The who’s who of local journalism gathered recently at the Newberry Library for the 83rd annual Chicago Journalists Association awards. As the organization’s first in-person ceremony since the pandemic took its grip, a buoyant feeling was in the air (aided perhaps by an open bar), as Chicago journalists rocked their finest duds (props to Sun-Times columnist Ismael Pérez for outshining us all), and took a beat to look back at their work across the past year—and its resulting community impact.

The night was an extra special one for the Reader, as publisher Tracy Baim received a Lifetime Achievement award, and our own Kelly Garcia was chosen as the Emerging Journalist of the Year. If that weren’t enough, staffers Katie Prout and Mike Sula were nominated for Sarah Brown Boyden awards, and freelance contributor Matthew Ritchie took home a first place distinction. 

During the pre-awards mixer, Reader managing editor Salem Collo-Julin asked if I’d picked up an index card and written down a query for Baim’s Q&A session. I’m not sure if it was the free-flowing bourbon, but for some unexplained reason, I brushed it off as a joke.

The ceremony underway, Baim was called to the lectern, and the emcee mentioned that in lieu of a stuffy speech, the honoree had decided to have an informal chat featuring questions from the audience. Panic set in. My boss was about to take the mike, and she might not be able to fill her allotted space. I needed to do something. Swiftly, I pulled out my phone and looked up “Windy City Times,” the storied LGBTQ+ publication Baim launched alongside Drew Badanish, Bob Bearden, and Jeff McCourt, and that’s when I saw it: Founded 1985.

I immediately felt a knot in my stomach, as even as a schoolboy, I remembered the significance of that time, and what it meant in the queer world I would one day grow up to be a part of: the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Tracy Baim and Enrique Limón Credit: GlitterGuts

Gladly, Tracy is a talker, and didn’t need my help filling up time thanks to her extensive mental Rolodex of experiences, including interviewing Mayor Harold Washington, and taking him to task on the city’s poor economic response to the nascent health crisis. 

Still, for a moment that seemed eternal, I dissociated, remembered being in Catholic school and having the nuns show us a news report mentioning this new condition, which they packaged as God’s welcomed punishment. At that moment, not having experienced my first crush, long division, or having even shaved for the first time, I remember thinking, I know what I’m going to die of. Moreover, I knew that no one would come to my funeral, and that my sole existence would be my family’s forever shame. That’s a lot for a grade schooler to take in. 

Anyone who has ever taken a rapid HIV test knows how mortifying those 20 minutes between being swabbed and getting your results can be. Imagine prolonging that over two weeks, which was the norm at the time, way before pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) was a glimmer in science’s eye; when the White House press secretary used the syndrome as a punchline during a briefing; and when, as one poignant scene in a sitcom of the time put it, it was believed AIDS was “killing all the right people.”

The scene in question, from the second season of the sitcom Designing Women, first aired on October 5, 1987

The LGBTQ+ community desperately needed allies in those primordial days, and the “L” in the acronym stood hand in hand with their brethren. They organized, marched, rallied, screamed, and fought like hell. Baim did all that while informing, dispelling misinformation, pairing a human face to the crisis, and saving lives along the way. She won’t want to hear this, but I say give her all the awards.

Ahead of Thursday, December 1, World AIDS Day—a commemoration that started in 1988 as the first-ever global health day—it’s worth noting that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS if left untreated, is now a manageable condition with multiple treatment options, and that while the threat of infection seems like something for the history books, the World Health Organization estimates that 650,000 people died from HIV-related causes globally last year alone, adding to the more than 40 million worldwide deaths since virologists first classified it.

AIDS, and the stigma it carried, robbed the world of a whole generation of artists, thinkers, performers, storytellers, and everyday folk who hid their true identities till the end because the world around them wasn’t ready to hear it, let alone accept it. To them I say I remember, and I thank you for being at the forefront. I, and many others, are indebted to you for paving the way, for taking the brunt of this epidemic, and for bringing exposure to a community that had long become used to living in the shadows. I also say thanks for allowing yourself to love when chances are that, like me, you were conditioned at a young age to think you’d never be worthy of it. Thank you from that little boy who was not able to properly word it, and would pray at night for God to make him “normal.” Thank you from the adult who still prays, and now gives thanks for every single thing that makes him unique, and asks for a more compassionate and caring world—one where our mere existence isn’t an open invitation for banishment, derision, or violence.

I remember.

Read More

Each week “Lucky” and “Pam” Seuamsothabandith walked the floor of the Seaford Clothing factory in Rock Island, Illinois, taking egg roll orders. The plant, which once famously made suits for Barack Obama, was where the couple (Phiengvilay and Phengphanh, respectively) found work after fleeing Laos in the late 70s.

When she was a kid, Stacy Seuamsothabandith woke up at 4 AM each Friday to the sizzle of her parents’ side hustle. “My mom was constantly working,” she says. “It was a nine-hour day in a really hot factory, then coming home to make a hot meal. I would sit down at the kitchen table with her to get two minutes with my mom first thing in the morning. She would always fry me a couple of egg rolls and I would go back to bed.”

Pam’s egg rolls. Credit: Laos to Your House

Pam passed away seven years ago, and the Seaford factory now sits empty, but her egg rolls live on in the family’s Lucky’s Eggrolls food truck, sustaining Quad Cities farmers’ market strollers and late-night bar goers since the late 90s. They arrived here in Chicago last June, when Stacy, her brother chef Keo Seuamsothabandith, and husband Byron Gully launched Laos to Your House, a biweekly virtual restaurant that reps Chicago’s only Lao food.

And now, on December 5, Laos to Your House is cooking live at Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at the Kedzie Inn in Irving Park. Over the decades Chicago has had only rare opportunities to taste Lao food made to order, and though Pam’s egg rolls are now legendary, they only scratch the surface of this undersung Southeast Asian cuisine.

The LtYH crew will emerge from their new HQ at The Hatchery to assemble their signature Lao Bento Boxes and Laocuterie boards, featuring an assortment of grilled meats (brisket, sausage, chicken wings), sauces, and sticky rice; plus kua mee, sweet, caramelized wok fried rice noodles with pork and fresh herbs; nam khao, a crispy rice salad with tangy fermented pork, coconut, and red curry; and of course, Pam and Lucky’s beef egg rolls.

They’re also featuring a trio of specials you won’t typically find on their regular menus: the yellow chicken and potato curry gang garee gai, with a side of French bread to soak it all up; goong hom pha, whole shrimp swaddled in wontons and deep fried; and gingery sweet or spicy chicken wings.

“Keo, he learned to cook from Stacy’s mom,” says Gully. “She always wanted to have a restaurant, so every time we cook in that kitchen, it really feels like a tribute to her.”

There’ll be a limited number of walk-in orders available, so place your preorder right now. It all goes down beginning at 5 PM, Monday, December 5 at 4100 N. Kedzie.

Meanwhile check out the remaining Foodballs on the 2022 schedule below. New 2023 lineup coming soon.

Phengphanh “Pam” Seuamsothabandith and Phiengvilay “Lucky” Seuamsothabandith on their wedding day, Laos, 1975

December 12: Kimski rumspringa with Won Kim @revisecmw

December 19: First night of Hanukkah with Zeitlin’s Delicatessen and Schneider Provisions @zeitlinsdelicatessen @schneider_provisions

Read More

PrideArts’ Jack Off the Beanstalk Credit: John Olson/PrideArts

The Evolved Network is a recently established not for profit organization founded by Sebastian White in order to bring therapeutic services and financial literacy to young Chicagoans through farming and culinary training. The organization is currently raising funds that will go in part toward a permanent space in which to host its restaurant management and cooking programs, and tonight’s Eat & Evolve with the Evolved Network event at the Avondale restaurant Eden (2734 W. Roscoe) will hopefully help fill the coffers. Food stations will be available from a variety of Chicago restaurants and chef pop-ups, including Saigon Sisters, the Publican, and Prairie Grass Cafe, and cocktails and mocktails alike are offered from Eden’s cash bar. It’s $20 to enter, and tickets can be purchased through the Evolved Network’s website. (SCJ)

In Great Britain, the Christmas pantomime, or “panto,” is a beloved tradition (and no, it doesn’t involve actual mimes). PrideArts gets in on the Fractured Fairy Tales-style fun with Jack Off the Beanstalk, which has its first preview tonight at 7:30 PM at PrideArts Center (4139 N. Broadway). The famous climber of beanstalks and slayer of giants is joined in this romp by love interest Princess Jill and Fairy Flick Bean. Directed by Bryan McCaffrey, the show is recommended for 18+, and promises “outrageous humor, raunchy puns, and sexual innuendo,” along with pop songs made famous by artists like Kelly Clarkson and Whitney Houston performed by the cast and a live four-piece band. The show runs through 12/18; tickets and information at pridearts.org. (KR)

A few music choices for this evening:

Chicago singer-songwriter Owen Ashworth’s project Advance Base plays Beat Kitchen tonight, with MJ Lenderman and Spencer Radcliffe opening. (8 PM, 2100 W. Belmont, $18, 17+, tickets at Ticketweb)
Indie-rock band Wild Pink performs at Sleeping Village tonight, with Dave Benton’s Trace Mountains project opening. (8 PM, 3734 W. Belmont, $22, 21+, tickets at Etix)
Bassist Jeremiah Hunt brings his Mingus Band to Jazz Showcase tonight for two shows. (8 and 10 PM, 806 S. Plymouth, $15-$25, all-ages, tickets at Eventbrite)
Chicago dream pop band Harvey Waters is on the bill for Free Monday at the Empty Bottle; Bled Tape headlines as the show is also their EP release party, and Stalled opens. (8:30 PM, 1035 N. Western, free, 21+, reservations encouraged at Eventbrite) (SCJ)
Part of a Kristen Toomey set at the Laugh Factory from October 2022

Rockford native and Illinois State University alum Natasha Leggero visits City Winery (1200 W. Randolph) tonight for a round of stand-up and stories culled from her new book, The World Deserves My Children, a collection of essays on motherhood and family in our “post-apocalyptic world.” She’ll be joined by fellow actress and Chicago comedian Kristen Toomey, who will open the 8 PM show. Tickets are $18-$37 and available at the City Winery’s website. (SCJ)

Read More

Each week “Lucky” and “Pam” Seuamsothabandith walked the floor of the Seaford Clothing factory in Rock Island, Illinois, taking egg roll orders. The plant, which once famously made suits for Barack Obama, was where the couple (Phiengvilay and Phengphanh, respectively) found work after fleeing Laos in the late 70s.

When she was a kid, Stacy Seuamsothabandith woke up at 4 AM each Friday to the sizzle of her parents’ side hustle. “My mom was constantly working,” she says. “It was a nine-hour day in a really hot factory, then coming home to make a hot meal. I would sit down at the kitchen table with her to get two minutes with my mom first thing in the morning. She would always fry me a couple of egg rolls and I would go back to bed.”

Pam’s egg rolls. Credit: Laos to Your House

Pam passed away seven years ago, and the Seaford factory now sits empty, but her egg rolls live on in the family’s Lucky’s Eggrolls food truck, sustaining Quad Cities farmers’ market strollers and late-night bar goers since the late 90s. They arrived here in Chicago last June, when Stacy, her brother chef Keo Seuamsothabandith, and husband Byron Gully launched Laos to Your House, a biweekly virtual restaurant that reps Chicago’s only Lao food.

And now, on December 5, Laos to Your House is cooking live at Monday Night Foodball, the Reader’s weekly chef pop-up at the Kedzie Inn in Irving Park. Over the decades Chicago has had only rare opportunities to taste Lao food made to order, and though Pam’s egg rolls are now legendary, they only scratch the surface of this undersung Southeast Asian cuisine.

The LtYH crew will emerge from their new HQ at The Hatchery to assemble their signature Lao Bento Boxes and Laocuterie boards, featuring an assortment of grilled meats (brisket, sausage, chicken wings), sauces, and sticky rice; plus kua mee, sweet, caramelized wok fried rice noodles with pork and fresh herbs; nam khao, a crispy rice salad with tangy fermented pork, coconut, and red curry; and of course, Pam and Lucky’s beef egg rolls.

They’re also featuring a trio of specials you won’t typically find on their regular menus: the yellow chicken and potato curry gang garee gai, with a side of French bread to soak it all up; goong hom pha, whole shrimp swaddled in wontons and deep fried; and gingery sweet or spicy chicken wings.

“Keo, he learned to cook from Stacy’s mom,” says Gully. “She always wanted to have a restaurant, so every time we cook in that kitchen, it really feels like a tribute to her.”

There’ll be a limited number of walk-in orders available, so place your preorder right now. It all goes down beginning at 5 PM, Monday, December 5 at 4100 N. Kedzie.

Meanwhile check out the remaining Foodballs on the 2022 schedule below. New 2023 lineup coming soon.

Phengphanh “Pam” Seuamsothabandith and Phiengvilay “Lucky” Seuamsothabandith on their wedding day, Laos, 1975

December 12: Kimski rumspringa with Won Kim @revisecmw

December 19: First night of Hanukkah with Zeitlin’s Delicatessen and Schneider Provisions @zeitlinsdelicatessen @schneider_provisions

Read More

PrideArts’ Jack Off the Beanstalk Credit: John Olson/PrideArts

The Evolved Network is a recently established not for profit organization founded by Sebastian White in order to bring therapeutic services and financial literacy to young Chicagoans through farming and culinary training. The organization is currently raising funds that will go in part toward a permanent space in which to host its restaurant management and cooking programs, and tonight’s Eat & Evolve with the Evolved Network event at the Avondale restaurant Eden (2734 W. Roscoe) will hopefully help fill the coffers. Food stations will be available from a variety of Chicago restaurants and chef pop-ups, including Saigon Sisters, the Publican, and Prairie Grass Cafe, and cocktails and mocktails alike are offered from Eden’s cash bar. It’s $20 to enter, and tickets can be purchased through the Evolved Network’s website. (SCJ)

In Great Britain, the Christmas pantomime, or “panto,” is a beloved tradition (and no, it doesn’t involve actual mimes). PrideArts gets in on the Fractured Fairy Tales-style fun with Jack Off the Beanstalk, which has its first preview tonight at 7:30 PM at PrideArts Center (4139 N. Broadway). The famous climber of beanstalks and slayer of giants is joined in this romp by love interest Princess Jill and Fairy Flick Bean. Directed by Bryan McCaffrey, the show is recommended for 18+, and promises “outrageous humor, raunchy puns, and sexual innuendo,” along with pop songs made famous by artists like Kelly Clarkson and Whitney Houston performed by the cast and a live four-piece band. The show runs through 12/18; tickets and information at pridearts.org. (KR)

A few music choices for this evening:

Chicago singer-songwriter Owen Ashworth’s project Advance Base plays Beat Kitchen tonight, with MJ Lenderman and Spencer Radcliffe opening. (8 PM, 2100 W. Belmont, $18, 17+, tickets at Ticketweb)
Indie-rock band Wild Pink performs at Sleeping Village tonight, with Dave Benton’s Trace Mountains project opening. (8 PM, 3734 W. Belmont, $22, 21+, tickets at Etix)
Bassist Jeremiah Hunt brings his Mingus Band to Jazz Showcase tonight for two shows. (8 and 10 PM, 806 S. Plymouth, $15-$25, all-ages, tickets at Eventbrite)
Chicago dream pop band Harvey Waters is on the bill for Free Monday at the Empty Bottle; Bled Tape headlines as the show is also their EP release party, and Stalled opens. (8:30 PM, 1035 N. Western, free, 21+, reservations encouraged at Eventbrite) (SCJ)
Part of a Kristen Toomey set at the Laugh Factory from October 2022

Rockford native and Illinois State University alum Natasha Leggero visits City Winery (1200 W. Randolph) tonight for a round of stand-up and stories culled from her new book, The World Deserves My Children, a collection of essays on motherhood and family in our “post-apocalyptic world.” She’ll be joined by fellow actress and Chicago comedian Kristen Toomey, who will open the 8 PM show. Tickets are $18-$37 and available at the City Winery’s website. (SCJ)

Read More

The who’s who of local journalism gathered recently at the Newberry Library for the 83rd annual Chicago Journalists Association awards. As the organization’s first in-person ceremony since the pandemic took its grip, a buoyant feeling was in the air (aided perhaps by an open bar), as Chicago journalists rocked their finest duds (props to Sun-Times columnist Ismael Pérez for outshining us all), and took a beat to look back at their work across the past year—and its resulting community impact.

The night was an extra special one for the Reader, as publisher Tracy Baim received a Lifetime Achievement award, and our own Kelly Garcia was chosen as the Emerging Journalist of the Year. If that weren’t enough, staffers Katie Prout and Mike Sula were nominated for Sarah Brown Boyden awards, and freelance contributor Matthew Ritchie took home a first place distinction. 

During the pre-awards mixer, Reader managing editor Salem Collo-Julin asked if I’d picked up an index card and written down a query for Baim’s Q&A session. I’m not sure if it was the free-flowing bourbon, but for some unexplained reason, I brushed it off as a joke.

The ceremony underway, Baim was called to the lectern, and the emcee mentioned that in lieu of a stuffy speech, the honoree had decided to have an informal chat featuring questions from the audience. Panic set in. My boss was about to take the mike, and she might not be able to fill her allotted space. I needed to do something. Swiftly, I pulled out my phone and looked up “Windy City Times,” the storied LGBTQ+ publication Baim launched alongside Drew Badanish, Bob Bearden, and Jeff McCourt, and that’s when I saw it: Founded 1985.

I immediately felt a knot in my stomach, as even as a schoolboy, I remembered the significance of that time, and what it meant in the queer world I would one day grow up to be a part of: the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Tracy Baim and Enrique Limón Credit: GlitterGuts

Gladly, Tracy is a talker, and didn’t need my help filling up time thanks to her extensive mental Rolodex of experiences, including interviewing Mayor Harold Washington, and taking him to task on the city’s poor economic response to the nascent health crisis. 

Still, for a moment that seemed eternal, I dissociated, remembered being in Catholic school and having the nuns show us a news report mentioning this new condition, which they packaged as God’s welcomed punishment. At that moment, not having experienced my first crush, long division, or having even shaved for the first time, I remember thinking, I know what I’m going to die of. Moreover, I knew that no one would come to my funeral, and that my sole existence would be my family’s forever shame. That’s a lot for a grade schooler to take in. 

Anyone who has ever taken a rapid HIV test knows how mortifying those 20 minutes between being swabbed and getting your results can be. Imagine prolonging that over two weeks, which was the norm at the time, way before pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) was a glimmer in science’s eye; when the White House press secretary used the syndrome as a punchline during a briefing; and when, as one poignant scene in a sitcom of the time put it, it was believed AIDS was “killing all the right people.”

The scene in question, from the second season of the sitcom Designing Women, first aired on October 5, 1987

The LGBTQ+ community desperately needed allies in those primordial days, and the “L” in the acronym stood hand in hand with their brethren. They organized, marched, rallied, screamed, and fought like hell. Baim did all that while informing, dispelling misinformation, pairing a human face to the crisis, and saving lives along the way. She won’t want to hear this, but I say give her all the awards.

Ahead of Thursday, December 1, World AIDS Day—a commemoration that started in 1988 as the first-ever global health day—it’s worth noting that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS if left untreated, is now a manageable condition with multiple treatment options, and that while the threat of infection seems like something for the history books, the World Health Organization estimates that 650,000 people died from HIV-related causes globally last year alone, adding to the more than 40 million worldwide deaths since virologists first classified it.

AIDS, and the stigma it carried, robbed the world of a whole generation of artists, thinkers, performers, storytellers, and everyday folk who hid their true identities till the end because the world around them wasn’t ready to hear it, let alone accept it. To them I say I remember, and I thank you for being at the forefront. I, and many others, are indebted to you for paving the way, for taking the brunt of this epidemic, and for bringing exposure to a community that had long become used to living in the shadows. I also say thanks for allowing yourself to love when chances are that, like me, you were conditioned at a young age to think you’d never be worthy of it. Thank you from that little boy who was not able to properly word it, and would pray at night for God to make him “normal.” Thank you from the adult who still prays, and now gives thanks for every single thing that makes him unique, and asks for a more compassionate and caring world—one where our mere existence isn’t an open invitation for banishment, derision, or violence.

I remember.

Read More