A man has been charged in relation to a shooting in Washington Park Tuesday afternoon, according to Chicago police.
Henry Brito, 23, is facing two felony charges of attempted murder and aggravated battery, police said.
Brito allegedly shot a 24-year-old man in his neck and back in the 6100 block of South Martin Luther King Jr. Drive at 5:54 p.m. Tuesday, police said. The 24-year-old was taken to University of Chicago Medical Center in critical condition.
Brito was arrested minutes after the shooting took place about two miles away in Hyde Park, police said.
Laurel Halo makes diaphanous electronic music that resists tidy categorization. Since her 2012 full-length debut, Quarantine (Hyperdub), her output has wafted between ambient, jazz, and avant-garde pop without fully inhabiting a single genre. Her latest release, last year’s Atlas (Awe), is like a collection of maps that lead to the dreamy and nostalgic recesses of the imagination. It opens with a collage of sensual textures and acoustic instrumentation that feels like collapsing upward into a journey through clouds. Over the subsequent nine tracks, the Los Angeles based composer maintains that sense of magical adventure, even when she veers dark.
On Atlas, Halo is joined by a cast of experimental acoustic powerhouses, including saxophonist Bendik Giske, who brings a sound intensely visceral and elegant in equal measure; cellist Lucy Railton, whose solo work aims to evoke physical sensation; and violinist James Underwood, better known as Iskra Strings, whose technical skill has made him part of contemporary classical music’s upper crust.
For her Epiphany Center for the Arts debut, Halo will present Atlas in its entirety, playing piano and live electronics alongside cellist Leila Bordreuil, who has helped Halo bring the moody, organic, and improvised qualities that make the record her magnum opus to stages across the world. The concert is part of a curated series by Reflections and will feature the live video image mapping that distinguishes shows organized by the deep-listening art series. Go experience audio-visual electronic art at its most tender, complex, and human.
Laurel Halo & Leila Bordreuil Matchess opens. Fri 11/8, 7 PM, Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S. Ashland, $41.72, all ages
Reader Recommends: CONCERTS
Upcoming shows to have on your radar.
Chicago Reader staff writer Micco Caporale (they/them) is an award-winning journalist and Korn-fed midwesterner bouncing their way through basement shows, warehouse parties, and art galleries.
They’re interested in the material, social, and political circumstances that shape art and music and the subcultures associated with them.
Their writing has appeared in outlets such as Nylon, Pitchfork, Buzzfeed, In These Times, Yes! Magazine, and more.
When not nurturing their love affair with truth, beauty, and profanity, they can be found powerlifting.
Caporale lives in Chicago. They speak English and you can reach them at [email protected] and follow their work on Twitter.
Bylines labeled “Chicago Reader Staff” are used for features that contain nonwritten, nonreported information like listings, for event and organization announcements by noneditorial personnel, and for advertiser content. Additionally, when multiple authors collaborate on an article, the byline “Chicago Reader Staff” is displayed, while individual contributions are credited throughout the feature.
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Chicago Police Department (CPD) officers stand in the intersection of W. Madison and S. Clinton Streets on August 20, 2024 responding to a protest of the Israeli consulate Credit: Josh Druding for Chicago Reader
This story was copublished by Inside Chicago Government and the Chicago Reader.
The City of Chicago announced last week—via a meeting of its Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability—that it’s about to launch a thorough study of police staffing, resulting in department-wide recommendations that will be shared publicly.
Details of the workforce allocation study, which could cost as much as $1 million, have yet to be widely disclosed by the city or the Chicago Police Department (CPD).
This effort grew out of the federal lawsuit Illinois v. Chicago—a simple name that belies the profound impact it aims to have on CPD.
The chilling antecedent was the 2014 murder of teenager Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke. The shooting was captured on a police dashcam video, initially suppressed by the administration of then mayor Rahm Emanuel.
A year later, a Cook County judge ordered the release of the jarring video. It spurred a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation of CPD (and arguably scotched a third term for Emanuel).
In a 2017 report, the DOJ wrote that CPD had engaged in a longstanding, pervasive “pattern or practice” of civil rights abuses. Later that year, the Illinois attorney general and a coalition of community organizations filed Illinois v. Chicago in federal court, asking the court to force reform on the department.
The suit resulted in the 2019 consent decree. This 230-page document dictates hundreds of reforms that CPD must implement under the supervision of a federal judge and continuous scrutiny by an independent monitoring team headed by former prosecutor Maggie Hickey, and financed by Chicago taxpayers.
Within the consent decree’s 600-plus paragraphs are a half-dozen dictates about how CPD deploys its workforce, including provisos that CPD must:
Have plenty of mentoring cops (“field training officers”) to coach rookies on the job.
Set and keep a 1:10 ratio of field supervisors (sergeants) to officers.
Not move supervisors around, so that officers consistently have the same boss. (A rather tricky requisite: At an October consent decree hearing in a federal court, Assistant Attorney General Hannah Jurowicz said, “We have seen that supervisors have [moved] frequently based on seniority,” thanks to union contract provisions.)
“Fully implement and maintain a staffing model” that establishes supervisory limits and stability.
So, how well has CPD done on workforce requirements?
In her October 2021 semiannual report, chief monitor Hickey wrote that CPD’s “most notable obstacle for gaining compliance with” the consent decree’s workforce mandates “is the absence of a comprehensive staffing study.”
Now, fast-forward to October 30. At the city’s Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA) meeting that day, Commissioner Abierre Minor announced that “the workforce allocation study is almost ready for launch.”
Current practice
It’s not like they haven’t done this before.
At a CCPSA meeting on November 2, 2022, then chief of patrol Brian McDermott explained how his bureau reallocates the CPD workforce from day to day.
Brian McDermott’s response to a question about allocation starts after the 48-minute mark.
“Every single day my office does an analysis of where our emerging crime trends are, where we need the most of our deployments,” McDermott said. “We focus on our busiest districts.”
“Let’s just say,” McDermott continued, “the 12th District gets hot, or the 4th District, like it got hot this weekend. As soon as we’re starting to see an increase in shootings in the 4th District, I’m coordinating with my deputy chief, and we’re moving resources from other areas of the city to assist in those areas.”
Apparently, such practices continue to the present.
At a June 27 police district council meeting on the north side, a resident asked District Commander Melinda Linas how tactical—or plainclothes—officers are allocated.
“A lot of our deployment of resources is based on data-driven analysis,” Linas replied. “It changes day-to-day, depending on what’s going on in the district, what events are going on.
“If we have . . . robbery sprees . . . we would analyze that data and that of the surrounding districts,” she continued. “And we would kind of analyze where we think those sprees are going to happen . . . and we’d deploy to those [areas] based on the need, or the perceived need, based on the data.”
The sparkle of police data, however, fades in the piercing glare of the city’s Inspector General, Deborah Witzburg.
According to Witzburg, CPD can’t tell how many cops are working where, citywide, on any given day.
While testifying at a September 26 joint meeting of the City Council’s committees on Public Safety and Police and Fire, Witzburg called CPD’s patrol staffing data “incomplete and low in quality.” (Although patrol staff doesn’t include positions like detectives and internal affairs, it comprises over three-fourths of department staff, according to the city’s 2024 budget ordinance.)
“[T]he police department’s data does not lend itself to a good and clear view of how many people are working at any one time; the data is stored in too many different places,” Witzburg said. “That’s a problem for us from an oversight perspective. It’s a problem for the department from a management perspective.”
CPD bicycle officers in August 2024 Credit: Josh Druding for Chicago Reader
It’s also a problem for Chicago residents frustrated with a perceived lack of police response, and for activists who push for greater police accountability.
In 2011, for example, the Central Austin Neighborhood Association (CANA) sued CPD over its poor response to life-threatening emergencies in Black neighborhoods.
CANA, with attorneys of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois (ACLU), settled its suit with the city in 2021. The city agreed to improve its published records about 911 calls and police response times, and incorporate “equitable police response to calls for service into any new staffing plan.”
That’s when CPD’s inadequate data came to the fore, according to Alexandra Block, director of the ACLU of Illinois’ Criminal Legal System and Policing Project.
“To see if the city is complying with the settlement in that case,” Block said, ACLU looked into “determining what would be equitable response times. And we [repeatedly] got the same answer from the city. They can’t tell us how many people are actually working on any day, on any shift in a given district, because they are not automating and keeping that data—which is just really stunning to me.”
Block’s view was echoed by Second Ward alderperson Brian Hopkins. “Most of us don’t have a definitive number” of officers working in particular wards’ police districts, Hopkins said in an interview. “And when we ask, we don’t get an answer.”
These concerns were corroborated in a July report by the city’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). When CPD members are absent from work, the report said, “they are still captured in the data” as physically present. Also, CPD assigns some officers to specialized units that work sporadically in each of the 22 police districts—“thus increasing the difficulty in measuring how their presence contributes to Department coverage in any specific location.”
Past studies
In past years, CPD has undertaken—and seemingly ignored and/or not widely released—both internal and external workforce studies, some identified in OIG’s July staffing report. Examples:
In 2010, an external study used “a workload approach to come up with the optimal number of officers” and found that CPD had a “disproportionality of patrol deployment.”
In 2014, an external study recommended that CPD revamp the ratio of supervisors to subordinates, and better train supervisors.
In 2018, an internal study proposed “a staffing model which provides both ‘span of control’ and ‘unity of command’,” based on pilots in three police districts.
Why haven’t these studies been publicly considered?
As the author of the 2010 study, Alexander Weiss, wrote, reallocating officers is a “zero-sum game. . . . There will be winners and losers”—meaning that, in Chicago, any recommendation that reassigns officers from one ward to another will face stiff opposition by the losing wards’ representatives in the City Council.
That makes such a study, said Hopkins, “the hottest of hot potatoes.”
In 2020, 49th Ward alderperson Maria Hadden asked CPD for information about one of its external workforce studies. According to a memorandum by then police superintendent David Brown, Hadden was told that the city’s law department wouldn’t let CPD disclose the study “because of attorney client and/or work product privilege.”
This political and legal obstinacy was finally overcome by the requirements of the consent decree—such that, in January of 2023, CCPSA directed the police superintendent to “update the Commission on the progress of [a] comprehensive workforce allocation study” by June 1 of that year, with a further update by year’s end.
Credit: Josh Druding for Chicago Reader
Documents obtained by the Reader and Inside Chicago Government showed that, soon after, CPD leaned in.
In October 2023, “CPD began collaborating with philanthropic groups to fund” a workforce allocation study, according to a June 3, 2024 memo by Chief of Staff Dana O’Malley.
Allyson Clark-Henson, a CPD managing deputy director, testified in an October 15 consent decree court hearing that the department “is expected to receive funding” from four organizations: the Joyce Foundation, the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation, Arnold Ventures, and Chicago CRED. Clark-Henson said the funding (an expected $800,000 to $1 million) “is being coordinated through the Commercial Club Foundation, a membership organization for philanthropic sectors.”
A source within the funder group, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said, “We believe this study—and some of the related work—is crucial to our larger public safety strategy.”
Then, in December of 2023, 47th Ward alderperson Matt Martin introduced—and the City Council later approved—an ordinance obligating CPD to “enter into an agreement with a qualified third party to conduct a comprehensive staffing analysis.”
In her June 3 memo to the mayor and City Council, CPD’s O’Malley reported that the department had chosen Matrix Consulting Group of San Mateo, California to conduct the study. On its website, Matrix says it’s conducted over 350 studies for law enforcement agencies in North America.
According to the court testimony of CPD’s Clark-Henson, Matrix will do the study in five phases. The first phase will involve “initial interviews and stakeholder engagements,” and in the second phase Matrix will identify CPD’s current staffing, organizational structure, and “allocation strategies.” The study will include every CPD employee, both sworn (i.e., badged) and civilian.
In the study’s third and fourth phases, Matrix will analyze CPD’s staffing and develop “an interactive model that can be replicated as needed.” Matrix will address the consent decree’s requirements noted above, such as a 1:10 supervisor-to-officer ratio. It’ll also figure out where there aren’t enough people to do the work, and what sworn positions would better be done by civilians (an analysis also done by OIG in 2013).
What’s still unknown is how Matrix will determine CPD’s actual patrol presence in particular locations, which OIG has called “a complex, opaque, and imprecise exercise.”
Matrix must deliver final workforce recommendations within 12 months after contracting to do the study.
Transparency
Normally, one could find the city’s agreements with vendors, and related records such as requests for proposal, via the Department of Procurement Services (DPS) supplier portal. But because the city isn’t spending its own money on the CPD workforce study, the whole project is “handled outside of the DPS process,” according to a spokesperson.
That’s where the transparency challenge starts.
There are many things unclear about the workforce study project, because the city has yet to disclose key aspects. For example: How was the vendor chosen? How was the $1 million budget (give or take) figured? What’s the city’s legal agreement with the funders, and how might taxpayers be on the hook? Who, in what city department, is managing the project—especially now that Mayor Brandon Johnson has proposed to cut the CPD office that manages consent decree reforms from 65 positions to 28?
The city has denied or ignored multiple requests for records and interviews that might provide answers.
And what’s in the vendor contract? The workforce study ordinance requires CPD to sign a contract with its study vendor within 90 days of the law’s approval. That date was May 22—a fact that Alderperson Martin, the ordinance’s sponsor, said had him “incredibly concerned.”
“I’m frustrated. And I think, at this point, it’s embarrassing,” Martin said in an interview.
The ordinance also required CPD to report on the study’s progress—to the mayor and the entire City Council—three times between February and September of this year. CPD issued a single update on June 3, which it apparently sent to only one City Council member: Martin.
Finally, in her October 15 court testimony, CPD’s Clark-Henson said that each of the project’s five phases “will include community engagement and status updates for both internal and external statements.”
Observers are ready to engage.
Editor’s note : Despite multiple requests, the Chicago Police Department did not consent to interviews regarding this story.
Correction (11/7/24, 5 AM):This online story includes two sentences that were altered from the original version of this article printed in our November 7, 2024 issue (volume 54, number six). In the first mention of Alderperson Maria Hadden (found here under the heading “Past studies”), our print version described the source of Hadden’s information to be an email. The source document linked is a file containing a series of memoranda and does not indicate whether they were emailed, hence we have corrected the sentence to reflect this.
Additionally, in the original version of this story we wrote that Allyson Clark-Henson testified that the department is expected to receive funding of $800,000 to $1 million from foundations. The dollar amounts were not mentioned in Clark-Henson’s testimony, rather, they came from the impact report that is linked. We rewrote the paragraph to make this clear.
More about CPD . . .
🚔 After mass protests in 2020, the CPD agreed to overhaul its policies, but did they?
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Residents of the Leland fear they’ll be displaced amid ongoing foreclosure proceedings. Credit: Anna Wagner for Chicago Reader
Finding an apartment in Chicago is a difficult, stressful, time-consuming process—especially for low-income families and individuals. But, sometimes, keeping an apartment can be just as cumbersome.
The recent foreclosure of the Leland, a single-room occupancy (SRO) apartment building with almost 140 units in Uptown, has left residents and other community members scrambling to protect one of the few remaining affordable housing options in the neighborhood.
“I’m worried I’ll be homeless,” says one resident, Stephan, who asked only to be identified by his first name to protect his privacy. “I’m on a limited income. This is perfect for me,” he tells the Reader of the room he’s been renting for almost a decade.
Single-room occupancy apartments like the Leland feature smaller, more affordable units for low-income individuals, such as those relying on supplemental security income (SSI).Heartland Housing, a subsidiary of social services nonprofit Heartland Alliance, owned and operated the property until it was placed into receivership last year amid building code concerns and Heartland’s financial turmoil. The receiver, a court-appointed body, is tasked with managing the property in the time between owners.
In January, Mercy Loan Fund—a Denver-based nonprofit housing developer that claims to have preserved over 46,000 affordable housing units across the country—filed a foreclosure suit in the Circuit Court of Cook County against owners of the Leland. Mercy is now seeking the property to be sold by a Chicago foreclosure service.
Court records show that, in 2015, Mercy assumed control of a loan worth about $2 million that the building owners had taken out as part of a 2004 redevelopment. Mercy named a number of entities associated with the building in the lawsuit, including the City of Chicago and the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA)—both of which gave Heartland money to finance the 2004 redevelopment.
Read more: Heartland Alliance to spin off subsidiaries, dissolve
Now, amid foreclosure hearings, residents of the Leland are concerned a for-profit developer may purchase the building and kick tenants out of the only place they can afford to live. Affordable housing units are kept at rates that would allow people living on government income to rent them out, and developers of the buildings receive a tax credit for up to 30 years after financing.
A court-appointed receiver and the City of Chicago have met with more than 30 potential buyers of the Leland, but so far none have been wiling to take over the property. Credit: Anna Wagner for Chicago Reader
Mercy, which owns or manages a number of properties in Illinois, noted in a September court filing that it and the City of Chicago had “met with and/or discussed the preservation of the property with over 30 different potential new owners,” but because of “extreme needs at the property, none of these potential owners have been willing to take over the property.” City of Chicago inspection records show a growing list of code violations for the building, mostly elevator-related.
But residents of the Leland—which was constructed 75 years ago—say it’s in OK condition. It’s similar to any other large apartment you might find in the neighborhood, with bricks that bare their history and stone spires atop a pair of the building’s corners.
Stephan says it’s maybe the only place he can afford in his neighborhood. “Uptown is getting gentrified,” he says. “I just don’t want a for-profit to come in and make apartments or condos.”
His concerns go beyond whether he will have a place to stay. He says social workers employed by Heartland Alliance regularly visited the building to work with residents until the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. Since then, those offices have been empty. “I’d go down there and talk about whatever bullshit,” he says. “It was really nice.”
Sue Gries, a housing team member with community group One Northside, explained the situation bluntly during a July rally at the corner of Leland and Racine. “The Leland is in danger of being bought up by a for-profit developer who will make more luxury microunits unless a nonprofit developer is able to put together the funding to keep this building affordable,” she said. “That’s why we’re taking action.”
Gries said the Chicago Department of Housing and the IHDA, which uses public dollars to finance and maintain the state’s affordable housing stock, had “been supportive” by responding to the group’s inquiries but that those who are concerned “must keep up the pressure. We cannot afford to lose a single unit of affordable housing.”
Members of One Northside rally outside the Leland to demand the city and state preserve affordable housing in Uptown. Credit: Dilpreet Raju
Andrew Field, the IHDA’s deputy director of communications, relayed that a majority of former Heartland Housing properties have remained affordable. “To date, ownership of 13 of the 14 properties have either been transferred or are in the process of being transferred to new owners who will maintain the affordability of the properties and not evict the tenants,” Field wrote in a statement to the Reader. “Regarding the Leland Apartments, all agencies continue to work with the owner to ensure the property stays open and affordable for its residents.”
Lee Byrd, a tenant representative with the affordable housing organization Voice of the People in Uptown, explained that more affordable housing is needed in Chicago, not less. “This is what you need and deserve in Uptown, in all communities: housing opportunities that never expire,” Byrd said, before asking the city and state “to commit the resources necessary to fund development without displacement.”
Jeff Martin, another resident of the Leland, survived a “massive stroke” in 2018 that caused him to lose his apartment and live in a nursing home until he found Heartland Alliance through his Medicaid provider. Heartland placed him at the Leland a few years ago.
“I consider myself at home in the building,” he says, lamenting how difficult it is to find affordable housing. “Affordable units are in high demand and short supply, I already pay over half my income for rent.”
At a court hearing on October 28, he relayed the fears he and his neighbors share.
“Many of us have experienced homelessness and the thought of facing that again is frightening,” Martin said. “Losing this building will only add to the homelessness crisis here in Uptown.”
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From under his feathered scarlet bicorn, Jean-Jacques Dessalines looks northward with defiance from Lior’s Cafe.
The general, who kicked the French out of what they called Saint-Domingue in 1804, was joined on the restaurant’s exterior wall by other historic Haitians—including Chicagoan Number One, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable—when muralist Rahmaan Statik painted it for Lior’s opening a little over a year ago.
The vivid colors signal the presence of the only Haitian restaurant on the south side—one of only three in the entire city—and the only fine-dining option within miles of this car-swept block of South Halsted in Washington Heights.
The interior of Lior’s Cafe Credit: Martine Séverin for Chicago Reader
Not pictured is Dessalines’s wife, Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité Bonheur Dessalines, the first Empress of Haiti, who is arguably just as important to Haitian national identity as her husband, and one whose most resonating cultural contribution simmers within.
“Most Haitians eat soup joumou on a Sunday,” says Chef Daniel Aurel. “Or they eat it on Haitian Independence Day. But we like to have soup joumou all year round, like every day.”
The key ingredient in soup joumou (aka pumpkin soup or Independence Soup) is squash, which enslaved Africans in Haiti cultivated for export by their colonizers—but were prohibited from eating themselves.
Marie-Claire is credited with establishing the tradition of eating soup joumou each January 1, when she distributed it to Haitians on their first day of freedom with a delicious “Get manman ou!” to their once (and, sadly, future) oppressors.
At Lior’s Cafe, Aurel’s soup joumou is built on a vegetable stock with squash, cabbage, carrots, watercress, and penne and simmered with epis, the peppery, garlicky, herbal seasoning blend that lays the foundation for much of Haitian cuisine. You can get it with shrimp or a beef shank in your bowl, or order it vegan, the way Empress Marie-Claire probably first made it.
Haitian food is a synthesis of Indigenous, African, and French influences, along with a little Spanish and Arabic, but sometimes Aurel goes off script.
A table full of various dishes including poisson rouge (red snapper), chicken wings, diri djondjon (black mushroom rice), pikliz (slaw), banan peze (fried plantains), and more Credit: Martine Séverin for Chicago Reader
Most of the traditional Haitian dishes at Lior’s Cafe start with his epis—a blend of green onion, red and green bell peppers, garlic, parsley, and thyme—which he learned to make from his Aunties Myelle and Tatie Nadine. It’s in the braised oxtails and the poule avec sauce, and the five-veggie legume stew, too. You can taste the epis in the occasional oxtail poutine special, but he doesn’t use it in his sweet-and-spicy fried shrimp bombs or the boulette smashburger special he runs now and again.
“We are Haitian,” he says, “but I tried to do a little fusion too, because I didn’t want to shy people away.”
Aurel’s father, Jean Claude Aurel, a transit safety engineer who’d always dreamed of opening a restaurant, owns Lior’s Cafe, which he named for a goddaughter. In 2019, he bought the shuttered corner store, along with two adjacent properties, and began gutting and building out a new restaurant from scratch. That was the same year his son, then 21, traveled to Haiti for the first time, and for the first time began to fully appreciate Haitian food through eating at Auntie Myelle’s Port-au-Prince restaurant.
“My dad wanted to leave me in Haiti,” he says. “He wanted to leave me with my auntie and learn how to cook.” Instead, he went to culinary school in Kentucky and graduated with a job back home making sushi at Mariano’s. It was a temporary setback. “I knew down the line we would open up a restaurant.”
Lior’s Cafe 10500 S. Halsted 773-239-5467 liorscafe.com
“The options around here are kind of slim,” says general manager Brandon Lenore, who got on board after working as the operations manager at Aurel’s engineering firm. “There are no barriers to entry into this space. As well as just having a Black-owned restaurant—people want to support their own in this community. There are a lot of single-family homes, older generation. They want to see a place like this. In regard to going out, they’re going to have to go to Hyde Park and the south suburbs. People want to stay in their own community.”
Chef Daniel Aurel Credit: Martine Séverin for Chicago Reader
Bridgeport’s Brooke Lang Design handled the interior, bedecked by Haitian folk art that Aurel collected on his travels, while his son oversees the gleaming new kitchen, pushing out orders of crunchy malanga (taro root) fritters, and flaky chicken or spinach pate (patties) on carved wooden plates.
Soup joumou is offered as a first-course option, as well as the aforementioned legume stew, and an almost gumbo-like bowl of bouillon, a stew thick with radish, carrots, spinach, watercress, and plantains.
Haitian food is a synthesis of Indigenous, African, and French influences, along with a little Spanish and Arabic, but sometimes [Chef] Aurel goes off script.
There are some showstoppers among the second courses, like griot, epis-marinated, deep-fried chunks of pork shoulder; or poisson rouge, a whole red snapper smothered in a reduced tomato-garlic sauce; and one of the chef’s innovations, a jaw-dropping pot pie, its buttery crust breaking over braised-and-pulled goat in a creamy mushroom sauce.
Various rice sides, most notably one stained black by the dried mushrooms known as djondjon, along with mac and cheese, greens, or little pucks of corn souffle accompany these robust dishes, whose spell can be broken with a side of pikliz, the tangy pickled cabbage-carrot-shallot slaw powered by habanero.
Lenore reckons that about 40 percent of their guests come from the neighborhood and 40 percent come from the city’s widespread Haitian community, including some from beyond: they’ve served Haitians from as far away as Florida and Louisiana. The remaining 20 percent, he says, are the food-obsessed, those willing to travel for new and rare culinary experiences.
Ironically, that’s a demographic that might have been bumped by recent events. Photos of Daniel Aurel cooking in the kitchen and Statik’s mural appeared in a September Tribune cover story after the MAGA cult’s supreme leader began lying about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating people’s pets.
But as Dessalines and Du Sable watched from the wall, the response was supportive. “We’re glad to be insulated from that kind of hatred,” says Lenore. “But also we’re proud that we built such a positive environment that it doesn’t enter here. It’s kind of a safe space.”
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Like Colvin House—where dropshift dance presented a fuller iteration of ROOMS in April after three years of development—Gunder House is a landmark Edgewater mansion in a real estate subdivision developed by John Lewis Cochran. Located just north of the Berger Park Cultural Center and a few steps west from the lake, the Classical Revival-style home dates back to the first decade of the 20th century and was commissioned by Samuel Gunder, president of Pozzinni Pharmaceutical Company, and designed by architect Myron Church. The light brick edifice features a dark, arched doorway flanked by torchlike lamps. Upon entering the house, a volunteer invites visitors to explore freely for the first half hour.
ROOMS Through 11/23: Fri 11/8 and 11/22 6:30 PM, Sat 11/6 and 11/23 11:30 AM and 2 PM; Gunder House, 6129 N. Sheridan, 978-317-5577, dropshiftdance.com, $25 suggested donation
Ropes of LED lights coil around the margins of rooms where mirrors tilted against the walls intercept views. In the basement, the dust and must of detritus. On the second-floor landing, a loom with an incomplete weaving. Further in, cardboard boxes filled with shards of colored glass stand in a room with empty wastebaskets set upon the tables. A series of drawings rest above the windows, a penciled sphere serves as a study of both dimension and color. On a windowsill, a pink plastic pig flaps its plastic wings, never taking flight. A cluttered bathroom, mop askew on the floor, offers views of the water below. And in the first-floor water closet, something wonderful: the dim light of teal light bulbs and “driftwood”-scented candles offer projections in cobalt blue and aqua that reflect in the mirrors and over the arched ceiling with shifting speed, rapidly bubbling up and slowing to a flow (the projection and video are by Andrew Henke and Gary Walker; much of the above, as it later transpired, was simply how the park district kept the house).
After 30 minutes, we gather in the library, where the persistent click of a slide projector gives a steady rhythm. The sound of cars passing on Sheridan Road mixes with the rushing sound of the lake. Three dancers (Andrea Cerniglia, Christina Chammas, and Alexandra Claiborne-Naranjo) with containers of objects each face a mirror and begin to arrange their things: a VHS tape of The Secret Garden, threadbare stuffed animals, friendship bracelets, CDs, postcards, knickknacks. It’s as if each person, peering at their own reflection, is building a shrine to their memory. On the floor, a Post-it note states, “This place is ours.” After the objects are in place, they unfold ovoid fabrics (by Collin Bunting), each cut with two holes near the center—armholes or peepholes—each adorned in its own way. They drape the fabrics over themselves, nestle within them, swaddle themselves, share touch and space. A braid mingles with the fringe of the fabric. Bodies occasionally emerge one at a time and often merge together, forming shapes like tents or forts.
Inspired by the “sense memory of domestic spaces,” as described by dropshift director Cerniglia, ROOMS, which shares what she calls “samplings” of DWELL/burrow (2022), bloom (2023), and objects (2023), seems private to the internal lives of its players.
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If there’s a sport worth obsessing over, it’s basketball. What a beautiful game: shoes squeaking across shiny hardwood floors, the swish of the net when a perfect shot whips through, a contest that requires teamwork but celebrates individual style.
When I was a grammar school hooper, my dad gave me the 1995 book Hoop Dreams: A True Story of Hardship and Triumph by Reader columnist Ben Joravsky. The book is based on the 1994 documentary film Hoop Dreams, which follows two Chicago kids, Arthur Agee and William Gates, as they pursue professional basketball careers from eighth grade to freshman year of college.
On Saturday, November 9, Chicago Humanities will gather the two players and the filmmakers—Steve James, Peter Gilbert, and Frederick Marx—for a panel about the film. After 30 years, Hoop Dreams is still considered one of the greatest American documentaries, not only because of its cinematic storytelling but also its enduring relevance.
Hoop Dreams at 30 Sat 11/9, 5:30 PM, Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago, 915 E. 60th, $25 general admission, $20 CHF members (“Friends and above”), $10 students and teachers, free for CHF Humanist Circle members and above chicagohumanities.org/events/attend/hoop-dreams-30th-anniversary
The film remains timely, in part, because of “the odds that William and Arthur and their families are trying to overcome,” James, the film’s director, told the Reader. “Namely, racism, besieged communities, and the circumscribed opportunities for Black families. This is, needless to say, an unfortunate way in which Hoop Dreams has remained relevant.”
When asked how reception to the film has evolved, James said he thinks it has remained about the same, but it’s now being shared across generations. “The difference is that I think families with sports-dreaming kids often recommend the film to them as something that resonated with them years ago. I like that aspect of Hoop Dreams’s legacy.”
A Criterion movie poster for Hoop Dreams Credit: courtesy Kartemquin Films
When my dad gave me the book, it certainly seemed like the kind of story a basketball–obsessed kid like me would revel in. I played year-round, watched old Bulls VHS tapes to try to model my game after Scottie Pippen, and flicked the ball above my head in bed before falling asleep most nights. While Arthur and William’s love of the game mirrored mine in many ways, their story left me feeling deeply sad, making me rethink my own relationship to basketball. To me, it wasn’t an inspirational story about following one’s dreams; it was about two Black families living in a manufactured nightmare—one with systems designed to make some people fail.
When Arthur and William get into St. Joseph High School, a predominately white Catholic high school in the western suburb of Westchester that closed in 2021, it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. After all, the likes of two-time NBA champion Isaiah Thomas was a St. Joe’s Charger. But a series of challenges emerge that seriously question the ethics of the school, its storied basketball program, and the basketball recruitment complex as a whole.
Arthur and William don’t come from means. Their partial scholarships to St. Joe’s give their families a sense of hope. But when Arthur’s parents lose their jobs, he’s forced to leave St. Joe’s because they can’t afford the tuition increase. Arthur transfers to John Marshall High School and continues playing ball, but the disruption to his education has lasting effects. He misses multiple weeks of classes at St. Joe’s because of the debt and loses a semester’s worth of credits after being out of school.
“If he was going out there and he was playing like they had predicted him to play, he wouldn’t be at Marshall,” says the school’s head basketball coach Luther Bedford in the film. “Economics wouldn’t have had anything to do with him not being at St. Joe’s. Somebody would have made some kind of arrangement, and the kid would’ve still been there.”
It’s hard to argue with Bedford’s explanation. William is seen as having more potential than Arthur on the basketball court. He’s often viewed as the next Isaiah Thomas. But when William’s family can’t afford tuition, a sponsor pays for him.
Hoop Dreams shows us the human cost of continuing to turn a blind eye to the American nightmare many are forced to endure.
Even though one of the boys is seen as a potentially more valuable player, he’s still let down by the system. After William blows out his knee, Gene Pingatore, St. Joe’s head basketball coach, leaves it up to William to decide when he returns—a choice some in the film believe was irresponsible to entrust to a 16-year-old. William rushes to play again and reinjures his knee, limiting his confidence, playing ability, and arguably his basketball prospects.
“I’m very disappointed . . . in the system. He shouldn’t have been out there playing,” says William’s brother-in-law, Alvin Bibbs, after William reinjures his knee. “If winning’s that important, we need to reevaluate the program.”
It’s no wonder William is eager to get back on the court. The dreams of both Arthur and William are, in fact, hoop dreams: the only way they and others feel they can succeed is to dribble a basketball. They live in a system that gives Black kids very few options—and sometimes no options at all. Hoop Dreams is a reflection of our past and current unwillingness to directly face the racism, exploitation, and inequalities that hurt kids in neighborhoods and education systems across the country. The film shines brightest when it alludes to these injustices, largely through its Black subjects.
The filmmakers on the set of Hoop Dreams Credit: courtesy Kartemquin Films
Later in the movie, the filmmakers insert a Spike Lee cameo during the Nike All- American camp that William attends, in which Lee explains the investment-profit model present in many school basketball programs to the gathered kids.
“You have to realize that nobody cares about you,” says Lee. “You’re Black. You’re a young male. All you’re supposed to do is deal drugs and mug women. The only reason why you’re here—you can make their team win. If their team wins, these schools get a lot of money. This whole thing is revolving around money.”
At one point, Arthur’s mother, Sheila, tells the filmmakers how difficult it is to live on welfare month to month and make ends meet. Her husband has left after struggling with a drug addiction. The family went without lights and gas for three months, Sheila says, after she missed one welfare appointment. “So you know what the system is saying to me?” Sheila asks the filmmakers. “Do you know what it’s saying to a lot of women in my predicament? They don’t care.”
Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of the story is how often recruiters, coaches, and others at St. Joe’s fail to see the exploitative side of the sports industry. But ultimately the entire system is the real antagonist. As is the mirage of the American Dream. Hoop Dreams shows us the human cost of continuing to turn a blind eye to the American nightmare many are forced to endure.
Hoop Dreams (1994) PG-13, 170 min. Max, Paramount+, streaming free on Philo, Pluto TV, Crackle
Throughout Hoop Dreams, several subjects seem to see through the veil at various points, including Arthur and William.
Perhaps William’s disillusion is most evident by the end of the film: “Four years ago, that’s all I used to dream about was playing in the NBA,” he says while sitting in his bedroom. “I don’t really dream about it like that anymore. Even though I love playing basketball, I want to do other things with my life too. If I had to stop playing basketball right now, I think I’d still be happy.”
When I first learned Arthur and William’s stories as a kid, my takeaway was similar to that final reflection: as amazing as basketball is, Black life, and Black dreams, are so much greater than hoops.
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It was a good week for some rewatches, one of which was timely with Halloween. On Tuesday, Tobe Hooper’s vastly underrated The Mangler (1995) screened at the Alamo Drafthouse as part of the newly minted Terror Tuesday series. I’d only ever watched it at home, so I jumped at the opportunity to see it on the big screen, and the enhanced viewing experience did not disappoint. Based on a short story by Stephen King (though King was among the film’s misguided naysayers) and starring Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger himself), it is, to quote a review from the Washington Post, “ludicrous from start to finish,” an assertion that I wholeheartedly endorse but for the right reasons.
The titular “mangler” is a possessed industrial laundry press with a taste for blood that, at one point, becomes sentient and chases the surviving protagonists down a narrow flight of stairs. It’s wildly absurd, to say the least, and every minute is magic. Not only does it, in my opinion, rank high among Hooper’s swampy sagas of outre horror, but it’s also a wacky excoriation of late-stage capitalism vis-a-vis a contemporary setting that’s still somehow reminiscent of the industrial revolution, making it truly timeless. The mangler literally feeds on the blood of the workers and also the virgin daughters of the town’s powerful and wealthy so that they can maintain their power. For something apparently so ridiculous, it sure resonates as a simulacrum of the American experience.
A still from A New Leaf (1971) Credit: Music Box Theatre
On Wednesday, Halloween eve, I caught one of the final screenings of the monthlong Music Box of Horrors: The Dream Child programming, Psykho III: The Musical (1985), a new-to-me feature by Mark Oates and Tom Rubnitz. Much like The Mangler, it, too, is ludicrous from start to finish, but again in the best possible way. Adapted from Oates’s stage musical, which was mounted at the Pyramid Club (a famous queer East Village nightclub) in the early 80s, and capitalizing off the recency of Psycho II (1983), it doesn’t deviate too much from its Hitchcockian source material but does add some pretty catchy tunes into the mix. (“Loose Woman on the Loose” stays with you.)
Another noteworthy screening this week was Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 (which I reviewed for the Reader) at AMC River East. As an Eastwood enthusiast, I was eager to join the hordes of cinephiles dedicated to viewing his latest (and purportedly his last) film in theaters as a way to defend the auteur against Warner Bros.’ insulting decision to give the film just a small release at only 50 theaters nationwide. It’s cause for alarm when a major studio relegates an iconic director making serious adult dramas that are still commercially successful to such a strategy. (It was originally supposed to go straight to streaming.)
Thankfully, there are repertory screenings to fill in the gaps where contemporary exhibition is lacking. This past weekend, the Music Box began its Dangerous Business: Elaine May Matinees series with A New Leaf (1971), one of those films that just gets better every time you watch it. I’m telling you, do not miss these. May’s films are not only better on the big screen but with an audience, as well. A woman down the aisle from me was doubling over with laughter; I felt the collective joy in my bones, a much-needed antidote to all the doom and gloom as of late. The next three screenings will likely play a big part in my upcoming columns, so I won’t go too in-depth on the series here, except to say that the director’s cut of Mikey and Nicky (1976) is screening this weekend, and I expect to see you there.
Until next time (or Saturday, or Sunday), moviegoers.
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Wicked is a fantastic movie musical epic that hits all the right notes and stays true to its source material.
Alice Maio Mackay’s trans slasher film Carnage for Christmas is a satisfying holiday treat.
A new addition to the Dune franchise gives an intriguing perspective on vengeance, power, and humanity itself.
Payal Kapadia’s latest film finds a refreshing tenderness and subtlety in this story of burgeoning love.
Your Monster is a tropey but enjoyable horror rom-com with perfectly cast leads.
