, Qatar, Vienna, and Beijing

9.7 million: Number of “books or other resources” that the Chicago Public Library system circulates

$5 million: Amount allocated for construction of new Chinatown library

$53.4 million: Amount of money generated in 2012-2013 from “fiscal discipline”$52,841,661: Amount allocated for HIV/AIDS prevention

-$34,074,086: Change in spending on “city de-velopment” from 2013 to 2014

$121 million: Amount spent on the Head Start and Early Head Start child development pro-grams

700: Blocks on which CDOT will seal sidewalk cracks in 2014, up from 2013’s 400

$31,640,000: Amount allocated for construction of new Central Loop Bus Rapid Transit and the Union Transportation Center

2006: Year since which all aldermen have been required to complete an online ethics course

443: Number of times the word “Chicago” appears in the 2014 Chicago budget

556: Number of times the word “budget” appears in the 2014 Chicago budget

$1.03 billion: Revenue from O’Hare Air-port operations in 2012

$249.1 million: Revenue from Midway Airport operations in 2012

$18,314,327: Amount allocated for bridge management

$481,035: Funds allocated in budget to pro-vide “general support to the Executive”

$54,860,000: Amount allocated for worker’s compensation in 2014

$3,465,750: Amount allocated for a new Stony Island cycling track from 69th to 77th Streets

$37.5 million: Amount allocated for new Washington and Wabash “L” station

475: Number of Divvy bikeshare stations in Chicago by end of 2014

$19,500,000: amount spent to construct new Green Line station at Cermak

The City Council passed Mayor Emanuel’s 2014 budget 45-5 on November 26. In spite of debates over controversial items such as distribution of police funding and an increased cigarette tax, only one South Side alderman, Ricardo Muñoz, voted against the budget. Below, we highlight the major changes and most inter-esting numbers picked out from the 130-page budget document.

$8,672.1 billion: 2014 budget

18,000 Square footage of the Whole Foods to

be constructed on 63rd and Halsted. It is hoped that the store will help relieve what has commonly been described as a “food desert” in Englewood

100 Number of jobs this is expected to bring to the Englewood neighborhood

11.3% Chicago’s unemployment rate in 2011

10.2% Chicago’s unemployment rate in 2012

$339 million: Cur-rent budget defi-cit. Through major

spending cuts, closings, and efficiencies such as the reconfiguring of the trash collection system, Mayor Emanuel has been able to cut down the projected budget deficit by more than half

50 cents: Increase in per-pack cigarette tax in 2014. This will dramatically increase city rev-

enues, but certain aldermen believe it will do more harm than good. Brendan Reilly of the 42nd Ward, for example, said he worried that the tax would cause smokers to leave Illinois to buy cigarettes

Chicago’s median household income, compared to $55,735 in Illinois

$46,877BY JAKE BITTLE

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 4, 2013 8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 4, 2013

luke white

Every Saturday from ten to one, the basement of Hyde Park Union Church, at 56th and Woodlawn,

becomes a food pantry, distributing grocer-ies and providing information on nutrition and health programs. As part of the Hyde Park and Kenwood Hunger Programs, the pantry operates on an annual budget of $110,000, most of which is raised through private donations. The church’s staff ad-ministers the pantry, but it’s manned by volunteers. On this particular day, a bu-reaucratic-looking woman shuffles through a box of manila folders, looking for the right one, while children dart around in weather-beaten windbreakers, weaving past legs and furniture. Dingy, unheated, with all the allure and charm of a Cold War fallout shelter, the church basement is

a bit of a grim place. In order to receive food, individuals

are required to provide ID for everyone in their household and prove residence within the area bounded by Cottage Grove, Lake Michigan, and 39th and 60th Streets. Visits are limited to one every four weeks. Even with these restrictions, Lee Staple-ton, a social worker whose weekly presence is paid for by the Hunger Programs, says there has been “a precipitous climb” in the number of people coming in to collect food over the past couple of years. Alvin Palmer, a volunteer, recounts that where there used to be six or seven people coming in when the pantry opened, now there are lines of “twenty or more.” Both mention the fact that the pantry has begun to run out of food more quickly. Many families now re-

ceive less as a result.Part of what has contributed to this

recent increase in hunger is undoubtedly the growing number of people living at or below the poverty line ($23,550 for a fam-ily of four), presumably as a result of the economic recession. According to a study by the Social IMPACT Research Center, a non-profit that studies poverty in Illinois, the four Chicago community areas with the highest percentage of residents living in extreme poverty are all located on the South Side (Riverdale, Burnside, Engle-wood, and Washington Park). The same study also showed that over the last ten years, the poverty rate has increased across almost all of the South Side. Pullman, for example, contains approximately the same number of people living in poverty as ten

years ago; due to population decline, how-ever, the rate of poverty has actually in-creased by four percentage points, to 26.8 percent. Many of these recent increases stand in sharp contrast to the trends of the 1990s. Census data shows that from 1990 to 2000, fewer than one-third of South Side neighborhoods experienced poverty rate increases of more than 2.4 percent, and more than a quarter of neighborhoods lowered their poverty rate.

In an effort to combat the rise of hunger cases, the 2009 stimulus bill expand-ed the Supplemental Nutrition Assis-

tance Program, commonly known as the food stamp program. Increased funding for SNAP allowed it to provide more benefits and increased coverage for its recipients;

BY CHRISTIAN BELANGER

Federal cuts take a bite out of food stampsOff the Table

DECEMBER 4, 2013 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9DECEMBER 4, 2013 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

FOODa U.S. Department of Agriculture report showed that a household of four experi-enced a 27.2 percent increase in monthly benefits, from $294 to $374. As more peo-ple received more benefits, the cost of the program nearly doubled, growing from $33.2 billion to $78.4 billion in the past five years.

On October 31, however, Congress allowed the federal expansion of SNAP to expire, rejecting Democratic proposals to renew this part of the stimulus and, in the process, cutting food stamp benefits for approximately forty-seven million Ameri-cans. According to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research and policy institute in D.C., these reduc-tions will lead to a $5 billion drop in food stamp distribution in 2014. This means that many families will be forced to cut their food budgets, as most individuals will receive less than $1.40 per meal, while households of four face a reduction of $36 a month.

At the same time, Republicans in the House are currently trying to push through a version of the Farm Bill, (which, through the USDA, funds food stamps) that will cut an additional $40 billion from SNAP over the next decade. Speaker John Boeh-ner, a Republican from Ohio, has argued that the reduction in the Farm Bill dis-courages wasteful spending on benefits and “makes getting Americans back to work a priority again for our nation’s welfare programs.” While it appears increasingly unlikely that the bill will manage to pass before the House begins its winter recess on December 13, thus delaying it until Jan-uary’s legislative session, many Democratic representatives now support somewhere between $8 and $10 billion in cuts. The question, it seems, is not whether or not there will be cuts, but how extensive they will be.

Many of the people at Hyde Park Union Church would agree with Repre-sentative Boehner’s assertion that SNAP has not been wholly successful, but for en-tirely different reasons. Jacqueline Turner, sixty-two, relates how she has been forced to come out of retirement and look for work

in order to help provide for her diabetic aunt, who is ninety-three. “Why attack the poor people?” she asks indignantly about the food stamp cuts. The process of visiting this food pantry, she says, is already humil-iating enough.

The woman next to her, who declines to give her name, agrees. She can no lon-ger afford to eat three meals a day, she says, but instead has a light tea with breakfast, and later a small lunch, so that she is able to afford a substantive dinner. She is short and sharp, partially blaming the poverty around her on the government’s unwill-ingness to institute a one-child policy, like the one in China. She also decries the life

of underprivileged overreliance on a state that doesn’t seem to care about her and the community she lives in. While Turner clearly takes issue with her political views, she seems to share a similar sense of mar-ginalization, a feeling that they both live in an unwanted place, one in which the gov-ernment provides just enough to sustain them and their community, while never actually doing anything to help them in any permanent or meaningful way.

At one point, the woman compares her neighborhood to “a concentration camp,” and ominously warns, “It’s coming to a point…” She doesn’t specify exactly what “it” is.

The USDA estimates that 900,000 Chicagoans use SNAP, many of whom are children or senior citi-

zens. Paul Morello, a spokesperson for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which

supplies Hyde Park Union and is the larg-est food distribution organization in the city, says that the cuts will be “devastating” to the large number of people for whom “the recovery hasn’t trickled down yet.” Morello adds that many of these people al-ready have jobs, but still qualify for welfare because of the low wages they receive. In other words, there simply are not enough well-paying jobs for everyone to earn an in-come that allows them to live without food stamps and other federal benefits.

There are other issues that further complicate the problem of eating properly on the South Side. Because of food des-erts—formally defined by the USDA as

“parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods”—that exist in low-income areas across the South Side, many residents of-ten turn to less nutritious options. This contributes to increased obesity, as healthy foods are scarcely available or barely af-fordable, though the relationship between food deserts and weight gain catalogued by many researchers is somewhat contentious. A New York Times article published last year, for example, claimed that supermar-kets and grocery stores may be more avail-able in poorer areas than richer ones. This would mean that increased obesity rates are actually a function of other factors, such as a lack of education about healthy choices. By sending mobile pantries and “Produce-mobiles” that distribute fruits and vegeta-bles through the South Side, however, the GCFD hopes to provide healthier choices to more people. About twenty of these new

produce distributors now operate around the South Side, though only for a few days a week, and only for a couple of hours a day.

On a Saturday at Hyde Park Union, however, no one had ever heard of these mobile pantries. One woman, Erika Bright, spoke to the difficulty of finding healthy food, observing that many of the families she knew bought fried or canned food because it lasted longer, even if it was unhealthy. Lee Stapleton, meanwhile, said he believed that healthy food options—such as the Whole Foods store scheduled to open in Englewood in 2016—would find willing patrons around the South Side, though perhaps fewer than in other parts of the city. While there are several options available for those looking to buy reasonably priced produce and groceries, including Aldi and Food 4 Less, it can still be difficult for some to make the trip out of the neighborhood every time they need to go shopping for groceries.

Asked about the psychological ef-fects of this type of poverty, Sta-pleton identifies the “depressed,

displaced trauma” of people who have to choose between paying rent and eating. He also exhorts government at all levels—lo-cal, state, and federal—to encourage eco-nomic development. Similarly, Bright says that there is “no room for anything fun or fulfilling” in her life, and wishes that pol-iticians could, at least briefly, experience what it’s like to live on food stamps.

Jacqueline Turner, meanwhile, seems resigned to working for a while longer in order to provide for her aunt, at an age when most others might begin to think fondly of retirement.

All of them reiterate, over and over, their frustration with a government that doesn’t do enough to help them and their communities, whether those are families, friends, or neighborhoods. As Turner’s companion walks into a meeting with a social worker, she leaves with a powerful parting shot: “Just give me my forty acres and a mule, and leave me alone.” ¬

The question is not whether or not

there will be cuts to SNAP funding,

but how extensive they will be.

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 4, 2013

Melancholy HolidaysA Truman Capote double feature at Provision TheaterBY STEPHEN URCHICK

The precocious seven-year-old Bud-dy eats dirt. Playground tormenter Odd Henderson straddles his

squirming body and pins his flailing limbs. “You’re a sissy, and I’m just straightenin’ you out.” Buddy nevertheless continues to snake his spine and wriggle vigorously in futile defiance. He later inveighs against Odd’s evilness: “And I’m speaking of a twelve-year-old boy who hasn’t even had time to ripen!”

One of two holiday-themed Truman Capote short stories in Provision Theater Company’s back-to-back adaptations, “The Thanksgiving Visitor” is an archetypical bully reconciliation tale. The stage version retains all the expected tropes: a geeky vic-tim; stolen spending money; the attempt to feign illness and keep away from school; and a third-party push from his sole care-taker, elderly Miss Sook, to invite the ag-gressor to Thanksgiving, meeting hatred with goodwill. Nevertheless, the physical violence staged early on tempers this feel-good setup with heightened psychological stakes. Welcome to Depression-era rural America, where adolescent brutality looms larger than name-calling.

Throughout “The Thanksgiving Visi-tor” and into the subsequent “A Christmas Memory,” actor Max Gannet assumes the two voices of young Buddy and his later, lushly reminiscent adulthood. He credibly sketches childish antics, yet he’s old enough to command dignity—ably tackling the dramatic effort needed to conflate the child and the mature narrator. Provision over-comes the difficulties posed by Capote’s thick prose by translating it wholesale into abundant soliloquies, where the narrator assesses the situation like an Alabaman chorus.

Watching Buddy beaten up is sadden-ing, but seeing this articulate narrator re-sume the play and take the noogie he’s de-scribing proves wincingly shameful. Buddy is in the household garden with Miss Sook, down on all fours, imitating his rat terrier Queenie. The spotlight slowly moves onto Buddy alone. His eyes glimmer yellow as he straightens up, kneeling like a parish-ioner. The flannel robe he’s been wearing

while sick becomes a grave, oriental jacket. Sook’s oblivious as the narrator now pow-ers gently through an attractively prosodic interjection.

This figure’s abuse is consequently hateful, and the narrator’s own resentment grows understandably caustic. He begins using his powers to focus Buddy’s juvenile, confused anger through a robust literary lens. He gives bulk and shape to the pro-found feelings his younger self couldn’t express.

Buddy’s not happy when Odd steals the Thanksgiving party with a song: “The jealousy running through me could elec-trocute a murderer.” When Odd indis-creetly pockets Miss Sook’s cameo—a crime which Buddy invisibly witnesses—”a sizzling light bulb of an idea” burns his mouth “bone dry from the prospect of total revenge.” Buddy denounces Odd at the dinner table, his chair crashing down with the day’s shattered celebratory spirit. But his bid for vengeance backfires, and he flees, full of hot, tearful embarrassment, to the smokehouse. As he contemplates suicide by means of a discovered poison bottle, Gannet’s two voices become practi-cally indistinguishable. Buddy’s distraught tirade and the narrator’s rhetoric crescendo and fuse.

Miss Sook ultimately talks Buddy down and educates him against deliberate cruelty. Sook’s well-traveled moral on two wrongs and a right is well taken, but not borne out so happily by “Visitor’s” epilogue. Odd walks out on Thanksgiving, eventu-ally drops out of school, and joins up with the merchant marine on what’s presumably the eve of the Second World War and the Battle of the Atlantic. Buddy and his foe are hardly reconciled. The narrator reports swaggering satisfaction in Odd’s absence, casting doubt on the lesson’s integrity. Though Odd ultimately returns to perform a neighborly act years later, the kindness is subdued and minimal, almost one-sided, as Odd keeps conspicuously quiet.

“A Christmas Memory” mobilizes the characterization from “Visitor.” It’s a glori-fied mission to make and distribute fruit-cakes, but the mood becomes surprisingly autumnal as Buddy reflects on what’s re-vealed as his final winter with Sook. She announces “It’s fruitcake weather!” with zeal, finding a windfall of nuts, some un-expected magnanimity in a Native Ameri-can bootlegger, and a little leftover whiskey along the way. Buddy and Sook fly kites on Christmas day. “I could leave the world with this in my eyes,” she whispers. Yet Buddy leaves her for military academy. We

watch her shuffle around upstage, Buddy narrating up front. One winter, Sook can no longer summon the strength to climb from bed. “It’s fruitcake weather!” sud-denly embodies dull, empty shock at her surprise disability. Hearing of her death, Buddy concludes with pointed wistfulness: “Home...is where my friend is.”

By twinning Buddy’s boy-self and his older, richly descriptive register in Gannet’s person, “The Thanksgiving Visitor” strains the holiday spirit with an internalized meanness. It spills over into an exhausted fury and an uncertainly hollow resolution. It retains a bittersweet moral, feeling much like Buddy’s clutching, waist-high hug to Miss Sook. The two Capote adaptations both articulate the season’s cheer, but pair it with something as sad as Odd’s broad hands confusedly cupping Sook’s gifted chrysanthemum—as sad as Buddy’s recol-lection that Queenie’s gone away to bury her Christmas bone in the field where, a year hence, Queenie will herself be buried. ¬

Provision Theater, 1001 W. Roosevelt Rd. Through December 29. See site for showtimes.

$10-$32. (312)455-0066. provisiontheater.org

courtesy of the provision theater company

DECEMBER 4, 2013 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

STAGE & SCREEN

Glazing the MomentBuilding toward Redmoon’s “Winter Pageant”BY STEPHEN URCHICK

Dancing birds trickled out onto the chalk-sketched stage at an announcement from a moonlit

man in a suspended cage. The largely un-costumed performers swirled and wove benignly around a glowing tree. They were happily at home, swelling and ebbing on mellow music until a congress of ravens descended in a storm—rippling the lo-cals’ ranks and heightening the stakes. Their raven-lord lurched down from atop an unskinned hydraulic tower, flanked by wing-flapping henchmen. The resident birds, briefly cowed, now soared into a cho-reographed assault.

The music suddenly cut out. Redmoon Theater Artistic Director Frank Maugeri stepped forward. “What you’re trying to do is protect the tree!” He was having trouble detecting the coming battle’s ob-jective; the desperate holding action was still too fuzzily articulated. He gestured out a sharper vision—explaining what the audience ought to see after two-and-a-half weeks of rehearsals, when Redmoon’s fif-ty-minute, forty-performer, three-director “Winter Pageant” spectacle show went up. Conceived to comfortably include multiple dance groups from both North and South sides, replete with a surf-rock band, stilts, and massive machinery—sleight-of-hand, fast-roping monkey-men, and elaborate shadow-puppetry—this first rehearsal could only possibly grapple with the spec-tacle’s opening act. “You crack the code in the first ten minutes,” said Maugeri, “you crack the show.”

The performers adapted their routines, developing a defense on the fly, molding a new scene from what they had previously prepared. Hip-hop dancers from the Hap-piness Club caucused briefly, mulling over their repertoire. The lead dancers from the Indian and the Indonesian outfits paired off momentarily, playing new ideas against the other as if into responsive, sympathetic mirrors. According to Maugeri there’s no script. “We just start with bullet points.” From those initial sketches, the various partnering artists each develop their own, considerably disparate material. Seasoned stagehands and community volunteers turn out to populate Redmoon’s Pilsen warehouse-theater with works-in-progress. Redmoon attempts to meaningfully fuse

everything together through rapid collabo-ration and revision. “It’s a fast process with a lot of people,” Maugeri said.

The music resumed, at this point cued largely from a sound-suite but occasionally supplemented by the audio tech’s electric guitar. The Southeast Asian dancers unit-ed, checking the raven-lord’s advance as one, synchronized phalanx, palms clasped in low, offended bows. Their leader rose upwards to meet the raven-lord, but he planted his staff and brushed her away with his free arm’s slow, broad sweep. His second lashed out, shooing the stragglers like so many sparrows. Her flailing black ribbon licked their twirling flight’s gen-eral arc. The raven-lord now menaced the Happiness Club, their measured locking and popping evoking a dance-off’s itch-ing militancy. He dispersed them as easily, blowing them back and apparently off bal-ance. The raven-lord rounded on the tree, not expecting that the leader from the first group had recovered and stood in his path.

“We need to establish this!” said Maugeri, shadowing the action. He talk-ed through the raven-lord’s unvoiced thoughts, circling him widely: “I came for the tree, but this one—she is pesky!” Today seemed to be Maugeri’s day, and he spent much of it on his feet, marshaling the di-verse cast into a narrative unit. “My job is to look at the bigger spectacle,” he said. “Does that stage picture tell the story?” The Indian leader-bird summoned her final strength as the raven-lord’s second pressed her into a duel. The latter snaked her coils counterclockwise to the former’s rotation, containing the lone defender’s last stand. Having sidelined all those who depended on the tree, the raven-lord drained its vi-tal light to triumphant rock riffs, tramping away stage left, laughing.

Small changes and innovations con-tinued to accrue as the rehearsal marched further into the show. Does the hydraulic boom really contribute anything theatri-cally? Is it more logical for the raven-lord

or his second to lurk over a forest sequence, clinging to an oversized gramophone up-stage? Just how creepily touchy should the forest’s pointy-fingered tree-people be-come?

“We do a big glaze of a moment,” explained Maugeri, “and chop away until we have a scene.” The rehearsal was aptly sculptural. Beginning with a slab of ideas, the cast chiseled the concepts down. They chipped the action at individual breaking points, taking the birds’ initial, territorial antagonism and honing it into a fight for home, a war against the darkness, defeat in detail. Redmoon’s “Winter Pageant” began to resemble its constituent flocks—a color-ful aggregation, variably absorbing and ex-pelling elements, accepting those changes with relatively unruffled feathers. ¬

Redmoon Theater, 2120 S. Jefferson St. December 13-December 22. See website for showtimes. $10-25. (312)850-8440 x123.

redmoon.org.

stephen urchick

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 4, 2013

From the Out-side, Looking InSarah Morris’s “Chicago” barely scratches the surfaceBY PAIGE PENDARVIS

Sarah Morris’s 2011 film “Chica-go” opens with the assaulting beats of manufactured electronic music.

Bright images of rainbow-colored pro-grams on computer screens fill the dark-ened theater with an eerie glow. Morris makes the audience wait through several minutes of this visual and aural chaos be-fore offering up a glimpse of the titlular city. She first shows Chicago’s fabled sky-line from across Lake Michigan, letting us soak up the familiar jungle of steel, glass, and concrete from afar, before plunging right into the midst of the towering build-ings themselves. The camera flits in be-tween buildings, allowing a bit too much time for admiration of the architecture downtown.

The electronic music continues throughout the length of the film. This is the only sound the audience hears for the next sixty minutes; Morris includes shots of conversations, but all the audience can hear is the music’s constant pulse as the people onscreen speak unheard words. The film also uses beautiful close-up shots that evoke the intrusive feeling that Morris is revealing what is usually hidden to the ev-eryday observer.

“Chicago” might have been more approachable if Morris had showcased images of what the average Chicagoan sees—and the average Chicagoan is not a businessman in the Loop. Morris neglects to explore the neighborhoods further south and west, where the workers she shows so prominently retreat when the day is done.

Throughout the film, Morris takes the audience on a journey through the offices of “Ebony” and “Playboy” magazines, in-side the industrial inner workings of a meat processing plant, Fermilab, and the Chica-go Tribune’s news printing machinery. The scenes—shot both during and after a typi-cal workday—are remarkably similar in all

three of these places. But Morris’s focus on large-scale

downtown industry overlooks the impor-tance of the people who make these indus-tries run day after day. Her heavy focus on business could have benefited from some variety, perhaps by showing some of Chi-cago’s artistic endeavors: escaping the fac-tory and delving into a locally-run gallery somewhere south of the Loop.

Morris visits two different restaurants downtown to showcase the ways Chica-goans like to eat. Surprisingly, deep-dish pizza fails to make the cut. Morris instead stops by Manny’s Coffee Shop, a Jewish deli, during the lunch rush, and an un-named experimental upscale restaurant at dinnertime whose kitchen looks like a chemistry lab.

The attention Morris pays to the act of sitting down to eat a meal—a rather common aspect of human life—reveals just how different this communal experi-ence can look. At Manny’s, we see fluo-rescent-lit cases filled with pre-wrapped slices of pie and middle-aged men hastily slapping together sandwiches, which are then consumed by mostly lower-middle class customers in a bland beige room. At the high-end restaurant, the chefs meticu-lously assemble miniscule plates that look more like edible art than dinner; waiters dressed in black bring the plates to smart-ly-dressed diners waiting in a sleek black and silver dining room. Morris’s examina-tion of Chicago food could have used some cultural variation, or at least a trip out of downtown.

It’s difficult to know exactly what Morris aims to accomplish with “Chicago” from viewing the film alone. Fortunately, on the night of “Chicago’s” premiere at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Morris agreed to talk about the film with Diet-er Roelstraete, Manilow senior curator at

DECEMBER 4, 2013 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

VISUAL ARTS

the MCA. Morris, a slim woman in her mid-forties, was dressed in black pants and a blazer with a large black and white silk scarf blooming around her neck. A sleek brown bob framed her face. It seems as though Morris puts the same exacting scrutiny to her appearance that she does to her films and art—no element of her care-fully crafted image was out of place.

One of Morris’s first moves was to correct Roelstraete for calling her series of city-based films “portraits;” this is a term Morris herself doesn’t use, as it is “much too utilitarian.” Morris’s objection to this term is a rather interesting one. “Chicago” is a film that does seem to create a visual portrait of the city—or at least a portrait of what an outsider might think of when they think of Chicago.

Yet Morris stated that she based “Chi-cago” off of what first comes to her mind when she thinks of the Windy City—its political history, industry, meatpacking, advertising, publishing, and architecture. Specifically, Morris noted that Chicago is constantly filmed, so she wanted to con-front her audience with a different filmed look at the city.

Still, many members of the audience were unsatisfied with Morris’s answers. One, in particular, asked if she was aware that Chicago is often called “the city of neighborhoods,” as Morris essentially ig-nored all neighborhoods other than the Loop. Morris said she was, in fact, aware of Chicago’s many neighborhoods, but wasn’t at all interested in filming them. “I’m not interested in creating portraits,” she reminded us once more. Morris said “Chicago” was guided by her “automated interest” in the city, so she only researched

the aspects of Chicago of which she was already aware.

Morris showed no interest in learning about Chicago’s people, places, and things that weren’t already on her radar as an outsider. For Morris, these films are hard-ly more than “an excuse to investigate a place, meet new people, and talk to them.” A Chicagoan can hardly help but ask how much “investigation” Morris really did.

Chicago is bigger and more complex than Morris shows. It’s a shame that she runs from this diversity rather than em-bracing it and using Chicago’s beautiful complexity to deepen her storytelling. Morris’s purportedly “unified perception” of Chicago as a centralized, industrial powerhouse may have some truth to it—but there is more to Chicago than the Loop’s skyscrapers and the businessmen walking down State Street. Morris includes several scenes of a sports car driving into and out of the Loop, but she never asks us to won-der where the driver is coming from.

”City Self ” at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave. Through April

13, 2014. Tuesday 10am-8pm, Wednes-day-Sunday 10am-5pm. Suggested general

admission $12, students and seniors $7, mem-bers free; free admission for Illinois residents

every Tuesday. (312)280-2660. mcachicago.org

courtesy of the museum of contemporary art

14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ DECEMBER 4, 2013

FOOD

Come for the CoffeeFlecks Coffee brings coffee culture to Chatham

BY DOVE BARBANEL

luke white

Tucked into a corner on bustling 79th Street in Chatham, Flecks Coffee Company brings in cus-

tomers of all stripes for a solid breakfast and a cup of coffee with some company. “I wrote a play sitting right there,” says Sati Word, a regular. He points to a wooden ta-ble and chair against the far wall. The wall is painted deep red and embossed with the words “Dream Big” in large-font calligra-phy. Flecks Coffee is “something different, that the area didn’t have before,” Sati ex-plains (it opened in June). “It brings in a crowd I didn’t know was here, neighbor-hood folks.”

Coffee is already a culture in Chicago, and neighborhoods across the city have be-come fertile ground for small-batch roast-ers and independent coffee shops with at-mosphere. Hyde Park has more than a full serving of cafés catering to the UofC pop-ulation, and nearby Woodlawn has Robust Coffee Lounge, home to the Mocha Diab-lo. Flecks Coffee, however, is the first shop of its kind in Chatham, at least according

to its owner and its patrons.The shop is minimalist in design but

elegant. It’s furnished with wooden tables and high chairs, and brightly lit from two walls of windows facing out onto the street. Customers drop in for a cup of coffee and stay to watch highlights on the flat screen behind the counter and talk football with the barista. Lines of glasses stand along the large wooden counter, in front of a gleam-ing new espresso machine and the Flecks Coffee logo on the wall. The name comes from the blond flecks in the crema on top of a quality cup of espresso, according to Zuli Turner, the younger half of the moth-er-daughter ownership team, along with her mother Olga.

“We are into the café lifestyle,” Zuli said. “We provide a healthy alternative to what is currently found in Chatham. We don’t really compete with anyone else—we don’t sell potato chips, candy, soda.”

Instead, the menu includes specialty Belgian waffles and omelettes for break-fast, paninis and salads for lunch, and of

course, plenty of coffee drinks. The food is made to order in the shop, with fresh fruit as a side. The Turners aim to build a unique niche in the neighborhood. “One of our missions is to enrich the community, not to take out withdrawals and make no depos-its,” said Zuli.

While Flecks Coffee has been open for only five months, the shop is already developing into a community hub. This past month (through November 23), the owners hosted a popular Saturday night Noir Film Festival, setting up a projector and a screen along one wall and recruiting help from local filmmakers.

Flecks also hosted its first open mic on Black Friday, and there are plans for a slam poetry event in the future. “There are so many creative individuals who come out of Chatham,” Zuli explained. “You have no idea who you’re sitting next to, but then when they’re at the café and you’re chat-ting, you’re like, you must be kidding, we have to make something out of this.” When the sign-up for open mic was first posted,

Zuli said she received five pages of names: “That’s how thirsty the community is.”

In addition to creative types, the café attracts an eclectic crowd of mostly old-er residents, according to barista Wilton Jones. “It’s something different. People may go to Starbucks, but they might never have had a cappuccino before.” Schoolteachers from the nearby elementary school, CTA bus drivers, retired civil workers, and neighborhood business owners number among the usual patrons.

“Residents have been so warm and re-ceptive to us. Not a day goes by that people haven’t said they’re so happy we’re here,” Zuli said. “We want to be a place for ev-erybody.” ¬

Flecks Coffee, 343 E. 79th Street. Tues-day-Friday, 6am-6:30pm; Saturday, 7am-6pm; Sunday, 8am-3pm. (773)891-0057.

facebook.com/FlecksCoffeeCo

DECEMBER 4, 2013 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

ARTS CALENDARVISUAL ARTS

Human Rights Day ShowURI-EICHEN Gallery is celebrating and challenging what it means to be a human in today’s world with the Human Rights Day Show, featuring a display of drawings by labor cartoonist Mike Konopacki. Konopacki has published six collections of his drawings; this exhibition will showcase drawings from his most recent collaboration with Paul Buhle and Howard Zinn on the comic-based history text “A Peo-ple’s History of American Empire.” At 7:30pm, Joe Isobaker and Ruth Needleman, both activists, will lead a discussion on American Imperialism. Live music will be provided for those audience members not completely downtrodden by the continuing human struggles outlined and discussed at the event. URI-EICHEN Gallery, 2101 S. Halsted St. Friday, December 6, 6pm-10pm. (312)852-7717. uri-eichen.com (Katryce Lassle)

Black Is, Black Ain’t The Renaissance Society is holding a book launch and sym-posium to celebrate the launch of an exhibition catalog from the 2008 show “Black Is, Black Ain’t,” curated by Hamza Walker. The exhibition explored issues of racial represen-tation and identity in visual art, centered in a world that was at once pushing for race to come to the foreground and fade into the background. This Sunday afternoon, a “cast of curators, critics, and scholars” will come together to discuss the 2008 show alongside similarly influential exhibitions of the past three decades, from the 1994 “Black Male” to the 2012 “Blues for Smoke.” “Black Is, Black Ain’t” was up at the Renaissance Society only a few months before the election of our first black president; in the wake of Obama’s re-election, it will be interesting to explore any shifts that have erupted in contemporary art in these five short years. University of Chicago’s Kent Hall, 1020 E. 58th St., Room 107. Sunday, December 8, 2pm. Free. (773)702-8670. renaissancesociety.org (Katryce Lassle)

A Sherman Beck Retrospective The South Side Community Art Center will be honoring renowned South Side artist Sherman Beck in an upcoming retrospective, presenting a collection representative of Beck’s career from 1955 to the present. Starting in the late sixties, Beck was part of the radical AFRICOBRA (African Com-mune of Bad Relevant Artists), a group of artists whose mis-sion was to join the black cultural movement through visual arts. Beck has been a working artist for most of his life—he still frequently exhibits his work—and the South Side is vastly better for knowing him. Join the SSCAC in paying tribute to one of the South Side’s most influential artists, and maybe even have a conversation with the man himself. South Side Community Art Center, 3831 S. Michigan Ave. Through December 12. Wednesday-Friday, noon-5pm; Saturday, 9am-5pm; Sunday, 1pm-5pm. (773)373-1026. southsidecommu-nityartcenter.com (Katryce Lassle)

2nd Fridays Gallery NightWhat better way to spend a Friday evening than by wander-ing through dozens of open art spaces around Pilsen’s South Halsted and 18th Streets, schmoozing with artists and art lovers alike—for free? On the second Friday of every month, Pilsen’s Chicago Arts District hosts a 2nd Fridays Gallery Night to sate the artsy voyeur in you. Galleries and studio spaces alike are open to the public, allowing you to not only visit some of Pilsen’s running exhibitions, but to catch a glimpse of works-in-progress and the artists behind them. Chicago Arts District, 1821 S. Halsted St. Friday, December 13, 6pm-10pm. Second Friday of every month. Free. (312)738-8000 x108. chicagoartsdistrict.org (Katryce Lassle)

In the HoodCesar Conde, a Filipino-American Chicago artist, trans-forms personal experiences into artworks conscious of the human condition, and based in a discussion of individual uniqueness and mutual understanding. His next project, “In The Hood—Portraits of African American Professionals,” examines the American perception of racial stigmas in reference to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a black Florida teenager killed while wearing a hoodie. The exhibit features several oversized portraits of black professionals wearing hoodies, painted against stark black backgrounds. The presentation implores viewers to juxtapose racial identities imposed by society with the common humanity of all people, regardless of their attire or race. 33 Contemporary Gallery, Zhou B Art Center, 1029 W. 35 St. Through December 14. Monday-Friday, 10am-5pm. Free. (708)837-4534. 33col-lective.com (Olivia Adams)

Interiors and ExteriorsPre-World War II surrealism and post-war avant-garde, while spurred by quite different sentiments in France and abroad, remain tightly bound in art history. The former paved the way for the latter in many ways, with the era’s pre-war anticipation and post-war dejection both pressing artists (and ordinary citizens) to find new and creative ways to escape, modify, or challenge individual realities. Curated by UofC art history PhD students Jennifer Cohen and Marin Sarvé-Tarr and featuring works from the Smart’s collections as well as the UofC and Northwestern libraries, the exhibi-tion confronts the complex differences that emerged at the time between personal expression and political life. While art and politics have changed drastically since the second World War, “Interiors and Exteriors” is sure to highlight the common threads in artistic expression that have endured. Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. December 17-March 16. Tuesday-Wednesday, 10am-5pm; Thursday, 10am-8pm; Friday-Sunday, 10am-5pm. Free. (773)702-0200. smartmuseum.uchicago.edu

STAGE & SCREEN

Isabel Wilkerson Book SigningThe Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Warmth of Other Suns” will sign copies of her historical narrative on the Great Migration this Saturday at the Seminary Co-op. The book examines the under-explored history of six million African Americans fleeing Jim Crow cruelty and seeking a better life in America’s largest cities. It chronicles the stories of three people representing three migration streams: to Chicago in the thirties, to New York City in the forties, and to Los Angeles in the fifties. Wilkerson demonstrates that many people acted more like refugees than migrants, establish-ing hometown-based communities and running into new troubles in locations that until very recently had no place for them. Seminary Co-op Bookstore. Saturday, December 7, 3pm-4:30pm. $17 books, free signing. (773)752-4381. semcoop.com (Jon Brozdowski)

An IliadAlready in the title a disarming modesty is in place. It’s intimate: an Iliad, this Iliad. Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare—the duo who adapted the twenty-four-book epic poem “The Iliad” into the ninety-five-minute one-man show “An Iliad”—aren’t interested in contending with Homer for the definite article. The drama of this performance, directed by Court Theatre’s Charles Newell, doesn’t derive from the struggle between the Trojans and the Greeks, or even from the rage of Achilles, but from the anxiety of one man who, having represented the bloodshed, the waste, and the tragedy of the Trojan War thousands of times across thousands of years, finds himself straining to make the ancient story present to us—and to himself—again. See full review online. Court Theatre, 5525 S. Ellis Ave. Through December 8. See site for showtimes and prices. (773)753-4472. courttheatre.org (Spencer Mcavoy)

Winter PageantFor their fifteenth annual “Winter Pageant,” Redmoon Theater promises abundant avian imagery, eclectic chore-ography, and even surprise shadow-puppetry as they tell the tale of a plucky pigeon’s quest to return the pilfered light to his flock’s glowing tree. The Pilsen-based spectacle company has opened their set builds to community volunteers. They’ve brought together aerialists, a surf-rock band, and a Mexican clown artist; they’ve combined East-Asian, Indonesian, hip-hop, ballet, and belly dancing. Coming at you from as many different angles as a host of startled sparrows, it’s hardly liable to be the typical holiday show. Redmoon Theater, 2120 S. Jefferson St. December 13-December 22. See website for showtimes. $10-$25. (312)850-8440 x123. redmoon.org (Stephen Urchick)

Solo SaturdaysAnother Saturday, another show. Once a month, Chicago Solo Theatre pulls together a cast of artists to regale the au-dience with standalone stories or excerpts from longer pieces. The tales are tall and the performers are drawn from venues across Chicago. All have talents that stretch beyond keeping a crowd captive on the sheer power of their charisma; the stage will see an “actor, storyteller, massage therapist, bald guy”—and that’s just one of them. Another storyteller is a dentist by day, a good argument for not laughing too wide. In keeping with the theme of calling things what they are, the show’s venue is The Venue, entered through Overflow Coffee Bar in the South Loop. The Venue, 1550 S. State St. Saturday, December 14, 7:30pm. (Hannah Nyhart)

A Christmas Memory and The Thanksgiving VisitorStrict seasonalists—those sticks in the mud who insist on celebrating popular holidays in order—will have a new thorn in their side this winter, as Provision Theater presents its adaptation of Truman Capote’s short stories “A Christmas Memory” and “The Thanksgiving Visitor” at the same time. The charming tales are loosely autobiographical, and detail the close friendship between a young boy and his elderly-but-young-at-heart cousin. The show opens November 20, but those who like to gripe about the modern elongation of the “Christmas Season” can hold off until they deem Christmas cheer appropriate: the run will continue through December 29, when every mall in America will be well on their way to hawking Valentines merch. Provision Theater, 1001 W. Roosevelt Rd. Through December 29. See site for showtimes. $10-$32. (312)455-0066. provisiontheater.org (Hannah Nyhart)

A Christmas Carol, AbridgedIn an increasingly blustery winter, you can’t blame Dream Theatre for keeping cozy in their wheelhouse. The company once again displays its talent for reinventing the classics, but their rendition of a Christmas Carol will keep closer to the original than their typical, enthusiastically contorted fare. Rachel Martindale directs a rendition that takes its words directly from Dickens’ 170-year-old holiday tale. Running at just over an hour, the show keeps the focus on those words by dressing them sparsely. Three actors—Stephen Fedo, Christian Isely, and Rachel Martindale—perform amid minimal furnishings. Dream Theatre creative engine Jeremy Menekseoglu does not appear to be featured, unless he’ll be making an appearance in abridged form as Tiny Tim. Dream Theatre Company, 556 W. 18th St. Through December 29. See site for showtimes. $13-$18. (773)552-8616. dreamtheatrecompany.com (Hannah Nyhart)

MUSIC

Chuck Inglish, Kings Dead, Tayyib Ali, Kidd Tha Chicagoan, ClarkAirlines The slow-and-smooth-as-molasses flow of Chuck Inglish will be gracing Reggies Rock Club on Thursday. The rapper, who forms one half of the eighties revivalist duo, the Cool Kids, is also an exceedingly innovative producer who helped update the boom-bap sound with a low-end twist, tailor-made for hip-hop’s millennial generation. Inglish will be joined on Thursday by Kings Dead—the Boston-based collegiate rap duo formerly known as The Dean’s List, along with Philly’s Tayyib Ali, and the local underdog, Kidd Tha Chicagoan (not to be confused with Chance collaborator and crooner, BJ the Chicago Kid) and, lastly, the aspir-ing-ball-player-turned-rapper, ClarkAirlines. The show could end up being a hodge-podge display of hip-hop acts who really have very little to do with one another. Still, this reviewer holds a small sliver of hope that the five performers somehow end up uniting and forming a rapping megazord of disparate dopeness. Reggies Rock Club, 2105 S. State St.

Thursday, December 5, 7pm. $12-$15. 18+. (312)949-0120. reggieslive.com (Zach Goldhammer)

Rudresh MahanthappaHave you ever wished that you could hobnob with your favorite jazz musicians and compare notes about your favorite records? Hyde Park Jazz Festival and University of Chicago Presents Jazz at the Logan have teamed up to make your dreams a reality. Next Thursday they will be premiering their new Listening Sessions program, in which they invite performers to Logan’s ninth floor Performance Penthouse to informally present and discuss records of their choosing. This week, Rudresh Mahanthappa, famed alto saxophonist and scholar of Indian Carnatic music, will be coming to hang out with the crowd at Logan. Don’t miss your chance to schmooze with a jazz master. Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., Penthouse Salon. Thursday, December 5, 7pm. Free. (773)702-2787. (Zach Goldhammer)

Syleena JohnsonIn the mid-nineties, the perpetually almost-famous Chicago soul singer Syl Johnson was seeking a renaissance of recogni-tion. After having his songs sampled in countless numbers of hip-hop tracks, sixty-year-old Syl wanted the rap generation to know who he was. In order to win over the younger audi-ence, Johnson pulled his then-eighteen-year-old daughter, Syleena, into the recording studio for his 1994 comeback album, “Back In The Game” and for the duet follow-up, “This Time Together For Father and Daughter.” Nearly two decades later, Syleena seems to have inherited her father’s knack for bittersweet success. Despite six well-received solo albums, she is best known for the hook on Kanye West’s 2004 hit, “All Falls Down.” The chorus was originally in-tended to be a sample of Lauryn Hill’s “Mystery of Iniquity”; Syleena was just hired to re-record Hill’s part after West was unable to clear the sample. Johnson’s latest album, “Chapter V: Underrated” underscores the singer’s bitter feelings about her tepid success. Will Syleena now have the chance to find her own fame, or will she continue to perform in the shadow of others? The Shrine, 2109 S. Wabash Ave. Friday, December 6, 9pm. $15. (312)753-5700. theshrinechicago.com (Zach Goldhammer)

Handel’s MessiahWritten in 1741 and performed in Hyde Park annually since 1930, Handel’s “Messiah” returns to Rockefeller Chapel this December. Chronicling the birth, passion, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, the three-part oratorio uses baroque melody style coupled with text from the King James Bible and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and is one of the most performed choral works of all time. The chapel is completely packed every year with audience, orchestra, and two choirs—the University Chorus, Motet Choir, and the Rockefeller Chapel Choir. The resulting sound is both deafening and undeniably glorious. The oratorio features soloists soprano Kimberly Jones, alto J’nai Bridges, tenor Trevór Mitchell, and bass Will Liverman and is conducted by James Kallembach. Rockefeller Chapel, 5850 S. Woodlawn Ave. Friday, December 6, 8 pm; Sunday, December 8, 3 pm. $5-$45. (773)702-2100. arts.uchicago.edu (Bailey Zweifel)

WHPK Rock ChartsWHPK 88.5 FM is a nonprofit community radio station at the University of Chicago. Once a week the station’s music directors collect a book of playlist logs from their Rock-format DJs, tally up the plays of albums added within the last few months, and rank them according to popularity that week.

Compiled by Rachel Schastok and Charlie Rock

Artist / Album / Record Label1. Spray Paint / Rodeo Songs / S.S.2. Mammoth Grinder / Underworlds / 20 Buck Spin3. Purling Hiss / Water on Mars / Drag City4. The Julie Ruin / Run Fast / TJR/Dischord5. Gas Rag / Human Rights EP / Beach Impediment6. Autistic Youth / Nonage / Dirtnap7. Salvia Plath / The Bardo Story / Weird World8. Ezra Furman / Day of the Dog / Bar/None9. Shannon and the Clams / Dreams in the Rathouse / Hardly Art10. The Gories / The Show Tapes:Live in Detroit 5/27/88 / Third Man11. Wax Museums / Zoo Full of Ramones / Tic Tac Totally12. Wau y los arrrghs!!! / Todo roto / Slovenly13. Slushy / Candy / Randy14. Life Stinks / Life Stinks / S.S.15. Raspberry Bulbs / Deformed Worship / Blackest Ever Black

ARTS CALENDAR

Logan CenterFamily Saturdays

Free art workshops and fun for the whole family every month!

PLUS: Family MatineesDEC 15 Holiday DIY Art Workshops

JAN 18 Lee England Jr.

FEB 22 Third Coast Percussion’s “The Color of Sound”

MAR 22 Eth-Noh-Tec Storytellers

APR 12 Interactive Workshop Day* No matinee

MAY 31 “Fiddlin’ with Stories,” Charlotte Blake Alston &

John Blake Jr.

JUN 28 Wendy Clinard Dance’s “Chicago’s

Watershed: A 156-Mile Choreography”

JUL 12 Ase Youth Storytelling Concert

Buy Family Passes and register for free workshps at ticketsweb.uchicago.edu!

LoganCenterFamilySaturdays

FREE PARKING AT THE LOGAN CENTER 915 E 60TH ST AT DREXEL AVE773.702.ARTS

Co-presented by

Perfect Holiday Gift!SAVE 50%

with a Family PassAny group of four can attend up

to five 2013-14 Family Matinees

for a discounted rate of $75

ticketsweb.uchicago.edu

773.702.ARTS